Hey guys, so we’re onto the final part of our guide on forming a professional band. A professional band is a band that can be hired to play at events. You get paid for playing out, whether it’s at weddings, one off events, or anywhere else they need some musical entertainment.

If you haven’t already seen them, please start by reading the following parts before you go any further with this guide:

How To Form A Band Part 1.

How To Form A Band Part 2.

Once you’ve gone through those guides first, let’s carry on setting up and positioning our money making band.

The Thorny Bits – Money, Equipment And Who Does What

Running a band isn’t always going to be smooth sailing. In the previous parts, we’ve walked you through how to get the right band members, and how to start getting yourself out there. But there are going to be some other issues you’re going to have to deal with. Some of these can be touchy areas, so it’s best you think about them now so you’re prepared to deal with them if they ever come up.

Bands And Money

Lots of bands will work for beer (which cheapens the market for everyone else, but that’s another story). As a professional band however, you want to make it all about the money.

If you’re serious about making money, then ground rules should be established as soon as possible. Find a method that works for everyone. It took ages for things to settle in Celtic Clan, but we learned a lot along the way. Here are some suggested scenarios to make things easier:

Scenario 1 – You (The Band Leader) Takes A Cut

Presuming you do all the work, you must take something for this. I’d suggest 15%. The rest is then shared equally, with everyone equally sharing any expenses. Any objections – show them this article!

As the bandleader, you generally:

• Find the work. Negotiate the fee. Mail the band members any set dates. Work on the basis that unless they have booked out a date, it is available. This saves you having to ring around everyone to check they’re free.
• Deal with the paperwork. Always have contracts with weddings and private functions. Nothing fancy – just stipulate the client’s name and address, your details, the venue, and the timings.
  Ask for any special requests from the client’s party, and make sure there’s a clause at the end that says the deposit is non-returnable in the event of a cancellation. Take their deposit first, then send them two copies of the contract, both signed by you. They keep one, and sign and return theirs within 7 days. Arrange for either cash or check on the night, or for it all to be paid up-front 14 days before the event.
• Organize the final set list for gigs, which should be printed up and distributed to the band.
• Liaise with clients before the gigs to organize first dance requests, timings for arrival and set up, the length of your performance at the venue etc…
• Generate stories and publicity for the band. Look at what’s happening locally; what can you get involved in?
• Digital marketing. This is a HUGE job, and if you have the skills, could take up several days a week. This is any activity that promotes you online. Anything from putting free ads on Gumtree, to filling in your dates on websites like wherecanwego.com and registering your band on Google maps. There are countless free business websites available, and some of them can really help get your band out there. Things like blogging, tweeting, setting up a Facebook fan page or even guest-posting on other people’s sites can all help as well.
• Looking for new material, printing out song words, organizing tour schedules and accommodation, audition and rehearsing with deps (deputies), and lots more. It’s a major job!

If you do all of these duties or a good amount of them, then you deserve to take that extra 15%. If you do the majority of the work, you should get paid accordingly as band leader.

Scenario 2 – You Pay The Band A Set Wage

This is a tough one. It works on the basis that everyone gets a set wage, regardless of the gig. Of course, things can go either way. If you play at a run down pub for hardly anything, but you have to guarantee them their £100 or £150, not great! Alternatively, if you get hired to gig at a wedding for top money, it’s bonanza time for you! Everyone gets £100 and you walk home with several hundred more.

I worked the band like this for the first year, but I also picked up all the expenses too. Ultimately they voiced that it didn’t feel very inclusive and was too secretive, so we now do the more open accounting and it seems to flow better.

Scenario 3 – All Money Goes Into A Pot To Be Divided Up

Some bands do work this way, but they tend not to be high earners. The idea is all money gets held back and just petrol covered. It goes into an account which, depending on how often you work, is then split over the band members every now and again (or when someone leaves).

Ultimately, it’s up to you all to decide what will work best.

Sharing Your Band’s Expenses

Ok, so this is very important. You need to keep all receipts, and keep everyone informed of what expenses are coming up. These expenses could be anything from:

• Petrol.
• The printing of flyers and banners.
• Website domain names and hosting fees.
• Advertising costs in papers, on websites and for trade shows.
• Backing tracks (if you use them).
• Equipment repairs.

Expenses that individuals are responsible for are repairs to their own gear, their stage clothes, their strings etc.

Who In The Band Should Buy Equipment

Always a tough one. It’s probably best not to pitch in and buy together, as it’s a minefield if somebody leaves. If you can provide the basic PA this is ideal, and everyone else provides their own microphone, stand, leads, and amps where needed.

