7 Easy Steps To Sell Your Music & Profit

The word profit is rarely used by independent artists. You take your money. Put it into your art. Hoping one day you have a stadium of people screaming your name and millions of dollars.

Hoping this will happen is stupid. Why not do something that makes it likely to happen?

To boost your chances, it’s important to grasp what it means to actually make money from your music.

When you get more money from your music than what you put in. That’s profit.

Having your music be profitable is key. If you want a lot of fans and money, profit is what you should focus on.

I will show you step by step how to start making money with your music.

Table Of Contents

1 Make Sure Your Music Is Good
2 Choose Two Places To Build A Audience
3 Sign Up For A Email Marketing Service Provider
4 Setup Your Fan Building Machine
5 Create Things Your Fans Will Buy
6 Start And Never Stop A Schedule To Profit
7 Maintaining Your Fan Growth To Start Profiting

1 Make Sure Your Music Is Good

This might be obvious but everything starts with your music. Your music is a product.

In the mood for long road trip with good music.. pic.twitter.com/1qlUYBAiwV
— Poetry (@lastvibes) September 1, 2024

As an independent artist you are also a business owner. No business is profitable with bad products.

It’s harder to profit with trash music. It’s easy to profit with good music.

To find out how good your music is you will ask people. Good music is a mix of your artistic vision and what fans want.

This doesn’t mean you create music focused on something you think fans want. It’s the opposite.

Create music that moves you in some way. It can be physical or emotional. You have to feel something.

Independent music artist listening to music

Once you have some songs done you can get peoples opinion before release. My favorite way is a soundcloud private link via dm’s.

You will find that after doing this there is no exact science to creating good music. Some songs you test that you felt good about a lot people might hate. Or the opposite.

That’s why trying to create music you think will sell is foolish. Create songs you like and can’t stop listening to. Release only the songs you get good feedback on.

This is a business and you can’t be emotional about a customer’s opinion. They are always right.

Following this will mean some of your favorite songs won’t get released. Once you start profiting you can add those songs as bonuses or to deluxe editions.

2 Choose Two Places To Build A Audience

Independent artist phone showing a social media icon

You will need a way to find potential fans. You do this through content.

You need to choose one long form. That’s Youtube, podcast, or a blog.

You will also need one short form. Like ig, Twitter, or Facebook.

This will give you two different ways to find potential fans. It also ensures you always have a way to grow your fans if one platform goes away.

To choose which two options will work you need to consider your time and talents. If you are good at being on camera then Youtube is good but still can work if you don’t show your face.

social media changed my life pic.twitter.com/DNlMHeY8AR
— DAN KOE (@thedankoe) August 28, 2024

If you are good at talking then a podcast and Twitter spaces will be a good pair.

Research and understand what it takes to make content for the platform you consider.

You want to check out ways to learn your choices. You will be using these platforms for years. You want to choose an option you can learn and get good at.

You should strive to be as good at both choices as you are with music.

3 Sign Up For A Email Marketing Service Provider

To turn fans into true supporters you need email marketing. Email marketing will allow you to connect with fans.

This connection starts when you get a fan to allow you to email them.

When a fan allows you to email them it means they like what you do. It also means they are ok with you having direct communication with them.

This direct communication is a way for you to build trust with your fans. When done right, email marketing is like building a friendship with all your fans at once.

You will need to choose an email service provider for this step. I recommend using aweber because it’s free to start and easy to use.

Set up your account, welcome campaign, and landing page. The video below shows you how.

Your landing page should give away a free song in exchange for an email.

4 Setup Your Fan Building Machine

Once you have your 2 audience building channels and email service provider. It’s time to set up a system that makes money.

To do this you will place the link to your landing page on both channels. You should only have this one link.

Don’t use any other links. Make it easy.

You want potential fans that view your profile to have one option. That option is getting a song in exchange for an email.

By setting up your profiles this way you will grow your email list faster.

The more fans on your list the more profitable your business becomes.

Once on your list you want to send emails that build a connection and emails that offer something for sale.

Emails that build a connection would be a story about you or a song. It could also be talking about your favorite music and asking questions.

The emails where you offer things for sale would be asking them to buy a song or merch.

5 Create Things Your Fans Will Buy

Once you have fans on your list you will ask them to buy things. You can start with downloads of your song or album.

Songs and albums are usually low priced offers. These are key.

Low priced offers are usually anything under $50. Your low priced offer is how you will get your first super fans.

It is hard to profit off only low priced offers. It’s possible, but hard.

You want to have offers that are higher priced to make profiting easier. These offers should be $500 or more.

I know it’s hard to believe someone will pay that much but it’s possible. Nipsey Hustle sold 1,000 albums for $100 each.

To create your higher priced offer you will need more than music. You will want to create a bundle of merch.

Some merch ideas are vinyl, cds, clothing, virtual events, and in person experiences.

You want to put a lot of merch ideas together that would be worth more than $500 but sell it for that. You want the offer to be perceived as worth more than $500 but it should cost you way less to deliver the offer.

This will give fans a deal they can’t refuse. Because they are getting more than what their $500 is worth.

You will need both low and high priced offers to be profitable. Once a fan buys your low offer you can then offer the higher priced offer to them.

Make sure you separate your email list into people that bought your low offer and ones that haven’t.

That way you know which part of your list to send which offer to.

Before rapping up this step I want to illustrate how this system makes you money.

Money from a independent artist selling their vinyl to fans.

If you had only an album to sell at $10 you would need to sell 5,000 to make $50,000 a year.

If you sell both music and a high ticket offer you will make $50,000 easier.

With only 100 fans you can make $50,000 a year. You will only need 100 super fans that spend $500 with you every year. Unlike the music only offer that will take 5,000.

6 Start And Never Stop A Schedule To Profit

For you to become profitable with your music you need to grow your email list. This only happens if you make content.

Most independent artists make the mistake of posting only when they have new music. This doesn’t work.

You want to be posting at least one short form post a day and one long form a week. The more frequent you post the more subscribers you get on your list.

When people like your content they view your profile. If they’re into what you do they subscribe.

You will need to find topics and things you can talk about other than your music. Fans want to connect with your personality and values.

When you’re not posting content about your music you should post things that show who you are. You will find that a lot of other people feel how you do.

Twitter is fun with followers,

If you're in tech, say hi

Let's connect….😃
— Wise (@trikcode) August 19, 2024

These people will become your fans and then super fans.

Whatever amount of posts daily or weekly you start doing you have to commit to it. It’s important to choose a schedule you can do no matter what.

You never want to miss because that loses momentum and trust. Take time to look at other commitments in your life and choose a schedule that is right for your life.

ok so now that my life’s like sorta kinda together i’m going to start a yt posting schedule every friday at NOON from now on. lessss getttt it
— Huddy (@xhuddy) October 19, 2020

To make posting easier it’s best to schedule your posts in advance. Most platforms like Twitter or YouTube allow you to schedule content.

Schedule as much in advance as possible. I usually do a month of content for Twitter in advance. This gives me time to work on my blog and build my business.

I’m not worried about losing momentum if I’m not feeling well or something else happens.

Remember this next point.

The more you post the more fans join your email list. The more fans on your email list the more people see your offers to buy things. The more people that see your offer the more money you make.

More money means more profit.