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TOP REVENUE STREAMS AVAILABLE TO ARTISTS

TOP REVENUE STREAMS AVAILABLE TO ARTISTS

There are numerous ways by which an artist can earn money with his music and generally with his career as an artist. However, this article focuses on the top 5 ways an artist generates revenue. So let’s begin.

Music Sales and Streams: Streaming is no doubt the most popular way people consume music in this age and as such, artists having distributed their songs on the platforms i.e online streaming platforms, earn a certain amount of money which is dependent on their number of streams per music. The money generated from streams grows as your catalog grows and more people start listening to your music and that is why Artists release songs frequently. Also, Artists can still sell their music online via their website or Paystack.

Live Shows and Performances: This is a no-brainer. Live performances and shows alias gigs are some of the quickest ways for Artists to make good money. Through selling tickets for your concerts and tours or getting paid to perform at events such as weddings, end of the year parties, birthdays parties, and what have you. Artists rake as much as half a million naira per show, imagine having two to three shows per week. Don’t forget that this is just an added source of revenue to the Artist.

Brand Deals and Endorsements: If there are any means by which an Artist can get the bulk of the money, it is through endorsements and brand deals. As an artist, you have a number of people following you and are easily influenced by your music and lifestyle meanwhile different brands look for consumers and customers which you possess and so they need to tap into that hence they approach you with a contract to help them advertise and showcase their products for a good amount of money. Many artists today have a sustainable income from just their endorsements.

Licensing and Publishing: Licensing your music to filmmakers, gaming companies, comedians for skits, and brands for advertisements are also ways by which an artist generates revenue. In addition to this, the Artists still get publishing royalties when the film, game, skit, or advert is released. Licensing your music could also pass as “killing two birds with one stone” in the sense that when that film or advert is seen, the viewers may proceed to even check the artist and listen to his music more thereby increasing his streams, views, and even fan base.

Merchandise: Merchandise or Merch is also a good source of revenue for an artist if properly done. Merchandise allows you to sell your brand and image on it. It encompasses anything and everything about a brand which could be your name, logo, sign, nickname, etc. Good examples are Wizkid’s Starboy Nike Jersey, Burnaboy’s Twice as Tall merch, and many more.

Be More Than a Musician…and more: Musician Marketing Strategies Worth Considering

Musician Marketing Strategies Worth Considering

All thanks to the internet, there are now endless ways to promote your music in this day and age. The variety in channels allows you to experiment and run a creativity test on yourself by trying new things, which is key to successfully promoting your music in today’s music industry. Marketing your music is essential if you want to get your name out there and actually start making money from your musical talent. Here are some channels to exploit in marketing your music:

Focus a large part of your time on Gigging

Gigging is one of the very important activities every musician should be doing, it is not only good for creating awareness for your brand but can also be monetized in different ways to help build a strong relationship with your audience. Some of the best gigs you can do are events that have other acts in your genres are also playing at. Gigging is good for gaining new fans and making money in the music industry.

Be more than a Musician

By being more than a musician, it means doing everything you can to get yourself out there and be in front of a targeted audience because this will give you more exposure for your music as possible, also do things that are not directly related to promoting yourself as a musician but will still get new targeted eyes to your music.

Reach out to Music Blogs

Promoting your music isn’t just about sharing it with your fans. If you also want to reach out to a new audience and convert them to fans, music blogs are a great way to do that. Bloggers are always looking for fresh, clean content so reaching out to them is a good way to help market yourself and your music.

Collaborate with other Musicians

Collaboration is often overlooked as an aspect of music promotion, it is a great way to get your music in front of a new group of people who follow your fan base exponentially.

Your music marketing strategy is should be something you redefine over time, so don’t get frustrated trying to get these things together as some of them may take time to come, but they will surely help.

DON’T HIND BEHIND THE MASK

A lot of people already know what you are as a musician, you should also be able to let people know what it feels like relating with you when you are not on stage performing. People should be able to tell the difference between you as a musician and living your normal daily life outside music.

How To Earn Money From Youtube

One of the major factors in the business of selling music today is the ability to generate income from your product or content via several channels. Our focus here is on ‘How you can monetize your Content on YouTube’.

