Making Money and A Career In the Music Industry Business

. . . And it’s all about the Website. Collecting e-mail addresses and maximizing revenue . . . ”

Hi I’m Matt from Kurb. We’re all about online marketing specializing in digital music marketing and artist management. We’ve also just launched a new blog for small business marketing

Check out New Music Marketing.com - our artist community putting artists, musicians and managers in control of their online promotion and revenue management.

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Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.

Nearly every musician I know is a creatively diverse individual, yet many of them are singularly focused.  If they hit a goal for their occupation as a musician, it’s often attended by tunnel vision.  They place all their dreams of making it as a musician in one band or one project, and in the meantime exert a lot of energy waiting tables at the local Scrapplebee’s.  Perhaps worse, I’ve seen friends that were rattling talented and auspicious musicians get caught up in a corporate occupation and settle for the occasional weekend counterbalance band gig.  The latter usually step away from the cliff, scared to leap because they find their current situation secure and comfortable, later to lament their decision.

However, there is added way to attain your creative and singable knowledge work for you.  Chances are you hit a variety of skills that you take for granted, or at least hit come up with enough excuses as to why you can’t use them.  I’ve heard all the excuses, used many of them, but finally took off my blinders and realized there are many ways I can create revenue streams as a musician.

Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.  The beauty of all is that they can be done simultaneously, involve music, and if you hit a slow month with one revenue stream, added could likely pick up the slack.  That is, after all, the whole reason to hit multiple streams of income.

Performance Oriented Skills

The first place to start is evaluating your abilities as a player or singer.  Sure, your priority is to get your band’s act together.  But in the downtime, consider playing solo gigs and investigate opportunities to work as a sideman or studio musician in your area.  The better you are as a musician, the more opportunities you module find.  This might mean brushing up on your sight reading or dusting off the jazz chops, but these kinds of opportunities module strengthen you as a musician when your band needs it most.

Another option I rarely wager bands choose is to create an alias to perform more counterbalance songs.  Choose a second name for your band, add added singer if necessary (one lead singer per gender seems to do well), record a few counterbalance songs and start pitching yourself to local bars.  Have fun with it, and attain some extra cash.

One abstract I learned working at a bar in a college municipality was that counterbalance bands can do very, rattling well.  At the time, I had tunnel exteroception and thought it was beneath me, as an artist, to play in a counterbalance band for a bunch of drunken frat boys.  In retrospect, I probably would hit been better off on stage than doing something like working as a bouncer at a bar full of drunken frat boys.

Selling Music

Hopefully, your first thought here is, \”Duh.\”

If you don’t yet hit some penalization available to delude yet, attain this a priority. There are two keys to making this an actual revenue stream: 1) attain sure the penalization is really good, and 2) keep your overhead low. Set a realistic budget, get your penalization together, and explore some options for recording.

Home recording vs. studio recording is an all different topic (as is the communicating on commerce penalization independently), but for the sake of this article, here’s my belief in a nutshell:  Use your budgetary restrictions as a creative guide.  For example, I hit a small home recording rig that I’ve used for 4 albums and counting.  One of the things I can’t do is record drums.  So instead of throw my hands in the air and do nothing, I choose creative means of recording penalization within my restrictions.

Once you hit an album (or even a few tracks) that you’re happy with, release them digitally.  Budget some time each week to market yourself and your music.  Keep your overhead baritone by using every free online resource available to spread the word about your band and the music.  If the penalization is good, it module sell.

One last abstract to mention here: Record and release counterbalance songs and status oriented albums.  While it may not be your chosen path to be recording counterbalance songs, my experience has been that they delude rattling well.  Sales from counterbalance songs help fund larger projects with my original music.  For example, iTunes sales of an album of 8 counterbalance songs, involving no more than an acoustic guitar and my friend singing, and recorded in my parents level nearly 10 years ago, provided me with enough funds to take my jazz trio into a studio and attain a proper recording.

Here are some other articles I’ve written to further discuss what I do to help delude my music:

How To Effectively Promote and Sell your Music on iTunes

Recording, Releasing, and Performing Cover Songs

Make Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Album

Recording / Home Studio

If you hit a home recording ordered up that you’ve used for your possess recordings, why not let other musicians hire you and your gear?  If you hit ProTools chops to burn, people module need you.  There’s a precipitous learning curve on this software, and many musicians would rather hire somebody to record them before taking the time and energy to learn these recording techniques for themselves.

Composition & Arranging

Writing and arranging penalization is perhaps one of the more profitable ways to use your skills as a musician.  Music enhances life.  That’s why we hit it in movies, commercials, parades, elevators, dentists’ offices… well, perhaps ‘enhance’ is the wrong word.  My point is, it’s everywhere.  And in some cases, companies may want custom penalization for their website, or they’d like to commission a piece of penalization for a special occasion.

Somebody has to write this stuff.  Do you hit the skills to pull it off?  There are countless opportunities discover there if you look, but the best way to find this work is finished effective networking.  Make sure everybody knows you can write penalization and that you’ll write for hire (many people wrongly assume that an creator would never write commissions).  Build a portfolio of examples, perhaps by doing a few projects for little or no money, and work module start to find it’s way to you.

Music Directing or Conducting Skills

Wherever there’s a group of shrunken musicians, there’s a need for a director or conductor.  My counterpart over at MusicianWages.com, pianist Dave Hahn, has written about the employ of a Music Director in the theater .  That is just one place Music Directors (or MD’s as they’re called in the biz) are found.  Artists with large backing ensembles also need MD’s.

It can take some time to get into this kind of position, but if you are a beatific musician that also has strong direction skills, these can turn discover to be ideal gigs (musicians with direction skills are sometimes hard to find).  The only downside is that this is a gig that is probably going to take place a night, and can cause a conflict with your band’s schedule.

Teaching

For many musicians, teaching private lessons is a great way to generate some steady income.  There are several ways to find students.  If you’re willing to put in the effort, placing ads on Craigslist or putting flyers in your local grocery store might help you find students directly, and you can charge whatever they’ll pay.  If hustling for students isn’t your thing, many stores that delude instruments also offer lessons.  There are also programs that offer penalization lessons at regular schools.  Because there’s a middle man for the latter two options, you’ll probably attain less money per student, but could also hit more students placed in your studio.

Transcribing or Copyist Work

If you hit done a lot of work in Finale, Sibelius, or added notation program, then you could be a priceless asset to other musicians that need to get their penalization on paper.

Working as a copyist generally only involves getting previously notated penalization into clean, organized parts for each person in an ensemble.  Composers module write discover an orchestration in one large score, but often hire a copyist to do the grunt work of extracting each instrument into separate parts.

Transcribing involves writing downbound note for note what is happening on a recording.  Not only does it help to hit notation skills, but a drilled ear as well.  There are software programs that can now slow penalization downbound without affecting pitch, which makes things easier, but it’s still a priceless skill that can pay.

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It’s important to remember that none of these gigs constitute giving up on your occupation as a musician.  In most cases, it module strengthen skills that can only help other areas of your career.  Best of all, it can put money in your pocket and attain it a little easier to quit that day job.  Good luck!