How to earn more with your music

Because streaming sure as shit doesn't pay enough

Today, I’d like to tell you about my newest offering and use the occasion to talk about how to earn more from your music.

The Fever Dreams at Ruger Place Sample Pack

First off, I’m really excited to share that the Fever Dreams at Ruger Place Sample Pack is available now. This sample pack is a collection of 75+ curated from my EP of the same name. These glitchy, gritty, and atmospheric samples come directly from track stems; including hardware recordings, custom instrument racks, and transformed field recordings. This sample pack prioritizes texture above all else.

Free subscribers to this newsletter can pick up the Fever Dreams at Ruger Place Sample Pack for $3 off by using this link.

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Paid subscribers get it for free.

If you’re a paid subscriber, scroll down to the bottom of this post to find a link for a 100% off discount off the Fever Dreams at Ruger Place Sample Pack.

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The drum, bass, vocal, keys, synth, guitar, and fx samples are all pulled directly from the Fever Dreams at Ruger Place E.P. Give it a listen while we talk about how you can earn more money from your own music as well.

Making a living in music

I have wanted to make music for a living for as long as I can remember. What I could never remember was wanting to be was a business owner. The hardest part of getting my career off the ground was reorienting myself around the reality of the situation: to be a professional musician is to be a business owner.

And at first I was pissed lol. Truly. I grew up with anxiety around money. I still have anxiety around money. Some days, I would much prefer to bury my head in the sand than think about invoices, bills, expenses, and taxes. You might be reading this and thinking to yourself, “oh god I don’t want any of that.” I would understand you completely for thinking that way. However, I would also say that the business of working in music is far less scary once you face it head on.

In many ways, music business is just a knowledge game. What you know rarely ever hurts you, but what you don’t know almost certainly always will. Take licensing, for example. In my field of video games, if I didn’t know how licensing works, my ability to negotiate would be severely limited. I wouldn’t actually know who owns my music and I wouldn’t know how much it was truly worth. In the end, it would be what I didn’t know that hurt me.

It’s important to know how to earn more with your music

If you want to work professionally in music, you have to know how to earn money with your music. In what may be considered the ultimate crapshoot, it is simultaneously much harder and far easier to earn a living in music than ever before. On one hand, the old ways are dead. Whereas music used to be an art experienced by listeners via physical media, it has now been demoted to background content for consumers via the playlistification of our lives. Many record labels and venues are sinking their teeth into touring profits and merch sales in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. And, Bandcamp, one of the few universally beloved platforms in the music industry, is ratcheting up everybody’s anxiety levels every time it’s sold to a different corporation.

On the other hand, there are new ways that are thriving. It is possible to have complete control of your career in a way that was unheard of 30 years ago. Recording, releasing, and marketing music is the most accessible and affordable it has ever been. Building and reaching an audience requires far fewer gatekeepers than in the past. There are more tools, platforms, and resources available to all of us now than at any other point in the history of the music industry. You also don’t ever have to tour or play a single gig if that isn’t your thing. Who needs the old ways, anyway?

Ok, I lied. It’s all still just the old ways.

I hope you’ll forgive me for waxing philosophical for dramatic effect in the previous paragraphs. But really, things are the same as they always have been, the conditions are just different now. From the very beginning of this industry, musicians in the highest echelons of stardom and musicians just barely eking out a living alike have supplemented their performing, recording, or licensing income with other revenue streams as well. For many of us, that looks like day jobs and, for the biggest artists, that most visibly looks like lucrative endorsement deals. (Some of which I’ve compiled in the collage above.)

But what I want to impart on you is that your options for earning a living and earning more from your music are far more robust than the weekend warrior or superstar binary. Instead, there is an entire spectrum of earning possibilities that exist for all of us. The only constant in the music industry seems to be change and so if we’re all to weather the storm, it’s best that we not only know our options but that we make the necessary effort to take advantage of those options.

