An old proverb claims money to be the root of all evil. It’s a perfectly valid choice to keep your art separate from your money-making activities. However, there are only so many hours in a day – while the making, recording, and distributing of music all have costs in terms of time and material resources.
If you’re here, chances are you’re looking for ways to at least break even – and, hopefully, be able to live from your music altogether. So, here are some more or less established pathways for turning your art into other forms of value.
The more of these you try, the more familiar you will become with how the extant media ecosystem works, and thus the better you will be able to establish more equitable alternatives.
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Mutual aid. It’s not just about soliciting donations. Establishing a network of people with shared values can be essential for surviving capitalism. Bringing to the table the music to express those values can gain you the moral and material support to move forward.
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Sell tracks and albums. Listeners can buy music directly, either as a digital download or on a physical medium. In the digital realm you are relying on the listener not choosing to obtain your music for free. Physical releases can make for memorable artifacts in their own right.
- Online:
- Faircamp is a static site generator that allows you to put your releases behind custom payment links (“soft paycurtain”).
- Mirlo is a user-friendly space to help artists sell digital music, receive financial support, manage mailing lists, and share with their supporters. Details of our collaboration with Mirlo can be discussed in the Projects > Mirlo category
- Bandcamp is an established player in this space, with a relatively decent ethical stance.
- Offline:
- vinylrecorder (DE) is a boutique service for pressing vinyl records.
- elasticStage presses vinyl and CDs on demand.
- TODO add more links here…
- Online:
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Rent music. Subscription-based services are popular and convenient; however, as oligopolists, they keep the lion’s share of the profits, plus get to define the market and the expectations of the listener.
- Bandwagon is an ethical discovery engine and streaming platform for your music. Its business model is TBD 2025. The following forum category is dedicated to our collaboration with them: Projects > Bandwagon
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Play live. Use music as a lead generator to sell merch and concert tickets. Depending on location, access to larger venues may be monopolized by companies such as Eventim and Live Nation – but nothing stops you from contacting unorthodox venues directly.
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Play covers. While few public gatherings are as welcoming to original art as they ought to be, having live musicians play at a function is a traditional status symbol. Put together a set with your personal spin on it, get that money, and reinvest in your thing.
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Play DJ sets. Use the taste you’ve cultivated as a musician to share your favorite other people’s music with the crowd – then blow people’s minds by mixing your original work into the set.
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Make soundtracks. Join forces with a cinematic project, a videogame, an art installation, or another intermedia endeavour, to bring an immersive sonic experience to a less cornered market.
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Sell stock/background music. Similar to soundtracks, but with a more commodified relationship. Submit your music where people can buy it for their project wholesale.
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Sell beats. Your beats and backing tracks can enable lyricists to get the word out to a larger audience.
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Sell building blocks. Sample packs and synth presets help beginners and pros alike to get started more quickly.
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Teach music lessons. With high-quality video conferencing and prosumer gear, teaching music online becomes viable. Help bring a learner up to speed who may be unable to find a good teacher in their immediate area.
- Jitsi Meet is the premier FOSS P2P videoconferencing tool. It’s a simple webpage, no downloads necessary! Many instances of Jitsi Meet are run by volunteers around the Net:
- Here’s a list of Jitsi servers by
CHATONS which you can try. - And if you find yourself paralyzed by the choice, you can always have jitsi.random-redirect.de pick one for you (their full list is on GitHub)
- Note that some, but not all instances of Jitsi may require login with a social account. To skip that, just try different ones until you come across one that doesn’t. (Once you find one, don’t abuse it – instead, if you find it helpful, it’s a good idea to donate to the org that hosts it!)
- Here’s a list of Jitsi servers by
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- Jitsi Meet is the premier FOSS P2P videoconferencing tool. It’s a simple webpage, no downloads necessary! Many instances of Jitsi Meet are run by volunteers around the Net:
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Obtain grants. Trusting the market as final arbiter can end up turning the planet into a blob of grey goo. Thankfully, various public and private institutions alike realize this, and offer funding and residences for artists who aren’t too keen on playing the music industry game. Instead, you get to play the art world game – which may be a better fit depending on what you’re after.
- We’re collecting resources on the subject at Grants for music makers and friends.
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Patronage. Do like the classics did and convince a person of considerable means that your art is a benefit for the world and a laundromat for their conscience – probably the second most ethically fraught way of sustaining your music after literal trapping. More practically, platforms like Patreon enable you to collect regular donations from regular people who believe in your art.
- https://liberapay.com/
- https://www.patreon.com/
- https://opencollective.com/
- https://ko-fi.com/
- FOSSJobs wiki contains a list of patronage platforms
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Run a studio or rehearsal room. If the gear acquisition syndrome has gotten to you, operating a space that allows others to benefit from your expertise and tooling is a way to recoup costs as well as build community.
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Go meta. In a world where social media captures everyone’s attention, some form of self-promotion is essential for getting off the ground with any of the above options. But streaming, vlogging, or podcasting about your creative process can also be turned into a source of revenue.
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