5 Genius (But Controversial) Ways To Make Money From Music

“If I spend $500 on music promotion I won’t make all that back from the streaming revenue. Why would I pay for marketing?”

That sound familiar?

This reveals a couple things about the mindset artists have in building a business.

Firstly, let me say this. I’m not here to belittle your thinking. I’m here to show you a much, much better strategy for your music career.

Let’s look at 5 different ways you can treat your music career like a real business.

This may upset some of you music purists out there, but it needs to be said. Make shorter songs.

Preferably, make them under 2 minutes. Once Spotify and the others start paying more for longer songs than you can reconsider, but until then, when a song is shorter it tends to get replayed more.

Not only that, but release songs every week if possible.

When you release short songs on a consistent basis you can stay on the radar for your fans. There are tens of millions of content creators out there. You’re not going to stay top of mind for everyone at all times. It’s impossible. But you do need to stay top of mind for people who are already interested in you.

These are your followers. Your super fans. Your people who come to shows and buy products. You should ALWAYS be marketing (and remarketing) to them.

Remarketing simply means making a custom audience inside of social media and serving ads to a very small group of interested people.

We go over this in a music specific way in our FB/IG Conversions course we give out for free whenever you order any promo package at www.omarimc.com/promotion.

Another unpopular opinion, but here goes… people can copy your voice using A.I. if they want to. Why not do a professional A.I. version of your singing or rapping and get paid every time someone downloads your voice profile?

You can literally collaborate with anyone in the world, 24/7. You can apply with companies like Uberduck and we’re sure there will be plenty of others that offer this service.

We’re not talking about the traditional label route here. These days, you can sell royalties to just a few of your songs and maintain ownership for the rest of your catalog. You can use sites like Corite to sell a percentage of ownership to your songs and split the streaming revenue with your fans. The better track record you have, the more reliable this method is.

One of the most reliable money makers for artists is performing live. However, it’s hard to draw a crowd as a smaller artist.

However, one thing you can do is market your show differently. Let’s say you’re an R&B artist and you want to promote your upcoming concert in a couple months. Find an angle to not only market this as a concert, but an entire experience for your attendees. You could theme the whole night as a romantic getaway date night for couples. Dress up the venue with a chocolate fountain, flower bouquets, food trucks or high end catering, etc.

This is where your creativity shines! And if you have trouble brainstorming, get the ball rolling by asking an A.I. service to give you ideas! You can use Jasper, Rytr, or any others out there.

30% of your marketing budget to IG & Facebook Ads. A good chunk of this should be traffic directed at your website so that you can sell products & services to have more control over your revenue. If you don’t have a website, you need one. You DO NOT own your IG page, TikTok account, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify or anything else on social media. The companies own the product. You need to be spending most of your budget sending to people to something you own. Your website. Look through our list of website builders here.

Once you’ve got a good website, then it’s time to send targeted traffic there. Click here for Facebook & IG ads management

 
20-30% of your marketing budget to YouTube/Google. Again, a good bit of these ads should be directed towards your website. Click here for YouTube music promotion

 
15-20% of marketing budget to Spotify Playlisting. When people see your Spotify profile, perception can become reality. If it looks like a ghost town there, they may perceive the music differently. Vanity or not, the more buzz something already has the more likely people are to gravitate towards it. This will have an indirect return on investment when combined with the two steps above. Click here for Spotify playlist pitching

 
The remaining budget towards SEO, TikTok, Microsoft, or other platforms (Apple Music, Snapchat, Gab, Twitter, etc.) You ALWAYS want to be innovative in marketing. If your primary audience is on one of the lesser used social media platforms, test out ads there. Businesses that innovate get the reward of not only surviving, but thriving even when their competition starts to fall. Click here for Tik Tok promotion