Artists, Watch Now: New Channels for Money From Your Music

We hosted a conversation with friends from CD Baby, Side Door, Caravan, SoundExchange and Wags Works to learn and discuss new ways musicians can derive income from their music.

COVID-19 has taken a massive toll on all parts of the music ecology, but professional working musicians are some of the very hardest hit. We are excited to share a wealth of knowledge from a panel that has a deep understanding of the in’s and out’s of maximizing your payout, and receiving the income you are entitled to through streaming, and how to create and deliver content that will help generate additional income from the music you have in your archive.

Watch Now:

PANELISTS:

Meara McLaughlin: MusicPortland
Wade Metzler: SoundExchange
Scott Wagner: WagsWorks
Kevin Breuner: CD Baby
Dan Mangan: Side Door
David Gluck: Caravan, Inc
Malachi Graham: Small Million

Key Takeaways

  1. Use your time at home to make sure you’re signed up for Sound Exchange to gather your digital radio revenue. You may have a pile of revenue waiting from services like Pandora and Sirius XM. Here’s how to sign up: SoundExchange Best Practice Guide (pdf)

  2. To maximize digital radio payout from SoundExchange, you can work on your radio PR strategies. Understanding Sirius XM is key to understanding SoundExchange payouts as that’s where the bulk of the money comes from. You can make as much as $50 per play on SiriusXM! Keep in mind that it’s a corporate radio station, not particularly known for its indie curation. The most popular channels are retro throwbacks, top 40 pop, and talk radio. But there are some exceptions— from our research, it seems like the independent artists with the best chance of getting played on Sirius channels are rappers and folk artists. Anecdotally, programming managers in those genres just seem to be willing to play newer or unknown artists. This takes some detective work and persistence— finding emails for Sirius XM hosts and reaching out directly via email or on Twitter, much as you would to get blog coverage or Spotify playlist placements. It may also be worth considering running a radio campaign with a professional music PR company. Here are a couple resources about DIY SiriusXM promotion by genre to get you started:

    1. Folk / General: https://flypaper.soundfly.com/tips/how-to-get-your-music-played-on-siriusxm-radio-and-local-radio-too/

    2. Rap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfEKoK9cl5Q

    3. Indie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNP2uiVyVk

  3. Consider ticketing your live stream shows rather than giving them away for free. We know it seems like everyone’s playing for free and it may feel like you need to do the same to get attention and keep up, but we want to encourage people to uphold the value of their live performance by being really conscious of asking for support from the audience, whether in explicit and repeated tip requests, or by hosting a gated, ticketed online show. One great platform for that is Sidedoor Access. They have found that you can create a more magical, genuine performance environment by creating the technology to have you see your audience while you play. Just because we’re not together at venues doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to make this era of live performance special.

  4. Explore sponsorship opportunities and brand partnerships for livestream events. It can be done tastefully and respectfully— it’s about finding the right partnerships. Wags Works is a local company that does this well.

  5. Build your YouTube platform through consistent content release and engagement. David Gluck of Caravan, Inc. is a pro at creatively monetizing web video in the music world. Conversations with fans in comments, regularly releasing content, and driving people back to your YouTube from other channels will all help with this. On YouTube you need 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time in the last year to be eligible for monetization.

  6. Consider “premiering” any archived live video content you may have lying around, to generate revenue from old content. That’s a tip from our friends at CD Baby.

  7. “Independent artists have always led the charge in finding new and interesting ways to connect with audience, because they’ve had to. They haven’t had the luxury of mass media or giant marketing budgets, so independent artists were some of the first ones really capitalizing on YouTube and doing livestreaming… for a lot of the independent artist community, this is familiar.” -Kevin Breuner, CD Baby

Philip Graham