Hi brothers and sisters,
I asked on kvr also, but only childish reactions there 
But seriously…
Apart from performing, are there other ways to make a decent living from music?
It still seems a dream to me too break from from the capital enslavement and start making my own income.
There are probably sites or labels that need musicians and producers to sell music for commercials, for bars, for shopping malls, for karaoke, i mean come on, the world is full of music, it’s the one thing most needed next to breathing and eating…
I earn some small money, some 10-20 euro per month with my synth1 soundsets 
So that’s a start But that won’t buy me bread 
So where do you guys get a musical income from?
Well, I may tackle this when I don’t have a massive headache. Because when we start talking about this we’re all going to get one.
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Most big artists now only make money from live performance instead of record sales. You can find most anything off YouTube. It has kinda reverted back to the 60’s when very few artists made profit from record sales (only record companies made money off record sales for the most part). Publishing is where the real money is, and most record companies stole that from the artists. Soooo…good luck.
Edit- I made great money performing music in the 1970’s. I played with a few big artists, and I was a studio musician for a time. DJ’s and Karaoke destroyed a lot of live music after that. It was never the same after. It is nearly impossible to make a living from it now. I still play a lot of live music, but I make substantially less money per gig now than I used to. I do it for the love, and the curse of music. It became a sideline in the 80’s and hasn’t changed. I am still learning after all these years, and, even tho I have a Doctorate in music, I can never learn enough to satisfy my desires. I stopped chasing the money and just enjoy the performance. Of course, my pensions from Government work, and Teaching make that possible now.
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Thanks for this post Corky, it well describes my feelings about the matter at least from where I live and work. It’s all done over the social media now, the audition video, the booking page for the venues, etc … and the pay is abysmal except when playing private parties for the elite, landing a prime slot at a well attended festival or lucking out and playing for a bunch of rich tourists at a lounge or restaurant who tip well. It probably is better in the UK or parts of mainland Europe or Australia but I do not know, others would have to elaborate. I betray my age when I say I went through a similar experience in my history playing music. It’s for the love of entertaining other souls that might care to connect with what I do musically and the desire to improve my part as I go along. It’s all very close to the same except the pension … 
!
All the Best,
Dave
p.s. I’ve been wanting to use that smiley for a while … thanks
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Disclaimer: I do it for the love of what I’m doing and the learning and have never earned hardly a dime from my performances.
That said, I’ve met a couple folks who are really good at keeping pans hot in many fires at once - doing jingles, soundtracks, lessons, karaoke backgrounds, stock music libraries, sample and patch libraries, local and international performances, how-to books, recording gigs as engineer or producer, studio musician work … GADZOOKS, how they keep it all together and organized is just amazing! (But then again, they have a support network, and often a spouse handles much of the business stuff, and their “Roledex” is decked out with people they keep in touch with! I’m told one must dedicate four hours a DAY to following up on contacts and self marketing, the other four spent on nothing but music.)(Or art - I have friends similarly organized who make a living as painters and sculptors.)
Contracts are one secret - never, if you can avoid it, give complete control of a creation away. (Not traditionally possible in group-works like film, but possible in many other areas.) Sculptors were the first to pick up on keeping the rights to photograph their work as part of the sales contract in the late eighties, if I recall correctly. Many others in different creative fields have followed that inspiration since.
It is not my style at all - but I do know it is possible from seeing it done right before my own eyes!
Terry
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These days you can make a handy supplemental income from putting music up for sale in digital form, provided you can produce it more or less on your own for little overhead and are good enough at social media to get it out there. If you can make decent music in your basement for no real cash outlay (beyond buying your gear in the first place) and put it out without having to manufacture anything, then every $1 click is gravy, albeit in small amounts. My solo album has made a small but steady profit on Bandcamp over the last 5 or 6 years. Why not go check it out at trurl.bandcamp.com ??? 
(You have to be fairly shameless about pimping out your stuff whenever you can get away with it…)
I also know people that do a lot of instructional video and have subscribers and do pretty well, but they spend an INSANE amount of time producing content. Plus, Youtube is now making harder than ever to make any money from views. Gigging constantly can make you decent income, but it’s not a good way to go for a family man. I make my primary living as a studio producer and engineer, which in our market does pretty well for me.
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Freddy the Pimp
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Wow Synth player candy!
Please learn me some solo techniques! (that’s my other question and you can make the money lol)
So_Godly, my friend and I were just talking about that yesterday.We concluded that 1) for live performances, a bar doesn’t care about your sound, it cares about how many of your beer-drinking friends are going to come watch you play, 2) a record is only going to sell if you buy a million and say it has already sold a million, and 3) radio stations are only going to play it if you have an “in” in that industry (really many records you hear on the radio are pure crap, but after 100 plays, you start singing along), Good luck with your quest. Don’t quit the day job.
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I am lucky enough to have lived through the tail end of an abberant period in human history where a technology was created to allow writers and performers to market their own performances. Remember, prior to records to “sell music” meant to sell sheet music. Anyone then performed it, in thier own way. Publishing was where the money was. Then along come the little strips of magentized tape and plastic discs and all of a sudden you could sell your own specific performance, and radio was the perfect promotional medium. For what, maybe 60, 70 years??- a new industry sprang up and made billions. And people thought it would live forever but, why would it? Now recorded music has become a commodity. And commodities make money, but only if you sell huge amounts of beans at wholesale, not if you’re one of the beans.
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BlockquoteMy solo album has made a small but steady profit on Bandcamp over the last 5 or 6 years. Why not go check it out at trurl.bandcamp.com2 ???
Sweet! Just bought and downloaded your album.
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I’ve bean there…
Terry
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Hmmm, nice stuff - some of the chord-work reminds me of Chick Corea’s Electric band; one of my all-time favorites…
And great chops - compliments!
Cheers,
Torsten
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Thanks! If it keys it’s probably mostly real. The Holdsworth guitar, bass and drums were largly a lie lol That was my first real shot at emulating a whole band. I play basic rock drums and guitar but not like that. I was proud of the long fade-out “guitar” solo at the end. That was actually a live take keyboard solo.
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