7 Ways to Make $100 Per Day From Your Music

9 min readApr 28, 2021

All musicians know that selling CDs and streaming music is not the way to make money as a musician. You will be very disappointed if that was your dream as only a few bands and artists make the “big time”. However, in this post, I am going to show you how to make money as a musician and how you can leave your day job and make money from music.

Originally published at https://krannaken.com on April 28, 2021.

There will be affiliate links and banners in this post. If you click on them and make a purchase, I will make a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you but will help my blog succeed and drop value bombs as this post will. Thank you in advance for your support.

7 Ways to Make Money as a Musician

This post is inspired by a YouTube video called 7 Ways to Make Money as a Musician. I have to say that I don’t agree with every single way that the guy is recommending to make money with music, but I will mention that in this post.

The Key to Making Money As a Musician

One of the first things mentioned in this video is the fan base. It is vital to build your fanbase and have real fans who will move Heaven and Earth to help you. Making such connections takes time. However, there are strategies that you can use to build your fanbase with real fans and faster. Therefore, you will be able to make money with music much more easily. I recently wrote a post about a strategy that can also help you to find real fans and make money with music. I hope it helps.

How to Make Money As A Musician

Here are those seven ways to make money with music…

How to Make Money As A Musician From Streaming Services

Right off the bat, this is one that I don’t agree with. The guy is talking about making $100 per day. It doesn’t work like that. Unless you have a massive fan base already, it doesn’t make sense to rely on streaming royalties. This is because the actual services themselves are too greedy. Your music should be yours to monetize. However, streaming services make money with music that is not in their copyright to monetize.

YouTube is an Exception

However, if you aim to build your YouTube channel so that you can make money with music, you will find that Google is not as greedy as most. This is because they will give you 55% of all ad revenue that has been generated on your channel. It is a bit better than the 0.001 pence that you will make from Spotify.

How to Make Money As a Musician From Stock Music

In my view and my experience, stock music represents your biggest and best way to make money with music. Instead of making cents, or fractions of cents that you are making with streaming services, you are now making dollars per download. A typical track could cost as much as $40 for your customer. However, from that sale, you would typically make 50%.

Check Out These Other Posts About Stock Music Licensing

I have written posts on stock music licensing. The most recent of them is this one that shares 5 tips from industry professionals. However, another of my posts that also focuses on stock music is this one about how to make money from stock music.

A Word of Advice

One word of advice that I would also like you to know is that you should always look for non-exclusive deals when joining stock music libraries. This is because you only have the rights to list your track on multiple libraries if you go non-exclusive. Therefore, you can make money from one piece of music.

How to Make Money As A Musician By Writing Music eBooks

If you can write music ebooks about your music, music in general, the music industry, whatever, you can make money with music. In the video, the guy talks about selling books that have your band photos and music lyrics You will notice in this post that there are a couple of places where you can leave your email in return for my book.

Advantages of Writing an eBook

There are many different advantages to writing a book. You can publish it for free as an ebook for Amazon Kindle and this will also make reproducing it easier.

Another thing that you can do with a music ebook is to build your mailing list. You can build a big list by sharing your ebook with them. Furthermore, why not monetize your ebook with affiliate links? This will make it easier for you to make money with music as well as build your list.

What Other Digital Downloads Can You Make to Monetize Your Music?

Why not learn more about what other digital downloads you can create. These ideas will help you to monetize your music much more easily and effectively.

How to Make Money As a Musician by Selling Merchandise

This is another subject that I have blogged about in the past. I consider merchandise to be advertising that gives you profit. You are being paid to advertise your music. You can read that post here.

One thing that I would like to say is that merch that has your band name on it and nothing else doesn’t sell quite so well. It is better to come up with a slogan. I recently saw a video that promoted an artist’s merchandise. This merchandise was Christian in nature and read things like, “God Over Money”. This is something I can agree with as I am a Christian myself.

In the video at the top of this post, the example is Cardi B. This is another example of an artist who promotes paedophilia. In my view, it should be banned and so should every artist who promotes this kind of thing.

