The Antidote 3 : Six Ways To Maximize Your Income

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This blog post on Your Jazz Career is part three of a series called ‘The Antidote’ which aims to strengthen your music career against sudden crises. In this article, I discuss six ways to maximize your income. Something unexpected will always happen. It prompts the question: how do you minimize the impact of these disruptive changes?

We all need an antidote for uncertain times.

Introduction

Understanding your income streams and seeing all possibilities for financial growth is vital for developing a sustainable career strategy. Especially now, when one major income stream – live-performance – has literally disappeared and, according to Harvard professor Marc Lipsitch, periodic lockdowns might extend well into mid-2022… How do you become less dependable on one source of income like performing? You could start by analyzing the different career paths available for jazz artists and researching the possible income streams related to those. To give you a head-start, I have formulated six paths in this article.

Let’s dive straight in and make your jazz career more crisis resistant!

6 Income Streams for Jazz Artists

I strongly believe that you cannot make sound career decisions without knowing your options. When I was teaching music entrepreneurship, students would often ask me what else was possible besides performing and teaching. Well… A lot! And, also a lot more within those two categories then you might assume on a first glance. Below the six categories you could use to expand your music career.

  • Intellectual Property (Composer/arranger, recording artist)
  • Performing (studio session-musician & live music session-musician)
  • Transfer of knowledge (teaching, writing/talking about music)
  • Social & Reputational Assets (Fan data, your network, your brand, awards)
  • Fundraising income (crowdfunding, grants, subsidies, sponsorships)
  • Online income: YouTube (4 ways to earn money with YouTube)

First off, as an artist, you don’t have to do everything. Let that be clear. Great work requires focus and time. So choose your career paths with care. In addition, realize that you have a full career span of 40+ years to diversify and learn. Don’t do it all at once in 2020.

Secondly, a lot depends on your personality. Your purpose as an artist and your strengths make some choices more logical than others. So, let these concepts resonate and read up on those categories that you find interesting. Take it from there.

1. Intellectual Property: Composer & Arranger

Adding the roles of being a (freelance) composer and arranger to your bag of skills is a great way to further maximize income. As a freelance composer, you do ‘work for hire’. It is a service business where your musical composition and/or recording should meet the needs and demands of your customers. Your clients could be video-game companies, film producers & directors, marketing content agencies, orchestras and conductors, among others.

How do you find your clients? After you have created your online portfolio (website, Soundcloud, etc.), you’ll have to be pro-active. Visit conferences, festivals in your line of work, join meet-ups, join specific online forums, try to meet the professionals you want to work with. In addition, it is a good idea to send your music portfolio to music libraries and publishers.

In general, income streams include mechanical royalties, public performance royalties, commissions (by another entity to create an original work for them), and synch licenses. For the latter, for example, you can license your music directly with an Instore Media Play company such as Mood Media or ScreenPlay. When you go to your local warehouse and hear music, it is licensed by one of these kinds of companies. That means an artist composed that music and took those previous steps. So can you.

Current composers such as Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider, John Clayton and Jim McNeely show you a myriad of ways of earning a living from composing. They publish music books, conduct jazz orchestras, receive commissions, earn royalties, and give masterclasses. Study a few composers that you admire from different age groups. What kind of creative work do they put out? What are the related sources of income for these creative works?

In addition, offer your services to prospectivre clients on platforms such as Soundbetter or Fiverr. To connect you and your compositions or beats (idea?) with a publisher use platforms as Kobalt Music or Soundgine. Lastly, to sell your sheet music, you can use ScoreExchange.com.

What is going to be your next step?

Intellectual Property: Recording Artist

Most jazz artist perform live and release albums. Either as a bandleader or as a sideman. There are several ways of earning money as a recording artist. Sources of income related to commercial use of your sound recording are:

  1. Physical retail sales (record stores, Amazon, mailorder).
  2. Digital sales (Bandcamp, MP3s through Amazon, Google Plays).
  3. Merch (CD, Vinyl) sales at live shows – it can add up to 10-25% of that live-shows earnings.
  4. Streaming services (Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer).
  5. Digital performance royalties (Internet radio) – are you registered at the corresponding PRO?
  6. Master use license for synchs, ringtones, etc.

Point 1 to 4 requires active promotion on your side. Do you have a plan for each of these different sources of income? From a good merch table and announcements on stage, to a Spotify playlist strategy. Pick a topic that’s relevant now, and try to improve the marketing aspect of it.

Streaming services are currently completely taking over and therefore vital to understand. How much do you already know about Spotify?

Streaming for Jazz Artists

In pop music, attention has shifted from an album approach to a focus on releasing singles due to the impact of playlists on streaming services. For jazz artists, the case in point is the State of Jazz playlist on Spotify. However, Spotify pays artists around $0,0049 per stream. (Read the amazing guide by Jeff Price on Spotify royalties for free here.) That means you will need at least 1.000 streams to buy yourself a flat white. It can add up, but for jazz artists, it should not be the main revenue focus. Unless… when you manage to get on popular Spotify Playlists and promote your gigs on it too. For tips for musicians to get more out of Spotify, I highly recommend the blog Work Hard Playlist Hard.

2. Being a performer

Already since the piracy era of the 2000s, performing (touring) has been the most important source of income for musicians. Either as a bandleader, side-man or salaried-player. In addition, most jazz musicians I know prefer to spend most of their time playing live music. Jazz is social music.

However, since performing is so dominant, especially for jazz artists, you really need a good strategy to maximize your income from it.

