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Making Money with Your Music

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Introduction
This book is a summation of our years of experience in the music industry. It is also an answer to the many questions we have seen repeated over and over again in one of our music forums. That forum has over 11,000 members, so these questions are pretty much universal. If you live outside the United States some of the legal and copyright issues will not apply to you, but the rest will be very helpful.

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Table of Contents
Getting Started in the Music Biz ................................................................................................ 5 Music Producers/Musicians/DJs .............................................................................................. 5 Sound Engineers ..................................................................................................................... 5

Promotion Techniques that Work ....................................................................................... 7

Making a Press Package ............................................................................................................ 8 Photos ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Bio ........................................................................................................................................... 8 Articles /Flyers ........................................................................................................................... 8 Logos ........................................................................................................................................ 9 Creating Your Own Label ......................................................................................................... 10 Turning Real Profits .................................................................................................................. 12 Manage Artist ........................................................................................................................ 12 Sell CDs .................................................................................................................................. 12 Run a Club ............................................................................................................................. 13 Submitting Work to a Label ..................................................................................................... 14 What to do ............................................................................................................................. 14 What not to do ......................................................................................................................... 15 Copyrighting Your Work ......................................................................................................... 16 Poor Mans Copyright ............................................................................................................ 16 Official United States Copyright............................................................................................... 16 Creative License Copyright ..................................................................................................... 18 Legal Use of Samples and Sounds ........................................................................................ 19 Royalty Free Audio .................................................................................................................. 19 Non-Royalty Free Audio .......................................................................................................... 19 How Not to Get Sued ............................................................................................................... 20 File Sharing ............................................................................................................................. 20 Legal Distribution ..................................................................................................................... 20 Remixing ................................................................................................................................. 20 Look and Sound like a Pro ...................................................................................................... 21

Page |4 Looking like a Pro .................................................................................................................... 21 Sounding like a Pro ................................................................................................................. 21 Getting Your Music Heard ....................................................................................................... 23 Summary ................................................................................................................................... 25

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Getting Started in the Music Biz

Getting started in the music business is a pretty broad topic so let's break it down into 2 separate categories. Music Producers/Musicians/DJs and Sound Engineers

Music Producers/Musicians/DJs If you want to be a music producer, musician, or a dj all you need is talent, dedication, and connections. These require little or no college, and while it's easy to get your foot in the door it's very hard to make it big time. Just like everything else its all about who you know. Get to know the owners of the local clubs. Make friends, mingle, get phone numbers. Offer up your non musical services in return for bookings. Everyone wants to play music, but few people are willing to promote. The promoters and club owners are running a business, and to them it's all about the money. When you first start out offer to play for drinks and gas money. Don't turn down a gig just because the money isn't there yet. Remember it's all about supply and demand, as you make a name for yourself you will be able to charge more for your appearances.

Sound Engineers This category usually requires some college, and these colleges are usually expensive. On the positive side of things colleges like Full Sail University will guarantee you a job on graduation. Seriously consider enrolling in a university.

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What if you don't have time or cant afford to go to college? Well a second option would be the do it yourself method. You need a workstation (PC or Mac), a sound board, and some decent speakers. You probably need to purchase either Cubase or pro tools as well. Pro Tools is the standard, but if you can't afford it Cubase would be second best. Buy books, watch tutorials online and most importantly try to learn from others. Someone can teach you something in 10 minutes that may have otherwise taken you 10 days to master.

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Promotion Techniques that Work

Flyer, Flyer, Flyer, Flyer. When it comes to promoting an event or artist nothing can compete with the flyer. Flyers work 2 fold. They promote the thing needing promoted, and they also provide are a testimonial to your past work. I have a "portfolio" of literally hundreds of events. These are nothing more than flyers from events over the years. These can be photo copied and sent out via mail along with your bio. Companies such as PressEx, Inc (online at pressexprint.com) make it cheap to print thousands of flyers, business cards, posters, and even postcards. We are talking a hundred bucks for a thousand or so flyers here. Even cheaper draw a design up on paper and go to Kinkos. They have black and white copies for pennies.

Lets not forget the internet. The internet is the medium that allows some guy in the highlands of Tibet to juggle a cat and a bowling ball in the morning and that evening have it played on the 10 oclock news halfway around the world. There are several great sites for promotion. The number one that comes to mind is YouTube. A few others are soundclick.com , myspace.com, yourbeats.com, looperman.com, and facebook.com

Create a video and get on YouTube or Break.com all these internet sites are free, and so are a great way to get free promotion.

