When it comes to making money from selling music a lot of people seem to have it all wrong. Instead of focusing on trying to make money on album sales, maybe you should be focusing on other forms of income. The fact is you’re not going to make the amount of income you want from simply selling albums online. You can earn some income from this but it’s not going to be enough to pay all your bills unless you have other forms of income as well.

One of the best ways to promote yourself and make money is through various types of online advertising. One of the easiest ways to earn cash is simply to advertise your YouTube account and videos. You can earn money from advertisements you may place on your website using Adsense, a platform through Google which allows you to post advertisements for other companies on your videos. You get paid 68% per click, and since some clicks can be worth $2-$10, these can stack up quickly.

The fact is you’re going to need to pull together several sources of income if you want to sustain a reliable music career. YouTube and advertising is a great way to do that. Adding more services or products to your line is always a great way to get business and to have things pick up as much as possible. Selling merchandise, selling beats, selling albums, YouTube advertisements, streaming services and bundles/package deals are a great way to increase your income.

But what’s my favorite path to making income from your music? Definitely placements. A lot of people don’t understand that getting placements is actually not that difficult. But the problem is that you need to own the rights to your music. Obviously I am a music producer that runs Beats4Legends LLC so you can find plenty of beats and instrumentals on our home page for sale. But just because we have instrumentals for sale doesn’t mean that is the only thing you’re going to need. But connections are not as important as you might think.

While getting your music into the right hands is most definitely important and necessary to get placements, there are actually opportunities all over the internet and offline for getting your music into the right hands. There are even services that help you get out there like Taxi.com, which you pay a yearly amount or monthly for your music to be in a database that publishers can get ahold of.

This is for serious musicians only. You better not be using samples, have your music copy-written and have recorded your music professionally. But Taxi is not the only service available to help you achieve the results you want in terms of big boy publishing deals. But this is where the REALEST money in the industry is, and it is the easier way to earn a couple thousand, increase record sales and more… All from publishing.

Today I wanted to share some thoughts on what is holding back artists in general from getting signed to a record label. The truth is a record label will not sign somebody who doesn’t already have skill to please an audience, a buzz, and something that makes them different.

Luckily for you the independent industry is actually on a full up spin and has been for some time now. It was back in 2009 that I found out 50% of all record sales the whole year had been independent artists. At the same time major labels are falling off the map quickly and companies all over the place are failing.

That was the rumor anyway, in 2012 though it showed to be more like 33%, which was still more records than any of the major labels made (including Universal, Sony and others).

These record labels are basing their strategies on old age failing techniques, while on the other hand it’s so easy for independent artists and labels to begin doing new forms of advertisements to bring themselves to a more successful state. It’s time to completely redefine the way music has been sold and this is something everybody is starting to catch onto.

Record labels are seeing this, and you need to as well.

If you plan to survive in today’s day and age you would do well to understand this. Here is the chart I found for you to see for yourself:

So how is it that indie labels are making such a big movement in the scene now? Well with the invention of the internet has changed the way artists have done business, but before that even happened there was MTV. When music became much more televised it became about the image more than the artist. This entered a whole new market by itself.

But the independents have become successful because they are aware of things like download piracy. The fact is you can’t keep the same old tactics going and expect to succeed.

So this is, of course, going to bring you to a new simple question which you might appreciate knowing the answer to. That question is…

So what exactly are record labels looking for?

This actually isn’t the easiest question to answer right now only because record labels are still adjusting to finding new ways to promote and market their artists. With so many major labels falling off the map completely, it’s easy to see why everybody seems to be trying new things and being bold.

What labels are looking for is simple.

You need to be able to bring in an audience in a way that separates you from the thousands of other artists just like you. How are you different? Being a rapper isn’t good enough, you have to appeal to a certain audience so powerfully that you become a viral force.

Without the ability to become viral you will surely fail in this industry, as the majority of internet fame currently is coming from YouTube stars and the like. If you are able to create music that people share, spread and excitingly promote, then you are already on your way to becoming signed.

Every rapper seems to talk about the same things, have pointless flows and most importantly, they don’t resonate with an audience that has a high state of passion.

Macklemore, a musician from my city of Seattle, WA (who I actually did shows with before he made it famous, when we was local) is now one of the most played artists on major labels. He did this without even getting signed, by staying totally independent.

