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making a living from music (pg. 3)
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| theqlogic87 |
In this day and age is more possible to make a living out of music then ever before. We got Spotify, Sony Music Unlimited, and Xbox Streaming, which pays more than Spotify and Sony combined actually. Then there's the amazing and most profitable, youtube, any one who can get thousands of views to their video monetized with ads will be easily making some good money to pay off the phone bills. Rhapsody and Wimp are other streaming services that pay, but pay very little. Then there's the classic way of making $, itunes, beatport, junodownload, amazon mp3, etc.... Obviously, if you're not getting traffic on your music you're not bringing home the bacon.
Streaming is the future, people hardly buy music anymore. |
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| vercetti |
No, live gigs is the future. And the past. That's how people lived off music in 19th century, and will do so in the next century or 10.
It's all about what size venues you can sell out regularly.
Sell out 300 people venues, earn enough not to starve.
2000 venues - enough for a Macmansion, a couple of cars and lots of coke.
Stadiums - buy a small country or something. |
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| tehlord |
Diversification is the future.
Be the brand. |
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| Vida1003 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Storyteller
LOL. I'm sure this is why the big hiphop names do EDM now. |
You're talking about the mainstream and big market hip hop producers.The market for producers in hip hop at the underground level relies on the fact that every kid in the hood thinks they can make it rapping and will pay $500 for a beat if it sounds good enough and they have that money. And when you do get into the mainstream, your trap,crunk,drill type , the beat is everything and guys who can't even rap for real and just have the hype factor will pay ridiculous amounts of money for a hot beat.
when you say big hip hop names you're talking about the guys who work with the Jay-z's and the eminem's production wise. Those are the top 1%. They have no loyalty to any one specific genre anyway they go where the money is. Go down a few notches to guys like Chief Keef, Gucci Mane, Future,etc... the big names in the chicago and atlanta scenes right now. The producers behind these names are banking off hip hop. I say it's where the money is at production wise because you're not selling yourself as an artist. You're selling your product to another artist based on what they think they can do with it and if you make the right beats and fight the right rappers you can snag 500 for a track with ease if you have the skill and dedication.
Now off of the hip hop topic since this is a trance forum. I personally don't think making a living off of music should be on anyone's bucket list, and the ones who get lucky should be more than grateful. Let's be real, it wasn't until last century that the Rock Star/Pop Star was born and it became possible to attain wealth off of music. At the end of the day music is art and no one's art is ever worth anything till long after their dead, and that's if they were one of the best at their craft. |
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| DJ RANN |
This is such a big/open question, it's difficult to answer easily.
If you're talking about making money from making music and selling it, then basically it's pretty bad in the historical sense of things.
The industry has always been loaded to make a very few number of people very rich and everyone else at the sidelines scraping a living.
Back in the 80's when record sales were at their peak, about 20 artists made 90% of the revenue out there. Even though we already RDS, the labels worked the system and made it so radio play royalties went to only a few artists, even though the radio play was more than just MJ and Phil Collins.
Now in EDM, the money economics are virtually the same. Yes, you could write a one hit wonder, get a ton of airplay and licensing deals and never have to worry about shortchanging a rent boy ever again, but it happens to literally one out of a million producers.
Otherwise, it's a case of plugging away for several years, having many fingers in many pots and marketing the out of yourself in a very smart way.
It's really difficult to get a foot hold just by talent alone. Sure if you just keep writing incredible tracks one after the other after the other then you'll float to the top, or if you at one with the decks and are the next personification of Sasha and Carl Cox's lovechild, then you'll get noticed, but that's really only half the battle.
As one journalist said a couple of years ago: "you won't get the same flourish of talent as you did a few years ago. There won't be another Sasha; He was doing things years ahead of his time and now everyone has caught up, including the technology so the relative difference between a good a great DJ is somewhat minimal"
What they were referring to was things such as harmonic mixing which only really came to prominence 10 years later, and burning CD's or dubplates with just sounds, and access to this type of equipment (CD burners, vinyl cutters) was outside of the reach of start up DJ's.
Sure he has oodles of talent, he's a ing ninja, but many of things that set him way apart from anyone else at the time have been diluted if not negated.
As a composer, you can make money, but everyone thinks they can make those big sweeping/stirring action cues and bang, they'll get a blockbuster. Wrong. Most composers scratch around for years doing TV shows, and trailers, and short indie films, which all in all, result in lower less income than working an office job. A very small number make a lot of money. Less than 100 composers world wide make $1+ a year. Those that do make serious money, are making incredibly large sums. Like I want a pony on my yacht money, and I want my yacht airlifted to my island.
Engineering is even worse. There are maybe 5 top engineers that get "big money". It takes 30 years to get there. Your imdb will read like every film or album that anyone has cared about for the last decade.
That "big money"? mid 6 figures. It's actually really shocking. I worked very closely for a couple of years with one guy who is arguably in the top 3 in the world at the best, most successful score facility for one of the most famous composers. Sure, that engineer owns a million dollar house and nice car, and a few hundred thousand a year is not a bad life but put it in to perspective:
Name any field (and I mean anything, from secretary, to swim coach, to landscape gardener to IT specialist etc etc).
If you were in the top 3 in the world in that given field, you'd expect nothing less than several million a year, if not 8 figures.
