General Music Chat

I'm interested in knowing different ways that solo musicians make money, aside from just playing music at gigs.

There are obvious ways such as teaching, but i'm keen to hear from solo musicians who make money in more unique ways. For example, session work.

I wrote a short article about it, but am looking forward to hearing how other solo musicians make a living!

http://www.lastminutemusicians.com/blog/?p=536

Cheers!

Waiting tables? Working retail?

I would also be very interested in this as well!

Cleaning pools. All your evenings are free!

To me performances are where the bulk of the money comes from for any artist.

You have cd sales, merch sales, but I would say the performance fees you can muster up are where any real money comes from.

Solo cover artist in my area, make $100 to $200 a night.

Original Artist mainly play for publicity, you have to build up in that area, so it can be nothing to around $200 a night.

As others on here say keep a day job going of some sort.

Now, if you are a decent congwriter then I would try to pitch songs to publishing companys or directly to major artist if you can figure out a way to get them to them, Ive been unsuccessful thus far in this area, but if you could ever get a major artist to record and song and make a hit of it, then I think others would seek you out, thats the place where you make the real money. Write a bunch of songs, copywright then, form your own publishing company and be prepared to sell of major chunks of the publishing in order to sell them. I think songs are a dime a dozen these days so dont hold your songs like they are precious stones, make them available.

Good Luck

You're lucky, Eric. I know of a couple of guys in the greater Boston area who, like you, do multiple music-related things to make a 'living'. that total income doesn't go far in Connecticut with the taxes there, though, does it?

Erics answer the best you have to do as much as you can musically and see which one will push your passion and income

Sadly, at some point it can seem like its all 'work' and not fun anymore, that's the last thing I want to happen with my relationship with music.

You've got a lot of hustle Eric. You keep lots of irons in the fire and sooner or later one of them will heat up.

Talbot