Recent stats show that the number of people generating a 5-figure revenue from YouTube has gone up about 5% while those earning 6-figures have increased to over 40%. This gives YouTube bragging rights as a worthy business platform, where content creators can effectively generate and monetize their content. Here are a few ways to monetize your content on YouTube:

Independent Monetization

This is an independent channel of monetizing some aspect of your content through the ‘Partner Program’, without the inputs of a middleman. The revenue generated from your content will however be split between you and YouTube according to the stipulated rev. share. The criteria for Independent Monetization include;

Your channel must reach 4,000 watch hours in the previous 12 months and 1,000 subscribers
Google AdSense: You must have signed up to Google AdSense. This allows YouTube to pay your royalties
YouTube Monetization Settings: You must adjust your YouTube monetization settings to enable the ads you want running on your content and the type of content it should run on
Follow and Obey all YouTube Partners’ Policies patiently, while waiting to be approved

Content ID Policies

This is a digital “fingerprinting” system that YouTube content creators can use to identify and manage their COPYRIGHTED content across the YouTube platform. This ensures that your COPYRIGHTED content isn’t illegally used and monetized. If identified, the Content ID ensures that you get a royalty from such uploads. The simplest way to identify and manage your content is by working with YouTube Certified Content Aggregators (such as FREEME MUSIC of course).

YouTube Premium

This is a paid YouTube Streaming Subscription Service that provides advert-free video streaming to its customers. It offers access to music, series, and movies, all without adverts. Once again, working with a distributor allows you quickly and easily get your content on YouTube Premium as well as collect the appropriate royalties when it is available.

Funding For Musicians and Record Labels

Funding For Musicians and Record Labels

Getting funds for your record label is quite a daunting and challenging task, and securing funding is inevitable when trying to get independent record labels and music projects off the ground, and also to cover any cost that comes with producing music, touring, and running a successful label as a business. One of the most frequent questions we often get is how to get funding for musicians and music labels. Here is a guide to some of the basic and best sources you could give a try.

It is important and highly advisable to take your time to research preferable options when making a decision and to avoid making rash and hasty decisions. Before going into sources of funding, here are few things to look out for

Know and Study your source

A bad investor is bad for Business, be sure to know what kind of person you are partnering with, so watch out for extortionate interest rates or investors looking to take more control of your company than you would be comfortable with. Do your research; don’t just take the money and hope for the best.

Plan your Approach.

Different sources of funding require different approaches but it is always best to start with a record label business plan. You would need to know your Business inside out and where you aim to attain, then write your intentions out on paper whether you are hoping to get out there now or later.

Also, you wouldn’t want your chances blown over a few spelling mistakes, so check your application thoroughly, look it over again, then ask someone to check it for you this way someone else can point out the mistakes you overlooked.

Plan your Budget

It is always wise to plan your budget at the very beginning in other to know how much you need and not how much you want. You have to make a balance of what you want because taking too much might prove to be a problem while taking little you might not be able to achieve a lot and you end up making low budget projects.

Be Prudent

Spend your money wisely this goes without saying, make an account of every dime you spend otherwise you wouldn’t know where all your money has gone to.

Start-up Loan

A start-up loan is the best way to get new businesses to grow and develop. You can easily walk into any major bank for a business loan but make sure your business plan, your credentials, and your research are up to date to get a good chance of scoring a loan. Don’t just cast your net to high-end lenders you might end up borrowing more than you can return.

Private investors & sponsors

If your music is making an impact across the local, national, or even international music scene, you might just attract the interest of private investors or sponsors. Sponsors and endorsements can come from various angles ranging from music brands to soft drinks, to sport and even telecommunications companies. It’s important to know that this company receives hundreds of pitches weekly so it’s important to make your style stand out and not just become a random musician.

Fan Funding (Crowd Funding)

If you artists or one of you artists have loyal fans that are willing to do anything for the favorite Artist, anytime to want to drop a new album and cash is hindering or you want to go for a tour and you dnt have money for fuel or accommodation you can just ask from a die-hard fan he or she would be more than willing to help.

Fund Yourself

You can raise the money yourself if you want to stay in complete control of your cash flow, raising the money yourself is the best bet for you. There are plenty of ways you can generate income like through streaming, sales of tickets for shows, and performance fee.

How To Get Playlisted On Spotify

How To Get Playlisted On Spotify

For as many that are interested in featuring on Spotify Playlist, the process just got easier and candid. The platform now allows for a public process of getting on or suggesting an unreleased song to the curators and editorial team on Spotify. Gone are the days where artists and labels have to go out of their way to pitch new releases, hunt for hidden web forms or source for email contacts to submit for opportunities..

A little while back, Spotify announced the launch of a more formal and transparent process for submission. All you need is; a ‘Spotify for Artist’ account, and you need to deliver your song (scheduled for release) to Spotify within a specific timeframe.

Hints on Song Submission for a Higher Chance:

You are eligible to submit only unreleased songs.
You are eligible to submit one unreleased song at a time; once the song is released, you can then submit another unreleased track.
It also guarantees that your Spotify followers will have the unreleased track added to their customized Release Radar playlists on Friday, should in a case where they haven’t listened to the song earlier in the week.
Songs can only be submitted on Desktop. It is NOT supported on the mobile version of Spotify for Artist.
You can only submit songs at least, seven (7) days before the song is released. It would also serve you better to submit your songs way before the seven days’ mark.
The process is free!! You need not pay for placement.