One of the reasons I got out; not that it was totally about the money, but I realized I could spend the next 25 years becoming the best in the world and only earn a pittance compared to even the junior composers I was working with, and far less than any other field I might have applied myself to.
I now earn about 10 times more than I did when engineering 100 hour weeks, and I'm already pretty close to the income of that engineer I'm talking about.
You can make money from various different jobs in the industry usch as music marketing, management (I know a couple of the guys managing the top commercial DJ's right now such as Calvin Harris, and Gareth Emery and they make decent (not crazy) money), but I'd hate to be a new producer now trying to make a living off tracks.
If you had a good friend at a music library and they were putting your stuff on things like sports recaps and commercials, then you might do ok, but off record sales alone? You'd starve to death.
Gigs? Yeah, scratch a living but it will mean playing ghetto venues for ghetto play for a long time until (and if) you ever get a shot at the big time.
What most people don't realise is that the vast majority of DJ's didn't become that right out of school. Most had decent jobs and at some point, it reached a tipping point where they packed in the day job to go full time DJ'ing.
Danny Howells was a psychiatric nurse with decent pay.
Tony De Vit was a software programmer.
Armin was a lawyer.
I could go on but nearly every big name has a decent day job that would have seen them through life pretty well. |
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| theqlogic87 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vida1003
You're talking about the mainstream and big market hip hop producers.The market for producers in hip hop at the underground level relies on the fact that every kid in the hood thinks they can make it rapping and will pay $500 for a beat if it sounds good enough and they have that money. And when you do get into the mainstream, your trap,crunk,drill type , the beat is everything and guys who can't even rap for real and just have the hype factor will pay ridiculous amounts of money for a hot beat.
when you say big hip hop names you're talking about the guys who work with the Jay-z's and the eminem's production wise. Those are the top 1%. They have no loyalty to any one specific genre anyway they go where the money is. Go down a few notches to guys like Chief Keef, Gucci Mane, Future,etc... the big names in the chicago and atlanta scenes right now. The producers behind these names are banking off hip hop. I say it's where the money is at production wise because you're not selling yourself as an artist. You're selling your product to another artist based on what they think they can do with it and if you make the right beats and fight the right rappers you can snag 500 for a track with ease if you have the skill and dedication.
Now off of the hip hop topic since this is a trance forum. I personally don't think making a living off of music should be on anyone's bucket list, and the ones who get lucky should be more than grateful. Let's be real, it wasn't until last century that the Rock Star/Pop Star was born and it became possible to attain wealth off of music. At the end of the day music is art and no one's art is ever worth anything till long after their dead, and that's if they were one of the best at their craft. |
Thanks for saying that! Saved me time |
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| AlphaStarred |
| If you can make a bunch of that new ping pong trance, you got a slim chance. |
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| Vida1003 |
| quote: | Originally posted by AlphaStarred
If you can make a bunch of that new ping pong trance, you got a slim chance. |
To further extend on that statement, if you can build yourself into a brand and win the popularity contest, then you can let your cat walk over your Keyboard controller while the record Midi function is on,render it and sell 50,000 singles. |
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| Storyteller |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vida1003
You're talking about the mainstream and big market hip hop producers.The market for producers in hip hop at the underground level relies on the fact that every kid in the hood thinks they can make it rapping and will pay $500 for a beat if it sounds good enough and they have that money. And when you do get into the mainstream, your trap,crunk,drill type , the beat is everything and guys who can't even rap for real and just have the hype factor will pay ridiculous amounts of money for a hot beat.
when you say big hip hop names you're talking about the guys who work with the Jay-z's and the eminem's production wise. Those are the top 1%. They have no loyalty to any one specific genre anyway they go where the money is. Go down a few notches to guys like Chief Keef, Gucci Mane, Future,etc... the big names in the chicago and atlanta scenes right now. The producers behind these names are banking off hip hop. I say it's where the money is at production wise because you're not selling yourself as an artist. You're selling your product to another artist based on what they think they can do with it and if you make the right beats and fight the right rappers you can snag 500 for a track with ease if you have the skill and dedication. |
And you think that is different for EDM? There are so many dance music producers out there grabbing cold hard cash on ghostproduction it is not even funny. I think you might need to take a look around, there are a lot of similarities in both scenes (hiphop vs EDM), its music production after all... ;) |
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| Richard Butler |
Something I've come to realise is you can make big money without re-inventing the wheel. Warren Buffet always says when asked 'be the best tiller in your town'.
Bloke I know is 24 and started laying paths and patios a few years back. He's very smart and presentable as well as efficient and as a result became in demand even through the recession. He now drives a nice Audi and has 2 houses already and a team of guys working for him. |
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| PaULiN0 |
| But re inventing the wheel means better sex imo. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
| quote: | Originally posted by Storyteller
And you think that is different for EDM? There are so many dance music producers out there grabbing cold hard cash on ghostproduction it is not even funny. I think you might need to take a look around, there are a lot of similarities in both scenes (hiphop vs EDM), its music production after all... ;) |
there really isn't.
if a known producer with a number 1 barely makes rent from that track, well think about how much the ghost producer is getting. Those guys used to exist when djs had to learn quick. It just doens't happen anymore or at least not as much because everyone starts producing first. |
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