Making music and growing your fan base through live concerts might not be enough to earn a decent living. Nowadays, we have a plethora of digital tools and software to help your music get the right exposure and sell it conveniently from anywhere in the world. In this article, we will discuss the easiest ways to monetize music, why monetization is necessary, and some top tools to help out with the monetization process. Without further ado, let’s begin.
Understanding Monetization
Monetization is a way of generating a steady income from your music projects. Unlike social media videos or related content, monetization of music requires you to have royalties of the music content. For example, if a popular TV show wants your music in their project, you will earn royalties whenever the track plays.
Lyricists, and music composers normally secure composition copyrights, whereas singers or the recording labels prefer to secure recording copyrights. Now let’s look at the reasons why monetization is necessary.
- Monetization, especially on digital platforms, is a profitable move as it allows a huge number of people to access, listen, and download your music.
- The monetization process allows greater scalability when compared to selling music from physical locations. Promoting your music through concerts, exclusive shows, and events might generate revenue, but the exposure you get from monetizing your music content online has far better outcomes.
- It becomes very easy to market your music using online services. You can target the relevant audience, allowing them to explore content and interact with fans for a connected experience.
- Lastly, the whole process is simple enough and doesn’t require any special skills. Anyone with ample information can set up monetization and start generating a steady income.
Now that we have developed a basic understanding of monetization and the reasons to monetize, let’s read on to explore more about some tools that can be used to make the monetization process a lot easier.
A License
Music licensing is a proven tool to assist you in selling music. After you secure a license, it can be sold to individuals or organizations, permitting them to use your content. Normally, movie production studios, brands, and corporations secure music licenses from artists.
Securing a music license is not a simple process and has a lot of limitations to it when compared to other digital monetization solutions. For example, when you sell your license to a company or a brand, they might require you to sign an exclusive contract where you have to follow their set of regulations. Furthermore, you cannot sell multiple licenses of the same music to companies and production houses.
To make the most out of your music through licensing, consider promoting your music through online music licensing services. These services cater to different sectors of the industry, ranging from small businesses to big corporations.
A Distribution Platform
Promoting your music through music streaming platforms is a great way to effectively monetize. These streaming services and distribution platforms work by providing your music to the users and giving you royalties in return. Streaming services and distribution platforms do monetize your music and work in collaboration with each other. A streaming service provides music to people, whereas a distribution platform collects royalties from these streaming services.
Nowadays, you can find several streaming services and enjoy music with convenience. Most of these streaming platforms offer advertisement or marketing services and will also assist you in profile management, allowing your music to reach a wider audience. To find out more about distribution platforms, you can click here and understand how the process works. Many of these platforms offer free services for artists, but some also charge you an upfront fee if you choose to use their services.
Musicians and artists should consider using a streaming platform to monetize music, whereas composers or lyricists can reach out to a distribution platform to get their project up and running. Each distribution platform has its advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is best to dedicate time to researching and understanding the process before signing a contract with the distribution platform.
Lessons
There’s a lot of effort and hard work that goes into learning music. You might have put in a lot of hours in mastering an instrument or have mastered songwriting. Teaching these skills to others is another way to make money through music. You can find a huge variety of online teaching platforms that you can offer your services through.
The lessons can either be live teaching sessions or pre-recorded videos in the form of a crash course.
Amid this pandemic, online classes have become essential, and promoting your music on these platforms is a win-win situation. Most individuals also prefer taking online classes, as private lessons can be rather expensive and cannot be afforded by all.
Downloads
Creating your website and using it as a platform to generate sales is another great way to monetize your music. Nowadays, it is imperative that you have a digital presence. Maintaining a website and putting your music up there builds a brand’s identity. You can either sell individual songs, albums or run a subscription model where the users can listen to your latest music.
There are a few perks of selling music online. First of all, the profit made through online sales is solely yours. Unlike streaming services or distribution platforms, you get all the profit. Website analytics can be used to monitor the performance and tweak the branding according to the provided data.
By maintaining a website, you also offer your customers a personalized experience. However, tweaking your website and using analytics requires adequate knowledge. Individuals who find it overwhelming to sell music on their website can hire the services of digital marketing experts who can help you through the process.
Monetizing your music is indeed profitable when done with the right tools and strategy. We hope you find the provided information useful in setting up your monetization platforms. One last thing to remember is that you should never stick to one method of monetization. Instead, keep exploring different methods to get the best possible outcomes.