How to Submit Song(s):

Log in to Spotify for Artists on desktop, and find any unreleased music at the top of the Home or Profile tabs.
Select GET STARTED next to the release you want to submit. Or, go to Profile, right-click any unreleased music, and select Submit a Song.
Choose a song from the release to submit.
Fill out as much info about the song as possible. The more info we get; the better chance it has!

As soon as your song gets placed in a playlist, Spotify will notify you via email. Also, it’s good to keep checking the Playlists tab in your Spotify for Artists account.

Mistakes That Gets Your Music Removed From Streaming Services

MISTAKES THAT GETS YOUR MUSIC REMOVED FROM STREAMING SERVICE

(MUSIC COVER ARTS)

The first point of interaction between any new release and potential listeners is cover art. It has been observed that the quality of the cover art of a song largely determines if the listeners will interact with the music. The same applies to streaming services. If your cover art does not meet their guidelines, it will either not be uploaded or will be removed from the service.

Many are not aware that there are rules that are in place guiding the cover arts of music. It is however important to state that the general rule guiding the cover art is that; all cover art must be unique in itself, depicting the message of the music. Here are some other guidelines to follow when making cover art for your music:

No Information Mismatch: The information on the cover art must match with the information attached to your music i.e artist name, the title of single, or album.
There shouldn’t be record label information on the cover art.
Parental advisory warnings are not necessary, so far there is the ‘explicit content’ tag on the cover art.
Artist name abbreviation: When abbreviating your name, ensure you abbreviate your name completely and not just a part of the name.
If you are featuring another artist on the track, ensure there are no information mismatches on the cover art.
Avoid copyright and trademark infringement. You don’t put the logo of a company or brand on your cover art without express permission.
Don’t use the tag ‘original’ for cover songs.
Avoid using watermarked images.
Avoid stretching your images aspect ratio. The causes image blurriness.
Avoid up-scaling your image to a larger size.
Avoid excessive and irrelevant text on your cover art.
Avoid including your contact info, pornographic images, violent images, racist signs or logos e.t.c

Here are a few things that are allowed, although are still questioned.

There are no rules guiding ‘Word Casing’. You are at liberty to use whatever casing mix you want.
You can use the same image for all you release, so far the text on the cover art differs.
You can have an image without text but you can’t use the same image for another release.
Your social media handles, so far you don’t mention the name of the social media.

How To Make Your Song More Playlist–Friendly

HOW TO MAKE YOUR SONG MORE PLAYLIST–FRIENDLY

For your song to make the listeners’ playlist, it has to be play-worthy, in that, it must satisfy the need of your listeners as well as leave them wanting more. However, getting your song to be added to the playlist isn’t just about making good music or promoting the sound through all channels, there are certain technicalities that can aid your song and make it more playlist friendly. It is along this line that we shall briefly discuss certain fundamentals to achieving this.

As an artist, you must have it in mind that your music must have playlist features i.e short and straight to the point. For instance, to make a radio playlist, certain edits are done. The process of making those ‘edits’ could be burdensome, hence, the radio stations leave the song off their playlist. Having shorter versions of the song is good, especially for radio listeners, who are not as patient to listen to the whole song. It is therefore advisable to make a song for the playlist short and straight to the point.

Before we proceed, it is important to state clearly that this is not to dissuade the creativity of artists or restrict their musical expression, what we have discussed thus far is for the sake of musical playlists, especially on the radio. It is to this that we say it is advisable to make the original version of the song before making ‘playlist edits’. Have it in mind that the edited version of the song shouldn’t be so different from the original song, just a little extraction from different parts will do.

In editing your song, you can take note of the following:

Song Length: Make sure the length of your edited song does not exceed 4 minutes. It might begin to bore your listeners after the 4-minutes mark.
Song intro & outro: Ensure this does not exceed 15 seconds. Make it captivating and exciting.
Song Structure: Be sure to communicate what the song is about with a captivating hook or vocals. Keep your listeners in the groove of what you are singing.

Also, you must ensure to grab the attention of your audience such that, they won’t be eager to skip your song. In doing this, the song must have a fantastic intro and the body of the song must captivate them to want more. Failure to do so will reduce your chances of making money from your music on music streaming platforms. Before a song is considered streamed, the listener must have listened past the 30-second mark. Anything less than the 30-second mark will mean the song wasn’t streamed, hence, reducing your chances of making money off the song.

