How to 5X your income as a music producer

How To 5X Your Income As A Producer

An artist walks into the studio and you’re really excited about making “another” banging track. You have your top keyboard sounds ready. You have your biggest drum samples out. And you even took the time to start making the beat before the session.

You sit down and begin to talk. But all the artist can talk about is wanting a manager. Or how to get the track on Spotify. Or how to build a publishing company. In fact, sometimes it seems like they want you to talk about everything EXCEPT making a beat.

Don’t freak out. There just may be an opportunity here.

Whether we like it or not, as producers, we are perceived as music business experts. Right or wrong, people come to us not just for beat making ability, but to speak with someone who, in their view, knows the music business and can potentially help them further their career beyond producing music.

With that said, there's a real opportunity to position yourself to create more income and at the same time help an artist with their journey. And all it takes is you spending time educating yourself and researching different aspects of the music business industry. That’s a Win Win.

Here are four key areas that we recommend you knowing and understanding as you begin to position yourself as a place that artists can come to for career making not just beat making:

Music Knowledge: If you can help your artist musically it makes for a better track and enables you to charge a premium. If you know how to arrange, song map, have melodic and lead vocal ideas, backing vocal ideas, original guitar part ideas and yes, even know some music theory, your tracks and songs can go to another level. Better songs, better tracks, better income.

Marketing and Distribution: This is a major one. If you can bring marketing and distribution understanding to an artist you are definitely on your way to 5X your income. Helping your artist with track roll outs, social media strategies, photographer and videographer connections, branding concepts. That’s just on the marketing side. On the distribution side, if you can help an artist get on Spotify, Apple Music, understand how the money flows, and what distribution aggregator to use you would be adding so much value to that artist. And adding value can be a Win Win.

Venue Connect: One of the biggest ways an artist get exposure is threw playing live shows. If you as a producer can connect an artist to local venues you would be adding tremendous value to an artist. Usually producers are tied into local venue schedules, owners, players, and local promoters. With those contacts you can but together a few shows for your artist and take a cut of the performance fee or some percentage of revenue.

Management: This is a big one. As a producer if you believe in your artist and you have sufficient understanding of the music business you may consider some form of artist management. The mangers main job is to connect and if you have the relationships you can leverage on the artists behalf you could consider artist management. Management is not to be entered into lightly but as you bring added value and move the artist’s career forward management is definitely a way to 5X your income as a producer.

PS: You can get access to a free music production course HERE