If you want to become successful in making money from your music you have to run it like a business. The only way to get the income you strive for is hard work and there are no easy shortcuts.
I have done a lot of different projects online and some of them turned into full-time endeavors, where I made a living from them. Then one thing the successful projects had in common was that we/I ran them as a business.
There is a big difference in the way you do tasks when you look at them as work and not a spare time project.
- Instead of just thinking about doing something you get of the couch
- When you run a business you work concentrated and don’t stop until your shift is over
- You have a plan for what you want to achieve and when to it has to be done
Starting a business is not easy
When you start a business you spend long hours working hard and have nothing to show for it. Typically the time frame for getting a new business up and running is 2-3 years. Its only after this period of time you actually start to make a profit.
I think this holds true for starting a business selling royalty free music. It can of-cause be shorter or longer depending on what you goals are and your work ethic. For a start, creating 100+ pieces of high quality stock music takes a lot time and skill.
Then you have to learn marketing, how to create a website, how to write track descriptions that sells, how to tag music, how to pitch music, what kind of music you should create and how the music should be structured. Expect to use 40 hours or more every week to make your music into a full time living.
When you start out you don’t have much to work with. No knowledge, no connections, no references and no money. All of this takes time to build and the only way to get it all, is working at it every day.
Working part time can be a great way to start your music business
Most people don’t have the time or money to work full time on a getting a businesses up and running. This should however not stop you as there are always alternatives. Having a part time job has been a great way for me to start new online businesses and I know of countless others that have done the same. By having a part time job you make sure that you can pay the bills, while also having the time needed for starting a business.
Working at home has a lot of benefits, but the lack of social interaction can be a real killer – especially in the long run. When you’re composing music you work alone most of the time. It can therefore be a great help to actually get out and meet people at a regular job. For me having a part time job and working on my own projects is great combo and I actually prefer it over running my own business full time.
Never let any one tell you what you cant do!
Many times when I have talked about new business projects to people (even friends and family) they have not had any confidence in me or the projects. Things like these I have heard quite often:
“it will probably be a good learning experience for you” (implied that it would only be that)
“just stick with your regular job and you’re safe”
“there are too many other business doing that, too much competition”
Don´t let comments like the ones above stop you. Prove them all wrong instead by treating your idea of making money from music as a business.
It took 2-3 successful business endeavors for people around me to generally believe in all my new crazy business projects. I have a great loving family and great friends, but most entrepreneurs have heard comments like ones above.
I’m not quite sure why people in general are like that, maybe they are just afraid you actually will succeed and do what they never dared to do.
The music business is very competitive
All arts are very competitive and making money from art is even harder. Music is by no means an exception, but many musicians fail because they don’t think of they music as work.
If you want to make money form your music there is no way around it, you need to work hard and have the right mindset. Today everyone can make music from the comfort of their homes, but this does not mean there is no place for your music in the market.
If you have a solid business plan, work harder than others, make great music and spend the hours it takes you can definitely get a successful music business up and running!
great article! here’s a book i was told is essential to read. just ordered it.
http://www.amazon.com/Need-Know-About-Music-Business/dp/1451682468/
About running a business … well, running business requires information and stats. Here’s some suggestions. Hope they are useful. Let me tell you about my situation first.
I’m a true beginner, I’ve been in this “market” for only 2 months (but I’ve been a musician for over 30 years).
I only have 25 tracks in my portfolio now. I’m reasonably happy – my tracks are selling well, had no rejections so far, and I did no promotion at all. So, I’m satisfied, considering all that.
So I decided that it’s time to crunch some numbers, just to help my future decision making. So I’m sharing these stats with you, maybe they might help you as well. Of course take these with a grain of salt, obviously I don’t have a history long enough to actually give any true meaning to them, and things might be very different for you. It’s just to give you ideas.
Besides the obvious stats, this is what I’m seeing:
1. SALES CONCENTRATION
I make most of my sales on a small number of tracks. Right now 90% of my profits come from exactly 20% of my tracks. So, it seems that the famous 80-20 rule apply in this market as well. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to predict which tracks will sell the most (more on this later).
2. TRACKS WITH NO SALES
Most of my tracks don’t sell at all, about 64% of them have no sales. Again, it’s hard to predict which ones are the non-sellers
3. TIMING
Most of my sales come within the first 2 weeks of approval. More precisely, 45% of my sales come within 7 days of approval, and 68% within 15 days, 86% within 1 month. After 1 month, I have very few sales. If it keeps going like this, it means that it is crucial to keep submitting new tracks. If you stop, it’s pretty much over. I don’t know if this will change much when I have a larger portfolio, but I doubt it.
4. KINDS OF TRACKS
I have “main” versions and “edits / alternate” versions of my tracks. So far, only 4% of sales came from alternate / edits. Basically all my sales came from main versions. Nonetheless, I dont think that priducing edits is useless, because it does increase your exposure, which might help customers to find and buy “something” from you, including the main tracks (in other words, maybe they find the edit and then they buy the main version). However, it seems to me that producing edits is worthwhile ONLY if it’s very quick and easy. Otherwise, time is better spent on new songs.
5. STYLES
I have a small portfolio but several genres and styles are represented. And I sold a little bit of everything. So, I find it hard to predict the success of a song based on genre. Again, this might be different for you.
6. SALES vs EARNINGS
I find that the most useful stat to see how things are going is not necessarily the amount of earnings, but the amount (or, better, the frequency) of sales. Of course earnings is what we want in the end, but unless you sell hundreds of tracks a month they can be misleading. I’ve had one sale that made me a 50$ net profit, and my earnings charts looked awesome that week, but of course that’s a rare event that makes you happy but doesn’t tell you much. It’s much more significant to look at sales charts and numbers, where each sale counts as 1, no matter the amount of profit. In the end, if your sales increase, earnings will increase. A single, unusually large sale might provide not very reliable information.
Hope this is useful for you. If you have ideas about useful stats, please share!!
White Cat Music
1/2. I have a few tracks that sell really well, but else I think all of my tracks have been sold at least once. My profits are spread pretty good among my tracks.
3. When I upload new tracks I also see more sales. The more sales a track have had before the higher the chances of it being sold again. So the more tracks you have sold the slower the sales will fade when nothing new is added – well that is just my best bet on “sales fade” thing.
4.I have not done any edits of my tracks yet. I have thought a lot about doing edits, but always end up making new music instead as it is much more fun to do, than making edits of old music. Also a whole new track has a better chance of being found on different search terms.
5. Corporate and epic trailer music is my two best selling genres so far.
6. The libraries that give me more than one sale are put on a small list of libraries where all my tracks are being uploaded. As you say a single sale don’t make it a good library, constancy is the key making some decent money.
My highest sales price for tracks that have been sold more than once are $59.99, but I might raise my sales prices in the future. (on the libraries where it´s possible)
Thanks for sharing. Interesting. I’ve been doing this since April of this year and have over 175 tracks of various genres, but mostly piano based stuff. I’m in about a dozen royalty-free sites. Some bring sales every month, some have not brought anything. I have about 3 songs that have sold the most. One is a 2 minute classical waltz with a Jewish feel, the other is a simple piano rendition of an old hymn. Go figure. I almost always sell something each month on AudioJungle, Revostock, Pond5, Musicase and Productiontrax. I’m starting to branch out with some other non-exclusive libraries. The ones that yield nothing after a year I will most likely drop. I also belong to Taxi, Film Music Network and Music Page. So far, they have yielded better results. One LA music library just signed me and I submitted about 50 tracks. Who knows how many they will actually use. The most I have made off one track to date? $150.00.