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Making a Press package

A press package may just be the number one tool in your toolkit. While you can't travel door to door talking to labels and clubs, you can do the next best thing. (provide a press package)

What you need to include in your press package. 1.) Photos Get some professional photos taken. Call a few photographers and get some prices. Make sure to tell them you are calling around for prices as you will usually get a better deal if they think they are competing for your business.

2.) Biography A bio is a short biography about you, or the band. This should have little fat or filler. Make it straight forward and stay on point. Don't jump all over the place. Most importantly have someone check the spelling and grammar.

3.) Flyers and Articles Flyers provide proof of your experience. Articles provide 3rd person insight on you. A club owner might not believe the "hype" when you tell him how good you or your band is. They will more than likely believe a testimonial from a paper, or blogger.

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Don't have any articles written about you or your band? Check out PayPerPost. It's a site that allows you to hire bloggers to write articles about whatever you want. It's a great way to tip the scales.

4.) Logo If you have a logo be sure to provide it. If you don't have a logo use sites like 99designs.com or logobee.com

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Creating Your Own Label

Having problems getting accepted into a label or crew? No big deal... just create your own. You dont need thousands of dollars to create a label like you might think. Start small and work your way up to the top.

The purpose of a label is merely to market, promote, and sell goods and services provided by artist in its agency. Sounds simple enough right?

There are no negative repercussions to this venture. So if you dont become famous or make tons of money you can always use this as experience. What sounds better when talking to perspective manager? Im not currently working with anyone, or I am head of a small independent label.

Here are some ideas to help you get started and create some quick revenue. Park outside clubs, the mall, bars, and movie theatres and offer your cds to people leaving or coming in. Sell them for $5 each, and make a smooth profit of $4 a cd. You need to be passionate about the product to sell it. Be funny, polite, and not pushy. Tell them why they need this cd, or tell them you are doing this to raise money for your business. This would also be a good time to hit them up with a flyer for your upcoming gig(s).

You really need to create a webpage. Even if its a free page at Sound Click, MySpace, or FaceBook. You need to have as much credibility and exposure as you can get your

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hands on. Having a web page is one of the fastest and easiest ways to jump start a label.

If you are owner of a label you need to write a simple contract that guarantees you 20% or more of your artist commissions. This is 20% from CD sales, club appearances, clothing sales. Clothing sales, yes you can create a clothing store online in less than an hour if you use a site like CafePress.com. Cafepress allows you to upload a logo, pick out your items, and even set your own profits. You can even sell your cds on the site.

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Turning Real Profits

If you are in this thing for the money there is nothing wrong with that, but you need to make the distinction early. If you want to make some real money you need a plan.

Lets look at some of the various ways we can make money. Some of these weve already covered, but thats ok what we want here is just to look at all of our money making ideas in one place. Manage artist and receive a % of their work in return for getting them booked. Assuming you can get between $100 and $500 a show or slot, and you get 20% youll make between $20 and $100 per booking. Sell cds of you or your artist. There are 3 different ways to go about this. o Sell them by hand; while this takes a lot of time it may be the fastest way to turn a quick profit. Sell 20 cds at $5 a pop, and you just made a $100. o Sell the cds online at a store like CafePress.com this is quick, easy, and taps into the wonder that is the World Wide Web. Also be sure to try ejunkie.com its another great site that sells digital goods. o Sell your cds at local head shops, record stores, and even major global chains. Many stores have a local section and or will place your items on their shelf assuming youve filled out the appropriate paper work. These are not just small single stores; we are talking about some major chains as well. Youll just have to go talk with your local stores to see.

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Run a club. You dont have to buy a club or rent a building, all you need to do is hit up your local clubs. Call and ask to talk with the owner, or one of the owners. The plan is for you to run the club on a certain night (preferably a weekend night). You will work as the promoter and make a percentage of the door. Ive always asked for half. That half pays for the artist, the gas or plane ticket, the hotel rooms, the flyers, the drinks, and some profit for you and your label or crew. Sounds good right? Well here is where it gets even better. You now have a huge asset. You have bookings. People everywhere want to be booked. So you talk with other promoters in other cities and you do exchange bookings. Basically you scratch my back and ill scratch yours. You book me and my artist, put us on a flyer, get us a hotel room, and give us some money, and well do the same for you. Sounds simple right? Well it is. Now in order to be successful at this you need to promote. So be sure to read our previous chapter on promotion.

