A few months ago I was discussing the current state of music with a music publisher/producer in Nashville and asked the age-old question: “How does an artist make money with their music these days?” Obviously, this is a loaded question, but I really wanted to know how artists are trying to make a living in the current file sharing, $0.99 per download world. The answer I got back was pretty standard and boring: “If you figure out the answer to that one, you let me know.”

Stoner

It really is tougher than ever to make a living or even part-time dollars creating music. I don’t know any musician that picked up an instrument solely to get rich; maybe to get chicks, but not to get rich. While most artists would be fine making a meager living being able to create and perform their art, even that is a tall order these days. The worst part of this is that a ton of new music has been stifled because Jack and Jane Musician are working low-paying 50 hours a week jobs to pay the bills, buy their instruments, maybe a PA system, and a trailer or truck to haul it in, while paying for cutting some demos of their original songs. To even try to “hit the road to make a living” is just asking to be homeless when bar gigs pay no more now than they did 25 years ago. Music labels have been decimated by the music file-sharing world, so there isn’t much venture money to help new bands along and promote them.

So, about a year ago I set out on a quest to find some non-standard ways for musicians to make money with their original music without living on the street. Admittedly, I haven’t had the time to look under all the rocks and I’m still on the prowl but I’ll share with you what I have learned so far with a meager budget of $500 for the project.

First, I’m going to cover some songwriting basics and let me say some of this has been “borrowed” from my friend, John Bohlinger’s (yes, I’m name dropping) monthly column in Premier Guitar magazine (all borrowed info is in quotes). John is a Nashville multi-instrumentalist best know for his work as band leader for all six season of NBC’s hit program Nashville Star, the 2011, 2010 and 2009 CMT Music Awards, as well as many specials for GAC, PBS, CMT, and USA:

He shares: “When you write a song, you immediately own the song — 100 percent of the songwriter’s share and 100 percent of the publisher’s share. The song exists as soon as you’ve written or recorded it, and can potentially be worth money. The profits from a song are split evenly between the writer(s) and publisher.”

If you do your own publishing, you get all of the royalties or licensing from a song. If you have someone publish for you, you would split the profits 50/50. If you and your buddy co-write a song and you use a publisher, the publisher gets 50% (100% of the publishing) of the profits and the writers get 25% each (100% writing credit split two ways). In a band with 5 members, the members would have to figure out how to split up the 100% writers credit between the 5 musicians depending on how much input each member had writing the song. The drummer usually gets nothing — just kidding, drummers!!!!

Confused yet? It gets better.

What’s a publisher? John writes: “Before recordings, songwriters earned money from sheet music printed by publishers. Today, publishers don’t print much music, but they do administrate copyrights, license songs, and collect royalties for songwriters. Most importantly, publishers pitch songs to recording artists to get cuts.”

Publishers sometimes pay for recording demos of songs and often pay writers a “draw” (a monetary advance against future royalties earned). If the writer’s songs earn money, the publisher recoups the advance through the writer’s share of royalties. If the songs never make money, the publisher takes a loss. Keep in mind that as a new writer, you won’t get offered an advance since you are unproven as a writer. Most new writers without connections in New York, Nashville, or Los Angeles will need to use a publisher to get their songs “out there.”

Do you need a publisher? Bohlinger replies: “A great publisher works wonders. Bob Dylan did not become a legend because of his first few poor-selling albums. His publisher got his songs recorded by the Byrds, the Mamas & the Papas, Peter Paul & Mary, Sonny & Cher, The Hollies, and nearly every other successful act in the ’60s. After his songs hit for others, people discovered Dylan’s own recordings. Publishing worked for Dylan, but it’s not for everybody.”

Actual Dollars: There are royalty rates, mechanical royalties, licensing, and synchronization dollars. Your music can be sold for a flat fee OR you can hope it gets picked up by a big artist, put in a movie, TV show, or video game and then collect your royalties. I won’t go into detail on the standard amounts as that would double the size of this blog post your reading and put you to sleep.