In a nutshell, musicians should make their songs playlist-friendly. To do this, musicians should, after making the original version of their songs have edited versions of their songs. The implication of this is that it relieves the radio stations the stress of editing your song for a radio playlist as well as it is designed to capture the attention of the listeners, within the 30-second mark, on a music streaming platform.

Music Distribution 101

One of the fundamentals for music artists to get discovered and thrive digitally is through Music Distribution. It is the entry point into the digital earning space for artists. It affords artists opportunities that can be instrumental to achieving success with their music. In this article, we will be discussing all there is to know about Music Distribution.

Music distribution is the act of making music content available for public consumption. Our emphasis here is on digital. Music distribution affords listeners buy/listen/download music online. Although some platforms allow direct uploads from artists, the most lucrative way yet is to upload/distribute through a content aggregator/distributor.

A distributor/aggregator is an industry term for companies that help artists put their music on digital stores like Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, etc. The ultimate goal for digital distribution is to earn money from your music. There are a ton of distribution companies around the world and Freeme Music is at the forefront of Music Distribution and Label Services in Africa.

Most Music Streaming platforms don’t interact with artists directly, hence the need for a distributor.

There are certain benefits artists can enjoy from their distributor, apart from just the distribution of their songs. The distributor can help with editorial pitching to get marketing support from the DSPs. Some distributors also partner with specific artists on specific projects. Some even offer marketing support and cash advances. All of these largely depend on the deal on the table.

For artists to earn money from distribution, the song(s) have to be streamed or bought. The more the streams, the more the money. With playlisting services, artists have higher levels of exposure. Playlisting is a digital curation of music based on mood and quality. It aids content discovery. The competition is high and playlisting is incredibly important to have a better chance of thriving.

To get playlisted, artists have to pitch for considerations. A safe period is 14 days before the song’s release. Playlist pitch can only be submitted by music distributors, except for services like Spotify and Audiomack that allows artists to pitch directly through platform apps.

It’s also important to know that most platforms provide data for every artiste. These data show fan interaction with their music (location, age groups, genders, and time, etc). The analytics are made available to either the distributor or through the platforms’ artiste app. These insights should inform the artist’s decision when making and marketing a new release. Analytics also help artists to track, measure their growth and the impact their music is making.

You can also learn more on Music Distribution on our Freeme Academy Series here: Content Distribution, Pitching, and Analytics – Freeme Academy

Is Radio Still Relevant To Music Promotion?

If You’re Thinking of Radio Promotion for Your Music? This Post Will Point You In The Right Direction

It’s a new dawn in the entertainment space. An era where music distribution and promotion has become mostly DIGITAL – where music streaming and downloads are, by miles, the WAY musical content are distributed and promoted. We no longer live in an era where the premium is placed on physical copies, neither is music promotion left in the hands of ‘Alaba Boys’. Our emphasis in this piece is focused on radio promotion, why it should be considered, and how to go about it.

The reach as well as user engagement offered by radio houses is compelling enough to want to stick with this medium for promoting your content, seeing as there is rarely anyone who doesn’t listen to the radio today regardless of what they are listening to. The most important factor when it comes to radio promotion is the REACH and getting your song on the radio helps you grow your fan base and extend your reach within the said geographical location. However, not many are able to approach radio stations in such a way that their content and persona would be found irresistible.

Here are a few tips to guide your approach.

First, you must have and KNOW YOUR CONTACT. It is very ideal to know who is in charge of track-listing and song selection or who can influence such decisions. Having a knowledge of this helps you know who you should be approaching and how. Although you could get contact information via the company’s website, social media accounts, and other noble means, you should still make it a point of duty to know and build a relationship with your contact person.

You should also make inquiries about THE RIGHT FORMAT FOR SENDING YOUR MUSIC. It’s not advisable to just send content anyhow you feel like it. You should be sure of the format the radio station(s) work with; the content type, the song duration, and other relevant information that aids your track placement. Failure to do your own research could hinder your song from being aired.

Also, make it a point of call to PITCH THE RIGHT STATION. Going straight to the big stations, while still building a name for yourself, might not be the right move for you sometimes, their demands and criteria might be far-reaching for you if you’re at the early stage of your career. It would suit you better to target smaller stations but with a large audience reach and engagement, whose demands and criteria won’t be too much for you to handle.

Finally, you should CREATE A BUZZ. This could entail a lot more work than just pitching to the radio stations. You have to create hype for yourself and your music. There are no specific ways to create buzz for your content. Whatever way there is to get the radio stations to notice your content would do and when they do, it’s a roller-coaster ride from then on…

You can also learn more on the impact of Radio on our Freeme Academy Series here: Is Radio Still Relevant To Music Promotion? | Freeme Music Academy