10 Ways Music Producers Can Make Money in 2021

As a young or seasoned music producer or beatmaker, leveraging one of the top platforms to sell beats to license your tracks is a great option to earn revenue.

It allows you to get your beats out into the marketplace while charging affordable prices to up and coming artists. It also allows you to maintain the rights to your beats, so you can re-license them to other interested artists.

Separately, this business model allows you the opportunity as a music producer to develop relationships with artists at the ground level of their career. These are the relationships you can nurture, so if one of them gets to the next level, securing a placement with them becomes more likely.

With every track you release, make sure they get distributed to all the major platforms. With digital distribution platforms like Ditto or DistroKid, this is extremely easy and inexpensive. Another great thing is that once you sign-up, there is the ability to release unlimited tracks through their service.

With playlisting becoming such a big thing, you can even submit your beats to appear on editorial playlists from Spotify, for example. There are even some platforms like SubmitHub or MySphera where you can launch campaigns to get playlisted.

Definitely upload your beats to YouTube as well because as your grow your channel and subscribers and watch time, you can join their partner program, and start earning revenue from Ads being placed on your beat videos.

Also, when selecting your digital distribution platform, look into their YouTube Content ID service. If someone happens to use your beat in a video on YouTube, you can earn additional revenue through the Content ID system that your distributor will collect.

Soundcloud and Audiomack are also great platforms that you can put your beats on for people to consume and stream, and are great for building your fan base.

We recently put out articles on the top platforms to sell sound kits and samples and also how to make sample packs that sell. Nowadays music producers are selling their drum kits, melodic loops, sound effects, etc. Any unique sounds that you create can be shared to the world, and at a significant profit.

In our article reviewing platforms, we cover some of the great ones like Sellfy or Splice that truly cater to making revenue selling your original and authentic sounds.

If you are creating melodic loop packs, you can also consider building into your agreement that you collect a percentage of the publishing royalties when beats made with your melodies get used. This is something a lot of the top producers who are selling sounds are doing these days.

Either route you take, this is a great opportunity for music producers to add an additional stream of income.

When you get a major placement, there comes a fee for selling your beat. Through your Performing Rights Organization (PRO), there is writer/composer and publishing royalties, and through SoundExchange comes royalties for non-interactive streaming for when your music gets played on SiriusXM, for instance.

Placements are about networking, building relationships with the right people, so if you're just starting out, it shouldn't be something you're completely locked-in on. Build your brand and reputation, and major placements on something that will become a natural.

If you're working hard on seeking placements, don't be discouraged if you hear No's or nothing at all. Focus on what you can control, and that's continuing to develop your unique and authentic sound.

If you're sitting on a catalog of music that you've produced, now is the time to pursue sync licensing opportunities. Get your music placed in Television, Film, Video Games, etc. There are so many opportunities right now with the amount of video content being produced by Over-the-Top (OTT) media services like Netflix, Hulu, etc. that it is a simple supply and demand game.

Check out our complete directory of the top sync licensing music companies, and start doing research on some of the top music supervisors in the game.

Find what makes sense for you, and then craft your pitch.

Influencer Marketing is a key component to any major brands marketing strategy in 2022. These brands will pay you to create content and/or help promote their products to your fans and followings. Do you see yourself as an expert on a particular piece of music production equipment? Is there a DAW that you're just killing it with? Considering reaching out to these brands marketing teams and seeing if there is anyway you can collaborate on a project. There is a lot of opportunity right now for you as a music producer with influencer marketing.

YouTube Partner Program. TikTok Creator Fund. Twitch Streaming. These are social media revenue streams that should be on every music producers radar. To get to the point where these monetization tools become available, you'll need to frequently post high quality content. Make your posts stand out from others. Stay active and connected - it's called social media for a reason. You'll want to nurture and engage with your community. Don't view social as simply a way to promote your beats, but as a way to show who you are as a person, as a brand.

Are you noticing an uptick of listeners of the beats you distributed to Spotify and Apple Music? Is your following growing on social media? Do the research in your data and see if you notice any specific locations that may be heavier than others and consider penetrating that market with a live show. Some music producers are performing in front of thousands of people every night and there is a huge market as a producer for you to perform your stuff live. Lots of people go to shows once you build your brand to a certain level.

Similarly, in the digital landscape, going live on Instagram or TikTok, can offer you other ways to reach the masses without leaving the comfort of your home. TikTok Live, for instance, even gives producers the ability to be sent gifts that can be transferred into real money that you can deposit into your linked PayPal account.

Live music always has and always will build a different type of connection to your fanbase.

As a music producer or beatmaker, you have acquired a unique skill-set that you can market to other music producers or sound designers. Create and host your own on-demand or live trainings to your fan base, or connect with Universities who may pay you to be a guest speaker during one of their sessions.

Again, this is an area where building your brand will enhance your overall marketability as a beatmaker.

We talked about partnering with brands, and monetizing directly though social media revenue programs, but an often overlooked way to monetize your content is in the form of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing gives you the ability to communicate with your fans and followings the products you love, and earn a commission by doing so. We recently wrote an article on the top affiliate marketing programs for independent musicians, but the key here is authenticity. Find something that resonates with you as a producer, and your brand. This shouldn't be your primary focus, of course, and you're not going to get rich from affiliate marketing, but view it as a way to get some passive income for talking about products you might talk about to begin with.