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Submitting your work to a label

Lets get realistic with this scenario. Weve all heard its all about who you know. When it comes to sayings like this, they are usually true. So all you need to do is call your uncle who works at some huge label and ask him to help you. Whats that you say, you dont have an uncle?

Assuming you dont know someone who works at a label your best bet is to create a great product. Here are some dos and donts.

Dos design a great cover design a great label for the cd use bright colors master the tracks send 2-3 tracks listen to your tracks in at least 3 locations for quality (car, computer, stereo, club, headphones) get input from your peers, and really listen to what they say attach a cover letter attempt to hand deliver the package, and talk face to face with someone follow up with a phone call, again ask to talk with someone in the high ups spell-check, review, and double check everything

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Donts be sloppy / misspell give up forget to master redline the tracks put more than 5 tracks on the cd skip printing a label and write on the cd forget to follow up send hundreds of copies to the same label be rude, cocky, stuck up, stupid, comical

Assuming you can follow all those rules you should have a leg up on the competition. In the end its all about the product. There isnt a 100% chance that the label is going to listen to your cd. So you need to capitalize on any opportunity that comes your way.

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Copywriting Your Work

Copywriting your work is on the minds of many artists. We run several music forums, and this seems to be a reoccurring obsession. Everyone is afraid someone is going to rip them off. So we decided it was a good idea to cover this topic. There are 3 basic options to go with.

1. Poor Mans Postal Copyright (United States Only) a. This is as simple as burning a cd or cd of your works, placing them in a sealed envelope and mailing them to yourself. When they come to your mailbox do not open the envelope the work inside is now effectively dated, and since its a federal offense to tamper with the mail the music inside is effectively protected and dated. So if some artist releases your song a few years later then you can take him to court, bring the unopened letter, and open it in front of the judge. 2. Official Copyright (United States Only) a. This involves the united states copyright office. http://www.copyright.gov b. Protected by article FL-105 that states Claims to copyright in either published or unpublished musical works may be registered in the Copyright Office.

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Published collections of musical works and all the copyrightable elements of a unit of publication may be registered on a single form with a single fee if all the compositions are owned by the same copyright claimant.

Unpublished collections of two or more musical works can be submitted for registration on a single form with a single fee and deposit of one complete copy or phonorecord only if all the conditions are met as specified under the topic heading Collections of Music in Circular 50, Copyright Registration for Musical Compositions. Registration of an unpublished collection of compositions extends to each copyrightable selection in the collection, but only the collection title appears in the Copyright Office catalogs and indexes. A separate registration for each musical work results in a separate record of the individual title of work in the catalogs and indexes of the Copyright Office. A separate registration also may simplify identification of the work for purposes of licensing, transfer, permission, and distribution of royalties.

See Circular 50, Copyright Registration for Musical Compositions, for details on registration procedures and for further information on the deposit requirements. For further information on registration, see SL-35. For further information on copyright, deposit requirements, and registration procedures, see Circular 1, Copyright Basics.

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*NOTE: Copyright Office fees are subject to change. For current fees, please check the Copyright Office website, write the Copyright Office, or call (202) 707-3000. 3. Creative Commons License (Universal and Free) a. This is my favorite method as its free, and easy. Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

If you are planning to sell your works in the future you will want to use license your work as Creative Commons Non-Commercial. If you want others to use your work (remix, redistribute, reuse) you should choose Creative Commons Attribution. There are at the time of this article many different license revisions 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 so if you think you are interested in this check out the official creative commons site for music at http://creativecommons.org/audio/

b. Quickly protect and mark your work as creative commons audio? Go to http://yourbeats.com and sign up for a free account. Then choose a license type and upload your work to your free artist page. Its that simple. Again be sure to read more here http://creativecommons.org/audio/

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Legal Use of Samples and Sounds

This is another popular topic among artist. Whats legal and whats not legal when it comes to using sounds and samples? There are 2 types of audio as far as we are concerned. 1.) Royalty Free Audio. Works you can use and not have to pay royalties. a. Public Domain Works. All music currently out will eventually be part of the public domain, if you can wait long enough its all free. How long? Either 70 years after the artist dies, 95 years from first publication ,or 120 years from creation (whichever is shorter). So if I create a song now and die tomorrow you can have it in 70 years. OK not funny I know but thats the main way items get placed into the public domain. The other way is that some artist place their items in public domain because they actually want to give to the community. Just Google public domain audio and you should get some music you can use commercially for free b. The next and most popular way to get royalty free audio is to buy sample packs, or sample cd downloads. These will come in many formats the most popular being .wav file. They can then be used commercially without giving credit or royalties to anyone. Here is a quick list of sites selling royalty free music loops. i. PrimeLoops.com ii. http://flstudio.image-line.com/ iii. BigFishAudio.com

