I have just won 250 euros for a small intervention of 20 seconds of music on a short film for television.
And I often record songwriters at home.
In the summer I leave with all my equipment for three months at the seaside to record solo artists and bands.
I live between jobs and music.

 

I earn my main income through busking all summer and performing at weddings. I live simply, so it also sustains me in the winter. My YouTube channel and other streaming platforms may come to around 200 USD per month average. I have been living off my music since 13 years. I'm 32 now. It's been a great ride so far.

 

i make 20 a month working with this small womans choir and running their sound board for choir practices... I have made a few monies on bandcamp with my trippy drone/ambient tape loop stuff but making music to make money? no, that would be a terrible idea, I would get bored of it very fast. I grew up in church choir singing and all the way thru high school and college singing american standards. Now I make weird ambient music I bet 5% of the population would actually buy. Making music for the express reason of making money seems like its for the soulless

 

Not any more. I'm thinking of changing the gender, maybe that will make me more popular.

 

Thing is nowadays a new musician is one drop in a huge ocean of other musicians. It's hard to gain any kind of traction without massive promotion or marketing.
So the things that you do "around" music have similar problems: They can be pirated.
With live performances and physical merch being the only exceptions.
These however are harder to organize and make happen than digital goods, and for live performances you need a grown fanbase to begin with.
I think a lot of people don't consider music as being something they should pay for anymore when they can just fire up YouTube and listen to pretty much anything they want instantly.

 

Thanks a LOT for the suggestion buddy, i will indeed raise the price, a minimum of 100usd per EP/Album, it doesnt matter, i need to make my time worth it.
A friend told me the same thing, but since i am too "humble" i just ask for stupidly low prices lol.

So you say 60 per song its a steal too? holy shit mate.

And that is very true! hahaha i will tell them that if they ever complain.

Cheers mate.

Hey mate, its because i have a grindcore/goregrind project that was quite well received, and via Bandcamp i announced that i do mixing jobs, after that 2 guys appearead that wanted mixing for their projects and so we did a deal, but as the user called "Mydemons" said, my prices are way too low for such a job, and i think he is completely right... if you know what you are doing, by all means, put VALUE to your work and time.

 

I made a very good income in music/pro-audio industry for about 10 years. Piracy and tech disrupted it, and I got frustrated with working longer hours for less income. I decided to bail.

IMHO, it will become increasingly harder for anyone to make any money in the arts due to the overall agenda that is unfolding with the push for universal basic income, as well as more and more draconian tax laws that only benefit the criminals in the IMF/Fed Reserve/Central Banks. It's not looking good for society as a whole right now.

I do Mastering on the side and am also working on a sample pack at the moment, but I don't expect much from that. As the saying goes, 'We musicians spend thousands to make hundreds'.

As for the big bucks..the music industry is completely controlled by nepotistic criminals that set out to screw you over before you even sign your first contract. Don't even get me started on Spotify. I've got stories, but this is not the place for them.

I'll just leave this here..

 

The music industry is chasing the mysterious "Music Mafia" - so far without success (Year 2018)

So that we can get the obvious joke over with: No, the music industry and the "music mafia" are not the same thing. Behind the second term is a group operating in the background that has been selling access to unpublished songs, demos and videos since the previous year.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been fighting against all conceivable forms of piracy for years and decades. The fronts are usually clear: file sharers offer all conceivable content, the anti-piracy representatives fight against these offers and repeatedly punish those who use them. The success of these measures was and will be limited, only when legal offers were available did the phenomenon get a grip on something.

According to the file sharing blog TorrentFreak, there is only one thing the music industry fears and hates more than piracy and that is pre-release leaks. For about a year now there has been one name in particular: "Music Mafia".

Who is behind it?
This is a group of insiders, or possibly hackers, who have made it their business to sell unpublished material to the highest bidder. The Music Mafia became known throughout the scene when it succeeded in distributing two previously unreleased tracks by Kanye West long before their official release.

The amazing thing is that the side of the Musik Mafia has been online for a year and continues to offer unpublished material for Bitcoins. The program also features numerous prominent names, including Beyoncé, Coldplay, Drake, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry. Tracks and albums are either auctioned or regularly offered for immediate purchase. TorrentFreak writes, however, that the most prominent songs are sold behind the scenes.

The RIAA is, of course, doing all it can to take action against these insiders, with limited success so far. A few weeks ago a DMCA summons was obtained against the registrar of the domain, but it is not clear whether the Tonic Domains Corp. which has complied. But that is rather unlikely, after all, the site is still online today. The mystery, namely whether it is an industry insider or "just" a hacker, remains for the time being.

https://winfuture.de/news,104313.html

 

@Tele_Vision
Holy crap that is terrible, I had no idea it is like that.
Does this still apply today, after so many musicians have the options to release their music without labels?

Also I would definitely like to hear your Spotify stories. If you don't wanna post them here then why not create another thread? Or post them here, I'd think it's relevant.

I have to find the rest of this documentary.

 

@BEAT16
that's just insane, it would be the equivalent of bluray rips of blockbuster movies being leaked before the theatrical release. had no idea this is even a thing, wow

 

I'm a music lover. But in real life, I'm a Navy SEAL sniper.

 

Like Josh Gudwin if I'm not mistaken?

 

Yes, you mean in the US Navy. I believe he was a telecommunications expert.

 

I can't go into any details but if you look hard enough at non-Google censored sources you will have a rabbit-hole of info on the subjects.

also, you know the saying, 'to learn who rules over, find out who you are not allowed to criticize".

Here's the whole documentary:

 

FYI Spotify partly owns Distrokid. Can you say "double dipping"? Daniel Ek and his band of music pirates are the shadiest, worst of worst crooks.

And most of these streaming companies pay crap royalties, if any at all. Unless youre a major label artist (which owns shares of the major streaming companies) featured on the sites and playlists and getting tens of millions of streams every quarter, you are playing the lottery to win a below poverty level income. Most distributors and labels have fully automated systems where they basically do nothing but take 50-75% of your royalties off the top. Greedy bastards can f*ck right off. The whole industry is in a sad state due to all of the leeches.

I realize I am probably in the very small minority today, but if people like and want my music, they buy it from me directly and in the quality it was made to be played back in.. or not at all. And I'm fine with that. Basically, in $ terms it equates to around 5,000 streams = 1 song sale/download. The only way I ever allow a song to be on a streaming site is if its via a reputable label that properly markets, promotes and accounts for royalties. More importantly, if the label doesn't promote my music and brand and facilitate shows/touring, its a total waste of my music, time and money.

So yeah, my 2p is... get your own website and webstore. Look for labels that are doing good shit for their artists. Dont support the Spotify Daniel Ek crooks of the world.

 

yup, I've made a lot of money from music. The live side has disappeared since Covid and all the bullshit that entails though. To SEAL guy above, back in the day when I was younger I played at way too many SEAL turnover parties and was in a band with a few SEALs. Good times!

 

Regarding Spotify, this video is pretty good :

 

Well hobby painters sell their drawings too, right? Sure there are hobbists that haven't sold anything in their career but that'd be the exception, right? It's just that for music people expect to get it for free

Ghaleon is from the Lunar series if I am not mistaken, right? Based af :>

 

I''ve been getting abour 25 euro yearly from registering my tracks with my country's copyright organisation No idea how they have collected revenue, one of my tracks is reported as getting payment from TV in the UK. LOL OK.

And Spotify and Apple, and I haven't even put my tracks on there.

 

If you work really hard, produce great video content and have a huge youtube following I see no reason why you can't be earning 2 or 3 dollars a month.