If you can’t afford a PA, then consider hiring one for your first few gigs, just to see how it all goes.

Or if you do buy together, make sure everyone is responsible for a ‘bit’ of the rig. If someone leaves, they take that with them and nothing else.

How To Run A Band Conclusion

So, hopefully all this will have been some help to you forming a band. If you’ve read all the articles (See How To Run A Band Guide 1 and Guide 2), then you should have found your look, your sound, your brand and the right people. The internal running of the band should be established, and you and/or the others will be looking hard (in the right places) for good quality work.

It’s not easy. In fact, it’s a hard slog. And sometimes you’ll wonder why you bothered. But ultimately, bear in mind there are far worse things you could be doing to earn money. Enjoy the journey and ALL THE VERY BEST!!!!

This is a guest post by Ruth Graham, band leader of the Irish wedding/function band Celtic Clan. Take a look at their website for more useful information or to book the Midlands’ best Celtic and Irish function band.

Pre note: In this article we look at three main strategies to make money from your music career: How to make money from giving out free downloads (Short term), how to make money from gigging (Medium term) and how to make money from royalty collections (Long term). This is a potentially life changing post. It should change the way you think about your music career, and give you the steps to turn it from a hobby into something that actually makes you money. Please make sure you read it from start to finish then put into action what you’ve learned. You may want to bookmark it for easy reference in the future, and share it with fellow independent musicians. But anyhow, let’s get started…

I’ve seen it time and time again. Many people get into the music scene for the love of the music, but sooner or later realise they can actually make money from their hobby. So they decide to start treating their music as a career, putting more hours in and recording more songs. They work and work on making it successful, but no matter what they do they seem to struggle to make any real money for their efforts.

The reason why I feel so many musicians fail at making money is not because they don’t have enough talent, it’s just because they don’t put their time and effort into doing the right things. A lot of people focus purely on social media to promote their music. While it can get you small results in the short term, a lot of the time with social media it’s hard to target the right people. You’re also targeting these people one by one, which isn’t the best use of you time or energy.

Social media also doesn’t generally generate money (Well at least not in this situation). If you’re ‘lucky’ you’ll get a few free downloads of your song and a message saying ‘It’s good’. This is OK if all you want from your music career is a small ego boost, otherwise you need to take a different approach and fast.

The Solution

I’ve broken down what I think are three of the best ways to make money from your music. I’ve divided them into three categories: Strategies you should be focusing on short, medium and long term. As you get the hang of one and start making money from it, you should start thinking about the next stage and working on that too. By the end you should be doing all three of these things, and hopefully making a good extra income from your music (If not turning it into a full time career). So ready to get started? Then let’s go!

Important Note:
All of these strategies can make you money even if you’re not a big name musician. Independent musicians you may never have heard of have been using these strategies for years to make money from music, so as long as you have talent you can do it too. It’s about working smarter not harder, and putting your effort into 20% of the things that make you 80% of the money. Using the following strategies you can start earning more money from your music in a matter of months (If not sooner), so get started right away!

1. Short Term Music Strategies – Money From ‘Free’ Downloads

People are becoming more and more reluctant to pay for songs, and instead often tend to download them instead. One of the main ways I’ve seen musicians counteract the effect of downloading (Though I don’t agree with it) is by giving fans all their music for free. The idea is that people give out their music to build up their name, then their loyal fans buy the paid copy when it’s released. For me, this isn’t a strategy I’m particularly fond of. The thing is, where does giving out all this free music stop? After they’ve got so many of your songs for free, why are they going to start paying for any songs you do release that you charge for? While some people may have success with this strategy, it’s not something the average musician will have any luck with.

Give Out Free Downloads, Make Money From Them:

What I prefer to do instead is make money by giving out downloads that fans don’t have to pay for. I put songs up on my website in different forms, and each time someone downloads one of these different songs I get paid for it. It doesn’t cost the fans anything to download this music, but every time they do I still get money going into my account.

I then drive traffic to my site using automated social media tools as well as building myself up in the search engines for various terms. This means I get short term but easy traffic from social media sites, and then eventually long-term traffic from search engines such as Google. The more traffic I get, the more people download my songs free of charge, the more money I make from these downloads.

The good thing about this strategy is it sets up a good foundation for the rest of your music career. We’re raising awareness for our music by giving out ‘free’ downloads, but we’re getting paid for doing so at the same time. We’re also building up one of our best assets, our website. This website will be used as a communication tool between us and the fan for the rest of our career, so getting people in the habit to use it regularly means we’re killing two birds with one stone.