Some questions to consider. Do you play in one project only? Or three very similar ones? Do you play one specific kind of Jazz? Or do you move through all colours of the genre? And beyond jazz? What kind of venues do you play? For what kind of people? Are you using your full range of expression and artistic interests?

These are all questions to consider when formulating and setting goals for your specific performance career.

A Gig Overview

Let’s start with a gig-overview. What kinds of gigs are there? I’m sure I’m missing something, but these are the ones I could come up with.

  • Your own music gig (bar, jazz club, large music venue, festival)
  • Session-musician gig (other bandleaders, orchestras, big bands, theatre productions)
  • Tribute band gig (Tribute to Billie Holiday – a match for city theatres)
  • The Wedding/Corporate Gig (familiar repertoire, easy listening, entertaining)
  • Educational gigs (kids, teens, students – “What is Improvisation?”)
  • Theme gigs (Christmas, New Year, 70’s)
  • Support Act (low fee, potential new audience & network)
  • Showcase gigs (all about the network and potential new fans)
  • Other: Military, Cruiseships
  • Online gigs (hard to turn into a profit, more centred around community building, fanbase growth)
  • Busking on the streets (not right now though)

Which of these have you never done but would you find interesting? Do you know people that are active in that scene? Reach out.

And secondly, how do you actually earn money at all these gigs? You basically have six options: a performance fee, a salary as a member of an orchestra/ensemble, a transport costs refund, your merchandise sales, tour support (subsidies, record label), and your Performance Rights royalties (send in your setlist).

Are you aware of these six options? And what can you do to maximize your income from each of these?

3. Transfer of knowledge

One of the traditional income sources for jazz artists and still very important today is teaching. In general, the options are either to teach parttime or fulltime in five ways:

  • Private teaching: in a studio, at a music store, or at home.
  • Institutions: music school, in Secondary Education, university, or at a higher music education institution (conservatory).
  • Events: summer camps, after-school programs, for cultural organisations, creativity workshops, charity (nursing homes), speaker fees.
  • Masterclasses: as your professional reputation increases so will the demand for masterclasses by you. Highlight these as a service on your website and provide them either online or in ‘real-life’ at music institutions, colleges and so on.
  • Online: offer courses on Udemy or your services at Fiverr. Use Skype, Zoom or Google HangOut to teach long-distance. Additionally, subscription-based services are increasing in popularity.  These usually pre-recorded lessons are offered online with a monthly or yearly subscription. For example, see www.skillshare.com.

Besides teaching your main-instrument. What other knowledge could you turn into a paid service or YouTube video offering? Your knowledge of musical styles (teach music history)? Your knowledge of gear, music marketing, music theory, recording, … How can you maximize your income from teaching in a broader sense?

4. Social & Reputational Assets

An important source of (future) income are your Social Assets. The music business is a people business. Your network and the (online) data about your audiences are powerful assets. Understanding the needs and worldview of your fans will make your marketing and product-development a lot more effective. Also, your network of fellow creatives and your music industry network of promoters and booking agents, is the soil from which new opportunities arise. Invest in both regurly by being proactive and social. Visit conferences as Jazzahead, socialize with the programmers/staff at venues/festivals, send frequent newsletter updates about your creative work and accomplishments. It all adds up.

As a musician, you are also a brand – the public perception of who you are as an artist. An artist like Sun Ra – with his branding ‘from outer space’ – is an inspiring and effective example of how this can work for jazz artists. Branding is a core source of income, with revenues from branded merchandise (T-Shirts, Posters), Patronage support and fan funding (Kickstarter), Grants, YouTube Partner programs, product endorsements (corporate sponsorships) and more. Visualising your artistic identity in a clear and outspoken way will open up new sources of income and grow your audience. Need the next step? Research how (jazz) artists that you admire do their branding.

 

5. Fundraising for Jazz Artists

An opportunity many artists use to maximize their income, and, more importantly, to get great projects realized, is fundraising. There are different ways to do this, like organizing a crowdfunding campaign, applying for government funding & grants, organizing benefit concerts, and actively aiming for sponsorships (product endorsements). I cannot list all world-wide funds here. So instead, I will list a few interesting platforms to get you orientated on what’s out there.

6. Online sources of income: YouTube

When looking at your online assets as an artist, the main ones are logical: your website, Bandcamp, mailing list, social media channels and perhaps your blog/podcast. From social media, YouTube is potentially the most interesting. So to highlight one online platform here in more detail. There are four ways to make money with YouTube. You can receive:

1) Royalties for the sound recording owner (Audio/Master) collected by your distributor (CDBaby/Tunecore/etc).

2) Royalties for the content owner (Visual) collected by your Admin Co. (Admin Publisher company for example – like SongTrust, CDBaby Pro).

3) Performance royalties for the public broadcast of the song (PA royalties) collected by your PRO.

4) Mechanical royalties for the interactive stream of the song (Composition/Publishing) collected by your Publishing Admin Co.)

If you are interested in making videos and promoting your music through a platform like YouTube, then these four are great ways to maximize your income.

Those are six ways to maximize your income as a jazz artist. I hope a few of these possibilities resonate with you. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Stay strong. Stay creative!

Pieter Schoonderwoerd

Your Jazz Career

Find an empowering ebook on developing your artistic vision and writing a compelling artist biography here.

I’ve been coaching jazz artists for three years to achieve their creative and professional ambitions. If you are interested in a personal coaching session, you can read more about it here.