How to Sell My Music

Whether it’s your full-time job or a lucrative side gig, making music usually takes time and effort. Therefore, if love making music, you’ll want to know how you can make money as an artist.

Making money from music is not easy. You’ll have to diversify your skill set and implement various strategies to achieve financial success. Selling music online is one of the creative ways of making money from doing something you love.

By selling music, people will not only hear your songs but also support you by purchasing them. Here is how you can sell your music and make money from it.

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Through Your Website

Creating a website is one of the best ways to sell your music if you would like to distribute it on your own. A website is one of the first places your fans will visit to look for and buy your music. While having your own website requires some investment and effort, it’s a brilliant business tool that comes with a wide range of benefits.

By having your own website, you’ll control your fans' experience and possibly make more money as there are no other people or platforms to take your money. Your fans will buy directly from you.

This makes it easy for a musician to scale up as much as they want, and keep their fans buying more with customized offers, and discounts. You can also collect important customer information that will help you produce better music, drive sales, and connect with them. This sets you up well for a strategized and successful music career.

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Through Digital Distribution

Using a digital distribution platform makes it easy to get your music to as many places as possible. A music distributor releases your music to various download and streaming platforms and collects royalties from them. They’ll do all the hard work for you by ensuring your music is on as many platforms as possible including iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify. Therefore, you’ll not only reach more listeners but also diversify your revenue streams.

Some of the popular music distribution platforms you can use to effortlessly sell your music include:

When choosing a music distribution company, look at the services they offer, their pricing, and their royalty payments to ensure you find one that aligns with your expectations. You should keep in mind that a digital distribution platform can charge you initial sign-up fees, commissions on your sales, or other charges when uploading your music, or adding a new streaming platform.

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Online Music Stores

While setting up your website is a huge step toward selling your music, you should also consider digital music stores. They help you reach a much wider audience and allow you to sell music directly to your fans.

By placing your music in online music stores, your fans can pay for it and download it straight to their devices. In most cases, fans buy music from stores they are already familiar with and use regularly. The most popular digital music store to sell your music are Bandcamp and Soundcloud.

Bandcamp

Bandcamp is a free online record store and music community that allows you to sell your music to your fans in various formats, including MP3 and WAV. While it takes a 15% fee from your sales, Bandcamp does the heavy lifting work for you. This platform collects data and email addresses of your fans which you can utilize to market your new songs and send updates about upcoming shows, tours, and releases.

Bandcamp will also actively recommend your music to users through its app, weekly podcasts, and blog posts. Given its popularity and emphasis on music discovery, you’ll not only reach many music fans but also have them purchasing your music.

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Music Streaming Platforms

Streaming platforms are a popular way in which music fans consume music. Therefore, getting your music on these platforms is one of the best ways of selling your music. While the amount of money you’ll make from streaming services is small, these platforms are important in growing your fan base.

Music streaming platforms will get your music to new listeners, connect you with them and create a relationship that can be beneficial to your music career. You’ll create loyal fans who will want to keep listening to your music. This will make it easy for you to sell your CDs, downloads, and merchandise in the future.

Spotify is the most popular streaming platform with over 356 million active monthly users. Getting your music on a platform with such an audience can significantly transform your music career. Other popular music streaming platforms include:

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How to Sell Music to Businesses

Musicians can also sell their music to businesses that can use it in their commercials, presentations, or as background music in their physical stores. If that’s the case, then you should consider offering royalty-free music and sound effects.

Selling commercial music is quite challenging and requires time and devotion. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll make enough money to pursue it full-time. While you may consider selling through your website, it’s best to sell through existing popular marketplaces including:

While you’ll lose a percentage of your sales, these platforms give you access to all your potential customers and incredible easiness when it comes to selling your music.

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Tips on How Successfully Sell Music

Successfully selling your music is a complicated process that requires dedication and consistency. It may take many months and even years before you can make enough money from your music. Here are a few tips that can increase your odds of success in selling your music.

Create a strategy to sell your music

You should have a strategy in mind before you start selling your music. Create a music strategy that can help you select the best way to sell your music from the options discussed above, increase your fan base, and have a successful music career. You can only make sales when you sell your music on platforms where fans can easily access it.

Another important factor that can have an impact on your sales is when to release your music. Regularly and timely releasing your music will help you establish your brand and gain a following. You should also include ways you can actively promote the music and add incentives to get more people to buy it.

This can include offering a discounted price for a limited time or bundling together your previous albums with your new releases.

Utilize social media

Social media platforms will play a crucial role in helping you sell your music. By utilizing these platforms, you’ll not only get your music to a larger audience but also build and connect with your fan base. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow you to promote and share your music, updates, and exclusive content.

You can also include links to your website, streaming platforms, or online stores where fans can easily access your music and merchandise. Therefore, you can use social media to increase your music sales, build your community, and keeps your fans interested in your work.

Set up pre-orders

Building anticipation for your new music early on is one of the most effective ways of increasing your sales. By introducing limited pre-sales, you’ll build excitement for the release of your album and increase demand. Setting up pre-orders adds exclusivity as it allows your fans to purchase and access your music before the official release date. Releasing your music to fans who have pre-ordered it first will make everyone else want to buy your new release and help with sales. This helps you create loyal followers which in turn increases your sales before and after the release.

Events and online publications

Events, live gigs, and publications are crucial to the success of any artist. By setting up live events, a musician can promote their music, showcase their talent and connect with their fans. This is also the case with featuring in various music publications. Getting positive reviews, recognition, and background information on publications will open up more opportunities in your music career.

When a renowned music journalist gives you a good review, you’ll have more fans interested in your work, which rapidly increases your sales. The goal is to stand out from the crowd and have the right people talking about your music which in turn can have a huge impact on your success.

Build a relationship with your fans

Musicians cannot achieve success without having dedicated fans who love their music. Loyal fans are more likely to buy your music or merchandise and follow you across your career. Therefore, it’s crucial to engage your fans right from the start. You can connect you’re your fans through social media platforms or promotions.

You can also set up fan subscriptions that allow your fans to access exclusive content and other benefits not available anywhere else. They will enjoy these benefits in exchange for a monthly membership fee.

Stay in touch

As a musician, you should build momentum toward your releases and maintain the excitement through regularly updated and highly engaging content. A musician should not just release music and disappear, but rather find ways to keep their music top of mind for their fans even after the excitement has died down.

You can stay in touch with your fans through newsletters, social media, and competitions. Keep them up to date with everything from your new releases to your upcoming tours. This will help you remain relevant and keep your fans wanting more from you.

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Conclusion

There is a wealth of revenue opportunities when it comes to selling your music online. You’ll have many music-selling and streaming platforms to choose from and with the right marketing techniques, you can transform your music from a hobby to a career. We hope that this article provided you with everything you need to start selling your music. You should keep in mind that it’s quite rare for musicians to collect revenue from a single source. However, you’ll have to choose diverse revenue streams that are easily manageable so that you can focus on making music as the money flows in.