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How Not to Get Sued

This is another complex issue that many musicians think about often. Lets look at the main reasons for law suits. 1.) File Sharing We all know what file sharing is. We all remember the Metalixa (I spelled their name wrong because Im afraid theyll sue) suing Napster over the file app that millions of people have used. File sharing is a big no. 2.) Illegal distribution without proper compensation of to artist and label. If you are interested in distributing music from artist please contact a company like BMI. BMI represents more than 375,000 songwriters, composers, and publishers with more than 6.5 million works. 3.) Dont remix work and resell the work. Remixing itself is ok assuming you own a copy of the song. Selling the work is not. We cannot provide complete legal advice on this matter. If you really have questions that need answering hop over to the TheLaw.com its a site that has been giving free legal advice since 1995. Post a question and in a few days you should get an answer from a real lawyer.

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Look and Sound like a Pro

Making sure you and your labels work looks professional is about 50% of the battle. That will at least get you started. Remember however that no matter how many times you polish a piece of crap, its still just a piece of crap. So make sure your audio sounds good as well.

Looking like a Pro You are going to need some good high resolution photos for your cd or flyer design at some point. Here are a few great resources for images like this. http://search.creativecommons.org/ http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/ http://www.pdphoto.org/

The other alternative would be to take the photos yourself, or hire a photographer. You can get some really good photos nowadays even with mobile devices like phones. Borrow or buy a digital camera. You can also use these photos for your press package. Take a design class at the local community college on graphic design, or do some tutorials online. Creating the proper image, whatever that may be, is very important.

Sounding like a Pro a. Make sure to check the audio in at least 3 different locations. The reasons are simple. If the audio sounds good on your pc speakers, its likely to sound different

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in the car, or home stereo. What if that melody you worked so hard at, you know the one that makes your track pop, what if its drowned out by the sub bass and you cant hear the low end of the track because you dont have subs. Adversely, what if you have a killer studio setup work those low bass lines only to have them disappear whenever someone listens to them in the car. These are all common scenarios, that youll need to overcome. b. Master / EQ the tracks using software and or a mixing board. c. Make sure to compress the drums to make them crisp and clear. d. Be sure that your audio does not redline, as this is a common occurrence amongst new musicians. e. Create multiple versions and let your friends tell you what sounds the best. f. Getting frustrated? Take a break and come back the next day. Taking a break can often provide you with new ideas. g. Record in a studio if you can afford it. Studio prices vary per hour, but if you are serious and dont have one at home this is the best way to go. h. Upload your songs to a forum and get some input. (after you have protected them via creative commons, or copyright methods) i. Take your time. Unless you are on a deadline of some sort, make sure not to rush. Fame and fortune will still be waiting whenever you finish, its not going anywhere.

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Getting Your Music Heard

We are living in a time of many opportunities. The internet is the single greatest factor in this new age of music. Some of the artist reading this can remember a time before the internet, while some cannot. The net is a huge gift, take advantage of it. Here are some cheap or free ideas to get your music heard.

1.) Create a video of you, your band, or crew, and watermark it. (watermarking is when you place a logo or name on the bottom on one of the corners of the video) Then upload it to YouTube and Break.com make it interesting so people will tell their friends. 2.) Create a viral marketing campaign. Wiki says Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable. 3.) Submit your songs to radio stations, many radio stations have an amateur hour where they play local and regional music, as well as underground or indie music.

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4.) Create a myspace, and facebook account for your band. Upload songs to stream to visitors. 5.) Twitter. Twitter is becoming a very popular way to promote artist. Provide directions on how users can hear your new music.

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Summary
All in all its easier now than ever to get the fame and fortune you deserve. Take whatever you learned in this book and go and apply it in the real world. If are willing to put in the time and you have the talent there is nothing stopping you. This isnt a pep talk, its just the facts. Work hard and it will pay off. Work for a week or a year and then quit and youll get nowhere. At the end of the day its all about you, and what you have done. Get to it.

Copyright 2009 SoundBible.com