How To Make Money With Music [5 Proven Rev Channels]

When it comes to the fundamental ways to make money with music, the music industry has changed completely

Traditionally, music was sold as a physical products and therefore was highly profitable. We can call that the golden days of the music industry when artists, managers, and record labels were bathing in pools of money.

It's a bit different today right?

It definitely is. However, there are still many ways to make money with music because we can leverage the invention of the Internet. The ability to sell products and quickly build a fan base online has never been easier in the history of the world. So although the revenue channels in the music industry are very different they can still be very profitable if you know which ones to go after.

So which revenue channels should you focus on?

It's a great question and we recommend that you focus on multiple revenue channels in order to diversify your revenue. It's not good to have all your eggs in one basket. We recommend this because each one revenue channel will likely not sustain you on it's own. However, multiple revenue channels can provide you with a decent living.

So, it is very important to focus on building multiple revenue channels to support yourself as a musician and to make money with music.

In the rest of this post we will talk about the five most popular monetization channels for your music and how you can sustain yourself as a career musician.

1. Streaming

You are no stranger to this one I'm sure. It's hard to talk about how minimal the stream payout is but it is a channel worth mentioning. It can be long-term passive revenue if you are continuing to build a fan base for your music.

Let's face it, if you don't have an audience or you don't have a fanbase then this channel is not great. You might even say useless. You might be lucky if you could even buy some fish and chips at the pub. Don't they look delicious though? Anyway, back to making money.

So, it is ESSENTIAL to have an audience to make this revenue channel work. If you're reading this and just starting to build your audience then this video might be worth your while in order to help you kick start your audience.

In January of 2019, according to SongTrust, Spotify reports that it pays out between $0.00331 and $0.00437 per stream to rights holders.

Let's say for simplicity purposes, we call it an even $0.0038

But like we said, good luck trying to afford your next meal if you only have a handful of Spotify listeners per month.

Where we can turn this whole thing around is in your ability to leverage your audience and turn them into monthly listeners.

Let's say you managed to get 250,000 monthly listeners.

So that's 250,000 x 0.0038 which equals $960.00

Were you expecting more?

I bet. But, is it that bad? Let's look at it from a different perspective.

Keep in mind, this streaming revenue channel will not be our only monetization channel to make money with our music. It will be one of many.

If you had four other channels making $960 a month, then that would be:

$960.00 x 5 = $4,800

With $4800 of cash flow per month, that is more than enough to sustain a decent living. Go ahead and buy three orders of fish and chips at the pub. Hehe.

But the key thing to remember is that as we diversify our revenue channels, each channel does not need to sustain itself on their own. Yes, of course, this Spotify streaming revenue would not be able to support you if it was your only revenue channel.

You might be thinking, but 250,000 monthly listeners! That's a lot of listeners!

Yes, it is. Especially if you're starting at zero. But it's not impossible or dare I say very difficult to achieve.

The ingredients to do this are to get on as many Spotify playlists as possible, finding reach through paid advertisements like Facebook and Instagram and then creating content that supports your brand.

This is the recipe to convert fans into listeners. It'a all about working with the marketing funnel to convert visitors into listeners. There are people out there who like your music, we guarantee it, you just need to reach a lot of people.

Sadly, just getting on Spotify playlist