If you want to know how to fully implement this part of the strategy and how to make money from giving out your music to fans for free, check out our book “How To Make Money From Free Music” for the full process. In here we detail step by step how to make money from free downloads, and how you can turn each fan into regular downloaders earning you money each time.

So when do you stop working on this strategy? Well while you should keep this strategy going for much of your music career, once you get traffic from Google you’ll be automatically getting new visitors to your site every day. This means you’ll start making money on autopilot, meaning you’ll have more time to focus your efforts on the below medium term music strategy.

2. Medium Term Music Strategies – Money From Gigging

OK, so we’ve got our short term strategy up and running. We should be making money from people downloading out music free of charge, and our website should be receiving new fans daily on auto pilot (Full details of how to do this can be found in “How To Make Money From Free Music”). The next stage is to focus on making money from gigging.

Now some of you may have done gigs before. Gigging isn’t anything new for an independent musician to do, but often it’s not done to it’s full potential. Many musicians get booked for a gig, turn up and perform their music then go home. So, where does the money come in?

In reality, these are so many opportunities to make money from gigs that aren’t exploited by the average musician. Even if you don’t get paid for doing a show, you can still walk out of there with more money then you started with. Here are the main ways you can make money from performing shows:

Direct Payment:

This is the obvious one, but one that you won’t have the luxury of getting until you’re a more established act. The idea here is to get paid money by the event organiser for performing at their event. You get paid a set amount which you both agree to, then you turn up and play your gig. The reason you won’t get access to this gig until later on is because promoters only tend to book acts that can draw in the crowds. If your name isn’t big enough to get the event organiser new paying customers, then most likely you won’t get paid for your booking. As you do more gigs and build your rep however, you will get directly paid gigs.

Selling Of CDs And Then Merchandise:

Since most of the early shows you’ll be performing won’t be paid ones, you’ll have to make money in other ways. There are two main ways to make money from gigs which you don’t get paid directly for, the first being selling your CDs after your performance. This is a easy thing to do, you simply perform your songs then inform people you’ve got a CD to buy if they like what they heard. Let them know you’re coming round and for them to ask you if they want a copy. Once your shows done, take some copies of your CD round and ask everyone if they’ll be interested in buying a copy.

This strategy is simple but works very well. It can make you some nice money from each show you do, so if you don’t already do this then you’re missing out on a lot of extra money. Many musicians don’t do this, probably because they’re too shy to ask people to buy their CD. If this is you, you need to overcome that shyness and quickly. I know a lot of musicians aren’t sales people, but if you’re making your music independently you need to at least learn some aspects of selling. You’re only asking people if they want to buy your CD, they then have the option of saying yes or no. You’re not inconveniencing anyone’s life, and will be introducing some new people to the joy of your music. On top of that you’ll be making money from your night out.

I’ve found showcase and talent show type events the best for making money from CD sales. The people that go to these type of events are often interested in less main stream music, and are up for supporting independent musicians. As they’ve often been to a few of these sort of events they know what to expect, and usually bring some extra money in case they come across a act they like and want to buy some of their material. So make sure you always bring a tangible product with you and probe the crowd to find these people. The relaxed environment often makes for an easy few sales.

As you’re making more money from your music career you can also create merchandise and sell that as well. I wouldn’t recommend doing that until you’re headlining your own gigs or are playing at concerts however, as they’re the type of crowds that are willing to take that extra bit of money out of their pockets.

Collecting Royalties:

The other way you can make money from performing live shows is by collecting royalties from each performance of your songs. Whenever you perform one of your songs at an officially licensed venue, they should pay a set amount to the people that collect royalties in your country. You can then get paid from these royalty collectors once you earn enough money. Want to know more about making money from royalties? Well that’s part of our long term strategy, so read on…

3. Long Term Music Strategies – Money From Royalties

Royalties is one of the real ways to make money from your music. For those that don’t know, royalties is money you earn for each time your song is played in a public place. It doesn’t matter if your song is played on radio or if you perform it live at a licensed venue, you should legally get paid royalties for your efforts.

The collecting of royalties is something many musicians don’t actually bother with, mainly because they don’t know how to do it. At initial glance it seems complex and something they can’t be bothered with, but it’s not really that hard to get your head around and is essential if you want to make any real sort of money from your music.

