How to find more clients as a freelance music producer

Making a full-time income from the music industry is not the easiest career in the world. Instead of working a 30 hour day job like the majority of society, producers & business executives within EDM are regularly working 60+ hours per week in order to make ends meet. After all, it’s an absolutely incredible feeling to be able to sustain a reasonable income from your passion as an EDM producer. Therefore, a lot of people are turning towards freelance music production in order to increase the amount of money that they are making on a monthly basis. For example, producing beats for rappers & singers in exchange for a flat rate. During this article, we’re going to discuss exactly how to go about finding new clients, and the details that you need in order to make them want to work with you.

Firstly, if you are relatively unknown (but are able to produce at a great quality), it may be a simple case of reaching out to as many people as possible that would both have the budget to afford a production, and also could potentially be interested in what you have to offer. Generally, this would be independent singers & rappers with under 100k followers – but are regularly releasing music that has instrumentals similar to yours.

Within your initial email outreach, you need to convey three things: Who you are, what you can do for them in order to solve a problem they have, and then provide an irresistible offer that makes it impossible for them to say no. Here’s an example of a pitch that you could potentially use. Of course, it’s worth adapting to suit the tone of your own personality and details of your artistic brand:

Hey (Artist name),

How are you? I know you’re really busy and that you get a lot of emails, so this will only take sixty seconds to read. I want to respect your time.

You’ve probably seen people offer music production for thousands of dollars, yet for one reason or another, you are unable to afford it or the timing simply isn’t right. About me: I’m an EDM producer with over 22 million YouTube views and 5 million Spotify streams to date. I’ve previously worked with big artists such as (list a few previous clients that you have produced for). 

I’m reaching out to establish a line of communication between us, and to see if you’d be interested in me producing the instrumental/mixdown and master for a flat rate at an affordable price? 

Is this something you’d be open to? If so, I’m happy to answer any questions you have. Let’s talk soon, and I look forward to discussing your ambitions within the music industry.

All the best,

(Your name).

So why was this a great pitch? It was short & simple. The majority of people within the music industry get a lot of emails (often hundreds a day), and so they have limited time to read each one. By making it just a few paragraphs long, it makes them much more likely to read & respond to your email. Also by providing the prospective client with an opportunity to ask any questions, it allows them to mentally process the request. The more time that they spend thinking about you & your artistic brand, the likelier the probability is of them responding with a positive result.

Additionally, creating content based on your services is a great way to attract new clients to work with you as a freelance music producer. For example, you could easily create a video, or a tutorial, on why singers should be collaborating with more producers in order to expand their music career to even greater heights. Afterwards, you can use the Facebook advertising platform to directly target singers who live in specific regions of the world. By putting your own content in front of your target audience, it makes it a lot easier for them to recognize your service, and potentially work with you at some point in the future.

Here are a few ideas on the type of social media content that you could be making to attract more clients:

• A documentary talking about a previous client of yours. For example, it could be footage of them before and after working with you. If the track which you collaborated on ended up getting great results on streaming services such as Apple Music & Spotify, that’s definitely worth mentioning.
• You could write/film an informative piece on why collaborations are absolutely key to success within the music industry. If you do this, try and frame it from the perspective of the target audience. For example, vocalists have to pay a flat fee to their producer & then the entirety of the income from the track goes to them (if they are releasing independently). 
• You could also create case studies of how EDM instrumentals & remixes have significantly helped vocalists propel their careers. Some examples that quickly come to mind are Seeb with Mike Posner and The Chainsmokers with Emily Warren.

There is never a perfect time to reach out to a new prospective client. After all, they may not respond due to a hectic travel schedule, family commitments, or a variety of other reasons. And so it’s best to start as soon as possible. Let’s say you charge $500 per instrumental, reach out to 1000 people, and only 1% say yes. That’s $5000 in the bank for a few hours of email outreach. Not bad!

By systematically creating strategies which allow your ideal target audience to discover your artist brand, the chances of success in finding new clients is astronomically higher. After all, they will never be able to hire you for your services if they don’t know who you are.