How to make $100k in the music industry right now
Many producers within the EDM industry believe that producing music is the only way that they can make money in the scene. However, with an increasing number of musicians able to sustain a full-time career from their passion, it has become evident that generating multiple income streams is absolutely essential to success. In this article, we’re going to cover how to find different revenue streams from your music career, and how to apply them into practice so that you can start generating a great income very soon.
Firstly, it’s worth understanding that there are two different types of income within the music industry that you should be focusing on: passive and active. Passive income related to revenue that you are not working extremely hard to earn on a regular basis. A good example of this is Spotify streams – as you put the music out there and the revenue is automatically collected. On the other hand, active income is totally opposite: you earn more money as you work. Examples of this could include music journalism, being a mastering engineer, giving music theory classes, and playing shows & festivals. Many producers already have several forms of income within the music industry. However, they aren’t putting in the necessary work required to uplift it to a full-time income level.
In order to increase your income, you have to first decide the revenue streams that you would like to pursue within the music industry. For the sake of examples, let’s say that you decide to release music on streaming sites, play regular shows at festivals, and do some mastering engineer work. You’d need to ensure that there is a reasonable demand for your services at a price in which you’re willing to accept. Therefore, gauging an understanding of the market is extremely important. You need to understand the exact details of what your audience wants so that you can tailor your products towards that.
If your aim is to generate $100,000 worth of revenue each year, it’s worth doing the math so that the numbers are broken down into understandable sizes of information. Let’s say (as an example) that you are doing a show or festival once every fortnight, and charging $1k for a 2-hour set. This revenue stream, therefore, gives you $26,000. Next, you may be able to charge $450 for mastering of an EDM song (if you’re talented at the craft). On the assumption of being able to achieve 2 tracks a week, that gives you roughly $46,800 per year.
As we now understand the income from the first 2 revenue streams, the amount of money needed from music streaming per year in order to achieve the $100k target is only $27,200. Most producers have the ability to release at least once a month. Therefore, we understand that the target required in passive income is approximately $2180pm. According to royaltycalc.com, roughly 550,000 streams per month should be enough to fulfill this target. Now you know exactly how to make $100k from your music career.
Finally, you need to figure out the best way in order to make your release process extremely efficient. Are you able to automate the release process in a way that Spotify curators are notified when your new song is out? And that your PayPal is connected to your distributor for automatic payment upon receipt of a royalty statement? Are you running Facebook ads against people who have an interest in music production to increase the revenue of your mastering business? Those are all questions that you need to ask yourself in order to maximize the most of your time.