It’s all about our offerings.

As music makers, we can offer our skills and expertise thru two vehicles, what I’ll call our presence and our products. Those two categories in totality represent our offerings as music makers. I think it’s important to frame them as such because all of us have so much that we can offer. In my own career, I’ve come to learn that sustainability is possible when I make the effort to make the most of my offerings. Let’s step back and break down each of those categories quickly.

Presence

We can think of our presence as anything that requires our time and active attention. Performing falls under this category. As does teaching. In both instances, people are paying for our time, really. During that time, we share our skills and artistry with those present. There are other ways we can offer our presence as well. Beyond teaching at institutions or our own private studios, we can share our knowledge in classes, workshops, talks, and panels. When opportunities arise we can provide consultation. I would say that recording or producing for other artists fall into this category as well.

As a side note — and something I do want to talk about more extensively in the future — more of you should consider teaching. And if you are a music producer or electronic musicians you should definitely consider teaching. And I don’t mean regurgitating “tips and tricks” on IG or YouTube. I mean working with students. No matter how little you think you know, there will always be somebody who knows less than you who is willing to pay to know what you know. Teaching is an accessible way to start earning income from music and it’s a powerful skill multiplier. My rate of improvement as a composer and producer sped up considerably once I started teaching.

Products

Our products are anything that we offer that does not require us exchanging our time for money. Of course, time is required to make and market our products but the bill of sale itself isn’t for our time. For most music makers, this category only comprises their music — whether that’s in the form of streaming, CDs, vinyl, or cassettes.

However, I tend to think that this category is far more expansive than most music makers realize. As it relates directly to our music, there is of course royalties that come from streaming and radio. There are licensing opportunities for use in ads, film, video games, and television. But beyond our music directly, there are many other product offerings that capitalize on our skills and knowledge. Sample packs, software instruments, DAW templates, preset packs, on-demand e-learnings, subscriptions, affiliate marketing, sponsored content… The list goes on.

It’s worth noting that while most of the offerings in this category take the most investment upfront on your part, I tend to think that these offerings are more sustainable and have a longer shelf life.

Sustainability is about finding stability and knowing your values

If everything I’ve discussed so far seems overwhelming, I understand. When a lot of these ideas were first presented to me, it all just sounded fucking exhausting. I just want to make music. Why would I want to do 10 million other things as well? And there is truth to that statement. There is nothing wrong with just wanting to make music and letting that be whatever it will be in its own time.

What it comes down to is a question of values. What do you value as a person, as an artist, as a business owner? I would recommend letting your values guide you in what offerings you give to the world. For me, I value helping others so I teach and write this newsletter. On the other hand, I highly value expressing my artistry freely, so I place little emphasis on streaming as an income as my work doesn’t always sit nicely in the kind of genre boxes that allow for easy playlisting. I also highly value practice and process which is why I share things like sample packs and instruments.

The framing that opened me up to the idea of thinking about my career as, essentially, an income portfolio, was the idea of sustainability and stability. If I put all my eggs in one basket and that basket bottoms out, well, I would be scrambling (sorry) to find a solution. Think back to the height of the pandemic. We likely all new somebody who earned their living almost entirely from gigging. All of a sudden, over night, their career was taken from them. Whereas, on the other hand, those gigging musicians who might have supplemented their income with other activities such as teaching or recording still had those offerings to fall back on while they figured things out.

The metaphor that I impart upon my students is that their career is like a table. If a leg gets knocked out from under that table, whether the table remains standing is 100% dependent upon how many other legs it has. If the table had only one leg then the table is done for. But, if the table has three or four legs, then there’s a greater chance that the table will remain standing long enough for you to repair that broken leg. Our careers as music makers are the same way. Some months are slow. Some months are big. Some income avenues dry up. Some are steady. Having a range of offerings and incomes is worthwhile if only for the fact that it offers you a modicum of stability in an industry that is anything but.

Until next time.

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