It’s very hard to make a living these days as a musician.
Record sales are dropping budgets are decreasing and many other factors are
making it hard to make money in the industry. Unless you’re part of that top 3%
of musicians who get played on the radio daily and have millions of fans things
are getting harder and harder. Most of us musicians do this because we love it
but we still have to make a living somehow. Besides shows, digital sales,
physical sales, and merchandise if you’ve published music and it gets played in
a public venue or broadcasted you there’s money for you to get.
Performance rights organizations keep track of these things
and collect the money for you. They have to pay you the money if it’s there but
they don’t have to track you down to pay you. It’s up to you to sign up with
them so you can collect your royalties. It’s important to understand that these
won’t be huge checks if you’re a starting artist but if you’re music gets popular
these checks can be surprisingly big. Whether it’s a lot of money or not so
much every bit helps.
The sign up process is very simple. Pick one of these performing
rights organizations, go on their page, sign up and register your music with
them. Anytime your music is performed they will collect the money and once this
becomes a significant amount they’ll send you a quarterly check with the money
that your music made. It’s very simple so don’t forget to do this. We all want
to maximize the money we earn from music so sign up and keep creating great
content. Remember the better your content is the higher the chances of it
becoming a major income stream for you.