How to Make Money as a Musician by Creating Video Courses

If you have clicked on the link above in the section about ebooks, you will probably have read all about creating a video course. If you are great on a camera, you look great, are well-spoken and have the confidence, you can do really well at making video courses. I highly recommend that you check out Udemy and find out how to make money with music as a musician with Udemy.

Make a Lot of Money on Udemy

If you can build a valuable Udemy course, you can make a lot of money. Furthermore, all of the money you will make as a Udemy tutor will be passive. Therefore, you will be able to make sale after sale — just by doing the work once. Find out more about becoming a YouTube tutor here.

How to Make Money As a Musician With a Membership Site

This is one of the best ways that you can make money with music. The reason I say this is because your income will be recurring. Therefore, you will be paid over and over again for the life of the membership. If someone is with you for six months, you will see some money every month for those six months.

How Much Does It Cost to Start a Membership Site?

The great thing here is that it doesn’t have to cost anything upfront. You can make money with music, without having to spend a fortune.

Why Use Patreon For Your Membership Site?

As an artist, my best recommendation for you is Patreon. They will take a small percentage of the money you have coming in and you don’t pay them anything upfront. Therefore, using Patreon is a very wise option.

Another reason why you should be using Patreon is also that you will be expected to have a Patreon account if you are a professional music artist. However, if you are an amateur, you don’t have to bother.

How to Make Money As a Musician With a YouTube Channel

People with big YouTube channels can make a lot of money. Furthermore, they can make a lot of money from multiple streams of income. They can also attract brand deals. Let’s look at a few of the ways that big YouTube channels make money…

Ad Revenue

The first and maybe the most obvious way for a musician to make money with music YouTube channels is ad revenue. However, you first need to build your subscriber numbers to more than 1,000 subscribers. You also need to achieve 4,000 hours of watch time within any 12-month period. Therefore, this is something for you to look at later on in your journey.

Affiliate Marketing

You can also make reviews of products that you have experience of using. For instance, if you make music on your computer, you can review VST plugins. Alternatively, why not review the hardware you use? You could also review the services you use. I use Hypeddit a lot. I could review them and make some money when my viewers subscribe to Hypeddit.

The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to worry about reaching any minimum targets. You don’t have to worry about subscriber numbers of watch time. Therefore, you can do this from day one — and make money too.

Two Ways That Aren’t Mentioned in the Video

Class this as a bonus if you like, but I can think of a couple of significant ways that aren’t mentioned in the video. These include selling sample packs and templates, and also online gigging — or any kind of gigging for that matter.

How to Make Money As a Musician By Selling Sample Packs and Templates

This is an obvious way that you can make money. Therefore, I am surprised it has been forgotten about in the video. If you can make music with your computer, you can sell the DAW templates, sample packs, construction kits, preset packs, etc. If you make music and you are not repurposing it for multiple products, you are missing out.

Perhaps the best way of selling these products is through a site called WeMakeDanceMusic. I have a profile with them that can be found here.

There isn’t a whole lot of focus on my WMDM products. I just add to it when I have made something that I am happy with. Often, I don’t bother to add my songs to the WMDM profile if I am not 100% happy with them. However, it ticks over nicely and I earn something from it.

How to Make Money As a Musician by Gigging

The great thing about gigging now is that you don’t have to travel anywhere to put on a show. You can do everything through sites like Stageit.com, YouTube Live and Facebook Live. Stageit.com will allow you to sell tickets for your gigs with their universal currency.

Stageit also allows you to sell merchandise through your artist profile.

Another thing you can do with Stageit is to auction your services. By this, I mean that you can also have people bid on the music you play. The winner can then choose a song for you to perform from your repertoire.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading How to Make Money As a Musician: Seven Ways. The post actually includes nine ways, but the guy who made the video only mentioned seven of these ways. Therefore, you have got bonus points for reading this entire post.

If you would like to check out my other recent posts, you can find them here…