Industry news & advice blog

As a musician or songwriter, an important topic to consider is how to earn a living within this industry? It may feel like a daunting dream to earn a living wage doing the thing you love to do, but with the right approach, it’s absolutely possible. While the music industry is competitive, it’s also full of opportunities for those willing to explore new possibilities and adapt their approach.

To dive into this topic, we sat down with Aly Gillani - Artist & Label Relations Lead at Bandcamp, to discover his tips. Being the world’s largest online music marketplace and community, Bandcamp helps independent artists thrive and can support independent musicians earn a sustainable living wage. So, whether you're just starting out or looking to turn a side hustle into a full-time career, here are some practical tips from Aly to help you earn a sustainable income from your music.


Build an audience you can communicate directly with
As you begin to build a fanbase, it’s important to capture this community and build it as an audience that you can communicate directly with. Whether you have new music to share, gigs to promote or just want to check-in with your fans, making sure that you can easily talk directly to your audience is vital.

Social media is useful, but email is still the best way to ensure your messages land. Bandcamp allows you to collect email addresses for your own marketing purposes, so make sure that you use that data. Even when you’re gigging, always think to ask the promoter for any email addresses that can be shared. This will all help in your goal of building an audience that you can actively engage with.


Finding ways for fans to pay you
The music industry talks about exposure a lot, but exposure won’t pay your rent! You also have to consider how you can create new ways for your fans to buy from you. There are plenty of ways to give people options that will boost your earning. This can range from creating merchandise, releasing both physical and digital formats of your music, developing bonus material, selling memorabilia and much more. You can be creative in the options you generate for your fans.

Always remember that fans want to support independent artists, so offering more ways to buy from you, means that your revenue streams will increase. Capture this loyalty and build upon it.


Understand what you need as an artist
The modern music industry provides endless ways to get your music to your audience - it can often feel very overwhelming. I recommend doing an exercise that I call ‘The Artist Audit’. Get some index cards and on each one write out every facet of the work you do as an artist. This can be everything from social media to booking gigs to rehearsals to accounting to songwriting, etc., etc. Once you’ve written all this down, you can group the cards into categories such as admin, creative, logistics, etc.

For each group assess what you’re good at, what you’re bad at, what you enjoy doing and what you hate doing. This can then help you make decisions on who you need to work with to achieve your goals. Every artist is different and has different needs - being able to pinpoint where you excel and where you need assistance can be really instructive and help you make informed decisions about your career.


Make sure you get the basics right for your presence in the world
Opportunities can present themselves at any moment, so ensuring that your profiling toolkit is up to scratch and ready to go at any time is crucial. Looking at updating your biography, photos, social assets, links to online profiles, facts & figures, your one sheet, etc. can be a real life-saver if you need to respond to an offer or opportunity quickly.

This is an easy area to overlook and may seem like a task that is low in the priorities, but just having your online and offline hygiene across your assets up to speed could prove vital. An artist I work with on my label got a last minute offer for a high-profile gig after another artist pulled out. Being able to send a link with all the assets over helped make sure that she was picked over other options that the promoter was considering.


How to send your music for it to be featured
Building an audience and getting more listeners to your music will rely on getting industry tastemakers and gatekeepers to feature your music. These are busy people, so making their job as easy as possible is important.

Do the basics such as researching who exactly you are sending your music to and ensuring that it is relevant to them. There’s no point sending hip hop to a writer or DJ who specialises in metal. Share a link with your three best songs (maximum). Offer streaming and download options (if there is only a download option they’re less likely to check it out). Focus on making that journey as seamless and easy as possible.

Always link to your one sheet which will have all your up-to-date details, and when sending include a short biog and succinct pitch upfront, so that it’s clear what you’re asking for, be that airplay, live reviews or a record deal, etc. Be polite, and don’t hassle them for a reply if you don’t get instant engagement - a considered follow-up is fine, but you don’t want to overwhelm. Remember, not everyone is going to love what you do - that’s as true for you as it is the biggest acts in the world, so don’t get too downhearted if you don’t get a response.