Where To Sell Your Music: This is a big one. There are probably a million places and ways to go to sell your music so I’m going to tell you about two things I tried with my $500 budget. A friend of mine who is an excellent songwriter and I teamed up to try to sell his music. The first thing I did was order a publication that I had read about called Music Row Publisher’s Special that you can buy for $30 at http://www.musicrow.com/subscribe/ (Look for the back issue title Publisher’s Special). This directory gave me the names, websites, e-mails, and addresses of the big publishers in Nashville. This was tedious work but I went to each website and searched for their submission policies. They are all different so this takes time. Some refused to accept unsolicited material but many would accept emailed files or a sample CD but they all are very strict in their guidelines. I probably sent about 60 emails or CDs and did not hear back from most of them. However, it only takes one and a couple months ago, I heard back from a publisher on one particular song that he liked, and we struck a publishing deal.

As a new songwriter, no dollars were advanced, but we do now have one of the artist’s songs in a publisher’s catalog for the next two years in Nashville being shopped to big artists. If the song gets picked up and recorded and actually sells, royalties will start showing up about a year later (the industry moves SLOW). You will inevitably receive offers from many of these places offering to “pitch your song” for a fee. Some are legit and some are not. Without knowing whom to trust (or having much of a budget), I stayed away from those offers. Again, no money has come in but the seeds were planted in hopes of some future payoff.

The other avenue we tried was using TAXI. Taxi.com claims to be the leading independent A&R company (song pitchers) in the world. Here’s the lowdown, you pay $200 for a one-year subscription to TAXI. They have listings of songs needed in different genres for publishers, movie producers, TV show producers, artist’s managers, video game designers, etc. You find a listing you want to submit to you and for $5 (per listing) you submit a song and your artist profile. Your song is then evaluated by a TAXI representative to see if they feel it fits the listing and is of high enough quality to submit to their client. If it gets through the TAXI rep, they send the song to their client and the client will contact you directly if they want to make a deal. After about 25 submissions, we had two songs make it through and were presented to TAXI clients. One was for a TV show and the other for an Australian publisher. It’s been a few months, and we haven’t heard anything yet. However, I don’t know how long it usually takes to hear back from the end client. The downside is there’s no way to prove any of these listings actually exists. You are putting quite a bit of trust in everything being printed by TAXI. The band Crossfade was signed through TAXI and became a big success, so they are held up as the gold standard for this model, but buyer beware.

So, that is how we have spent the $500. Three seeds have been planted, and we now wait to see if anything grows.

THE ODDYSEY CONTINUES…

Summary

Musicians are usually very wary of business people and for good reason. The music industry has a history littered with artists being manipulated and outright robbed by business people. Do your homework and read everything you can on music business. Information is your weapon in the music industry and you need all the weapons you can get your hands on. Many artists are frightened to outright sell a piece of music, but don’t make that mistake. I know there’s a possibility that your song could go to the top of the charts, and you will be banging your head on the wall listening to it the rest of your life. But believe me, those chances are very slim and if you’re that good, you’ll be able to write another hit. Many would argue that this is a stupid way to do business. Maybe, but if you want to make music, selling your tunes outright may be what allows you to do just that.

John offers this example: “Willie Nelson shares this philosophy. He received less than $300 in total for three of the biggest revenue-generating songs of all time — ‘Crazy,’ ‘Ain’t It Funny How Time Slips Away,’ and ‘Night Life.’ Though he lost millions on these songs, their success made people recognize his genius as an artist (and gullibility as a businessman), which led to the incredible career he’s enjoyed for over half a century. Had Willie not sold his songs for a pittance to some smarter businessmen, he may not have become Willie Nelson. Business people will exploit the talents of artists, but usually some reward makes it to the artists, enabling them to create. Sometimes the best business plan in the arts is to focus on making great art.”

Steve Stoner