I see this debate a lot: how can I make a living being a producer? Here are a few tips to get you started
1 – Sell your project files, samples and/or presets.
As a beatmaker, try to put some decent amount of work into making QUALITATIVE beats and then setting up a professional beatstore. That’s a common but really useful way to earn some cash.
If you don’t make beats, you can always sell your project files as well as custom presets you made. The first option is a bit of a controversial subject in the industry because “you don’t want people to share your sounds”. Actually, if you sell your projects, it would be a great way for you to keep making new and innovative sounds instead of reusing the same ones. Not a lot of producers are doing this right now so jump on the opportunity to be the first one.
2 – Sell ghostproductions.
Ghost production is a business arrangement whereby a music producer composes a track for another artist who releases that track under his/her own name. Ghost producers receive an income in the form of either royalty payments or a flat fee for their work (youredm.com). There are multiple platforms out there where you can sell your ghosts, namely houseoftracks.com.
3 – Make YouTube videos.
Having a decent income is pretty hard as YouTuber nowadays because the platform is flooded with all kind of (same) videos. Although the population, you can always earn some income thanks to some entertaining videos, you could for example show how you mixed a certain track, how you designed the sounds of an another…
The key here is being consistent as you won’t have a lot of views the first months, if not years.
4 – Make songs for video creators.
Some underrated topic here: make free-licensing music for filmmakers. You would simply sell your music to the platform and they get entire royalties of the track. A platform like artlist.io is a platform filled with video creators, and it allows you to sell some music for them.
What do you think about those thoughts? Let me know!