It’s a tough life out there for aspiring musicians.
There are a couple of different ways to look at life as a musician in 2020. On the one hand, it’s harder than ever to make a decent living playing music. The industry isn’t set up to support smaller acts, so we’ve got a situation where 1% is making 99% of the money.
On the other hand, it’s never been easier to make and release music. Home studio equipment has gotten more sophisticated and you can release everything online. But where’s the money?
Today, we’re going to discuss the best way to sell music online. It’s hard to get people to pay for something that they’re used to getting for free, so musicians out there have to be crafty. Fortunately, creativity is the name of the game.
Starting a career as a musician is all about tempering expectations. You may never be Taylor Swift or Beyonce rich, but you could make a decent bit of money if you do things the right way.
Building Awareness Around Your Music
No one’s going to buy your music if they’ve never heard of you.
If you’re going to try to make an honest career out of this talent that you have, you’ve got to put yourself out there. Making money by selling your music online is about setting aside your artistic persona for a moment and approaching this like a business.
Start by building awareness around your project through social media. You should always be trying to gain more followers because those are the people that you’ll be selling your music to, at least at first. Build pages on all of the big social media platforms and invite your friend list to follow you.
You can approach the next step in a few different ways.
- Don’t release any music yet, but build anticipation by posting regularly and engaging with your audience. Maybe even post videos of you working on your music in the studio or live-streaming you playing one of your songs.
- Release all of the music right away on a streaming service and let people decide for themselves if they want to buy it.
- Release one song or short clips of a few songs to give the audience a taste of what’s to come. Depriving your audience of free streaming can help incentivize them to buy it later.
Once you build your brand and awareness around it, people will flock to your music. Be ready to sell it when the time is right. There are a few main methods that give you a place to sell your music, which we’ll look at next.
Selling Privately
If you want to get right down to brass tacks, you can start your own website for your band/musical project and sell your album digitally through it. You’d get the buyer’s credit card info, then send them a downloadable link to your stuff. Pretty easy.
You can also use a site like Bandcamp, which allows you to set up a page and upload your music for free. Once uploaded, you can either stream it for a suggested donation or sell it for a price that you determine. Bandcamp takes a small cut of the profits and you get the rest.
There are also several other distribution sites that allow you to set up shop and sell your music, but like Bandcamp, they’ll take a cut of what you make. The only way to get all of the money from the sales you make is by setting up your own shop.
Streaming Royalties
Streaming can be a really positive thing for your career, but not always for your bank account. Getting your music on Spotify and Apple Music playlists can boost awareness around you and grow your reach beyond what you ever thought possible. You could be a songwriter in Missouri and a kid from Bangladesh could hear you on a playlist.
However, you get a fraction of a cent per play, so you need millions and millions of plays to actually capitalize on this medium. When you’re at a certain level, it’s better to consider Spotify, Soundcloud, and Apple Music really great publicity tools rather than money-making tools.
YouTube is another great way to get your music noticed if you’re willing to put out regular content. Being a YouTube star is a long shot, but a lot of those people appeal to a younger audience because they can package their music or whatever other talents they have in really appealing ways, so they get hundreds of millions of views.
The Old Fashioned Way
Once you’ve got a decent-sized audience, from building your brand on social media or getting noticed on a streaming site, you can start advertising to them in more conventional ways. Again, keep a business mindset when you think about this kind of stuff.
Post regularly on social media about what you’ve got going on. Maybe you’ve got some tour dates coming up that people could come see you at or maybe you’re releasing a collaboration with another artist (another good way to grow awareness). The busier you are, the better.
Create other merchandise that people can buy, like t-shirts, tote bags, and physical CDs or LPs. Then, you can package items together on your website, drumming up more business, and bringing in more money to invest in things like promotion and touring.
You can actually make a good amount of money from a well-stocked online shop, so get yourself a PIM and start making merchandise. If you’re asking, “what is a PIM?”, it’s something that can help you figure out what’s selling and why, so you can better manage your shop.
Lastly, keep writing and recording. You might not make very much money from your first release, but if you can come out in the positives, you can keep going. As you release more and more music, your fanbase will grow and before you know it you’ll be making the big bucks. Well, maybe.
There Is No Best Way to Sell Music Online
Trying to find the best way to sell music online is like choosing the best ice cream flavor. Different things work for different people; one person might thrive on YouTube, while another might grow their web store slowly. Figure out what works best for you and promote the heck out of it.