However he reached a very specific niche audience with his two hit records from his last album. “Same Love” appealed to the gay rights movements which is extraordinarily emphasized in today’s society. The gay movement is most definitely winning the battle for gay rights all across the USA as well as many other countries as well.

By making a song that reached out to this audience it was easy to see why it went viral so quickly and made him much more famous, finally breaching the major radio stations. This not only made him a celebrity among those who didn’t know who he was, it also made a lot of people in a very committed, passionate community (the gay community) share and post his song everywhere. His fame was imminent and record deals came flying from every major label, none of which did he sign.

Macklemore’s other hit single, “Thrift Shop”, tackled the youth all over the world. The truth is most of us don’t have the money necessary to pay top dollar for expensive clothes. But going to a thrift shop is just as good because you can get top quality brands for a fraction of the price.

By targeting this group of people, he had decided on yet another strongly passionate audience. The poor and middle class of America, which just happens to be… Well, nearly everybody.

If you want to get signed to a record label, you need to resonate with an audience of high passion and tap those markets. Not doing so can be your biggest weakness in today’s independent and major market.

Today I wanted to try an experimental blog post to see how much you are interested in learning about how to get your music heard and promoted. If this blog post gets a fair amount of traffic then I will certainly come up with more blog posts in the near future. Please enjoy!

First of all you wouldn’t believe how many artists out there want to get heard. If I had to put a number on it I would venture to guess it’s in the tens of millions worldwide. It’s no wonder why, either, because it’s a basic reality for artists that you want to earn some income from your music or at the very least gain recognition.

SO how do you achieve this?

Well there’s plenty of methods and I’m actually going to simply touch on a couple here. However if this blog post leaves you yearning for more, please feel free to contact me and let me know so that we can come out with more blog posts in the future.

1. Know your promotion strategy.

Gaining followers on any social network doesn’t have to be a big deal. You don’t have to sit around waiting for success to come to no avail, either. On most social networks which include Soundcloud, Twitter, Tumblr and others, there’s a distinct follow-back rate of about 14%.

So one way to gain followers is simply to follow other people who are targeted to your niche. If you follow 100 people per day on these networks, that alone can build your following by hundreds per month.

After you’ve followed, be sure to unfollow the sorry suckers who don’t follow you back. That way you make room for connecting with others. This is a powerful method by itself because it can easily be a way to connect with producers, sell more of your music to artists and more.

2. Have rights to your beats.

I know this may seem cliche since I am a music producer myself and we offer rap beats for sale on our home page, but the fact is if you don’t have any rights to your beats then you are going to be having serious trouble right from the start.

How can you post your tracks on iTunes without having some sort of rights to your beats? Even if it’s just leasing rights, you want something in order to achieve success. How can you get people involved if you don’t have any projects distributed on iTunes? It’s like a business card almost. You can basically show people your iTunes link and that’s a great way to get people involved, not to mention make back some income.

Which brings me to point #3.

3. Distribute yourself on iTunes, Amazon and more.

There are affiliate programs I could make money on by promoting distribution services which are not as good, but… The truth is that I use Tunecore, which takes 0% of your sales and distributes your projects on all the major platforms for only $50 per year. In fact I know they have a $35 deal for the first year of distribution.

Again I could have just linked you to some place that would award me an affiliate commission worth taking, but instead I just linked to the right choice, which is Tunecore. Just keep in mind that when I say they take 0% commission, well that’s true but the fact is iTunes for instance takes over 30% commission on each sale. Pretty wack, right? That’s no matter who you distribute through, with the exception of certain major labels which surely have better deals in place with the big “i”.

4. Build up an email list with your own website.

We own a web design company, WebDesignMarketer.com, and so if you don’t have a website contact us ASAP with a budget in mind. We’ll work with you to get your website online for a great price.

The reason having your own website is so very important is simple: you need it to build an email list and a social media following. By building an email list you have a collective of all of your leads in one place. Meaning every time somebody says they like your music, you can add them to your mailing list and keep in touch with a click of a button.

The best email marketing service provider (which will give you the opt-in forms you need, and the ability to send to all your email contacts at once with a single click) is definitely Aweber Email Marketing Service. This service will allow you to build your mailing list following quickly and easily.

If you need a website, mixing, mastering or beats, contact us today. If you enjoyed this blog post be sure to stay in touch and show love by sharing this page. We’ll come out with more blog posts in the future if this one gets good feedback. 🙂