Today I wanted to write a blog post about possible revenue streams for artists. Be sure to support our website by buying beats on our home page, we’ll be posting new beats shortly. Here is a quick list of the top revenue streams for artists to tap into in today’s day and age.

1. Touring

I put this at number one but honestly it’s not something I would do. It’s number one because I feel like most people in the industry look to touring as a revenue stream so I wanted to talk about it first. One of the easiest ways to make money from your music is to plan full scale tours and do show after show throughout your local area. For this though you need supplies and lots of hard work into planning the shows, if you don’t have an agent doing that work for you. Another problem with touring is the consumption of time.

While you stand to make good money on tour, you have to practice and perfect your show. So that means you’re spending time not only traveling, waiting and performing, you’re also investing additional recreational time into practicing your act.

Another thing is if you’re in a group and you’re touring, the money is much lower than if you tour with just yourself and perhaps one more person. The more people in the band, the more split up the money has to become. This can be a good or a bad thing. If it’s a good thing, it’s good because everybody in the band can put together their resources. Maybe one person has a great van for the trip, while money can come from all the members of the band to fund initial expenses like gas and food.

With these expenses actually it becomes hard to make good money. Especially because touring is notoriously intertwined with drugs, alcohol and partying, you can bet that there is room for error. Sometimes people get cheated out of money or worse. It’s good to expect these sorts of things and hopefully your tour doesn’t have much bad luck.

Needless to say, while touring can make you money, there is initial investment involved and it becomes a game of “will I profit?”

2. Album sales and digital sales

I put this at number two but really it’s not a huge revenue stream. Let’s be honest here. It costs serious money to put albums into production, and to sell them off these days is even harder with the exception of if you’re performing and those performances are going well, then you can sell merchandise at the shows as well as albums. This is your primary means for selling albums without having to run up to random people on the street advertising your CD.

The fact is with iTunes taking roughly 30% of every sale, if you’re using iTunes as your primary funnel for making money from your music then you’d have to sell something like 500 full albums every month just to earn a full time income. That’s tough especially considering more than half of your audience will be buying the singles they like instead (unless you don’t give them that option for instance, which is a possibility for you).

Not only that, but iTunes doesn’t pay out until two months later. So if your album sells 100 copies in November, you’ll get your payment sometime in January. While if you sell on Amazon instead, the payment is pretty much just a few days wait away. Luckily though it’s inexpensive to get on these websites and more, which is why I put it at #2 for making money. Getting distributed is as easy as signing up to Tunecore. That’s who I use anyway, and you can get your music in Amazon and all the major online stores.

Personally I think selling through Amazon, if you set it up correctly, can be the better way to go.

3. Licensing

Licensing your music to TV shows, movies and commercials is a great way to earn income from your music. This is my personal favorite because it’s zero cost (with the exception of getting your music under legal copyright so you can avoid scams, costs $55 per album) and you can get licensed really easily if you know where to look. There are trade secrets on how to get licensing deals, but usually those who get licensing deals stay pretty silent about it.

The lucky thing is, though, that the information is right in front of your face.

I hope this article helped! Be sure to buy beats on the home page!