Comments on: Business Skills Are Essential To Becoming A Successful Musician

By: EagleCinematics

EagleCinematics — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:38:09 +0000

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)

By: David Hollandsworth

David Hollandsworth — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 20:35:45 +0000

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.

By: White Cat Music

White Cat Music — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 08:45:47 +0000

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

By: David Hollandsworth

David Hollandsworth — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 16:59:17 +0000

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/