The first thing I want to say is you don’t have to collect royalties all by yourself. There are companies that keep track of where your songs are played and will send you royalty checks every three or so months. The companies that do this for you vary from country to country, but in the US the main one is the Harry Fox Agency (HFA). In the UK PRS which is now joined with the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS). Elsewhere in the world there are other companies that will monitor and collect your royalties for you, so have a look for who deals with it if you’re from another country.

These companies will be responsible for digitally monitoring where you music is played and collecting the money from each of those plays for you. You know that that means right? Get more radio, event, film and TV plays and you earn more money! You don’t however get paid from getting people to listen to your SoundCloud player, so stop wasting your time on social media and get your music played where it really counts!

A Good Way To Make Money From Music Royalties

The obvious strategy for making money from royalties is to get a lot of radio play. Instead of making a mass of songs and giving them out for free online, why not focus on one big song at a time and aim to get it a lot of radio play? That means building up relationships with DJs, and making the type of songs they’ll want to play again and again! You’ll also get paid when your song is played in venues such as bars, clubs and pubs, so making sure you song is appropriate for as many of these places as possible is a good idea.

Even if you haven’t got a typically commercial style of music, you can always get specialist DJs to play your songs for you. While it may not get as many plays (Remember, the more plays it gets the more money you’ll make) you can still make some decent money if your song gets played week in week out.

The aim however should be to make a classic song which will still be played for a long time to come. If you make a song about Christmas for example and it gets played a lot every year, there’s a good chance that one song could make you a full time living. Any song that will be played for years to come is a real asset as is a consistent income source even when you’re not doing anything. So you may want to make a song about a yearly event or occasion?

You can also make money from performing at venues as I mentioned in the mid term strategy about gigging. This is why I said to read the whole post through before starting out, because aspects of your long term money making efforts are going to cross over in to the medium term, and potentially some of the medium term into the short term. What is important however is you do all of them, focusing on the things that will start making you money in the short terms and work your way up. If you try and do them all full on in the beginning you’ll lack focus and not get as many results as you could have otherwise.

Conclusion

Making money from your music can be a lot easier then many people think. It’s all about doing the right things for your music career to take off, if you focus in the wrong areas it’ll be a much slow and less profitable journey for you. Remember, you should do the 20% of the things that need to be done that’ll make you 80% of your money. Things like messaging people on SoundCloud and Facebook asking them to listen to and download your music for free takes up more then 80% of a lot of people’s time, and makes them around 0% of their income. So, how much is this really helping you?

I hope this article has gone a way to changing your approach to your music career. It’s all about being smart, learning the music business and adapting to new trends. And that doesn’t mean giving all your music out for free, it means getting paid whether people consume your music via ‘free’ downloads, or by performing and having your songs played on radio and at events.

So go back to stage one, implement this strategy into your music career, and once you start profiting from it move on to the next stage. Good luck.

Ok, so as you probably know by now, we recently launched our first ebook “How To Make Money From Free Music”. I genuinely feel this is some of the most valuable information we’ve ever produced, and could change the way people approach the distribution and monetization of their music forever (But that’s not for me to decide, let me know your thoughts when you get the book. ).

While there’s no prizes for guessing what the book is about (The clue is in the title), there is a prize for three lucky readers of Independent Music Advice! Three of you will get a copy of “How To Make Money From Free Music” sent directly to their inbox. The retail price for this book is currently $29.99 (Price guaranteed for the first week only, after that it may go up) but you can get your hands on it by taking a few simple steps:

1. Go over to the Facebook page for Independent Music Advice and click ‘Like’,
2. Head over to out Free Gift page and sign up to our mailing list.
   Note: Please make sure you use the same email address that your Facebook account is with so we can confirm that you’ve signed up to both. When you sign up to our list you’ll receive a free copy of the “Independent Musician Success” ebook as well as exclusive weekly music advice, so it’s worth it for that alone
3. Leave a message on our Facebook wall telling us a bit about your music career (Maybe your biggest achievement, maybe what you’re working towards etc) as well as stating you want a free copy of the ebook.

And that’s it. That’ll take around 2 minuets to do, but could gain you free access to some of the most valuable music advice we’ve produced!

If you’re still not sure what this book is about, you can find out more about How To Make Money From Free Music here. Best of luck!

Please Note:
Entries close Saturday the thirteenth of November 2010 at 11.59pm.
Winners will be picked at random and notified on the Sunday via Facebook or Email.
If you’ve already purchased a copy of the book and you win we’ll refund your original purchase.
The editors decision is final.

If you’ve been in the music industry for any amount of time, you’ll know that music downloading is a big issue. For years people have tried to prevent MP3 downloads from happening, mostly without success. Is there no answer to this issue? Well actually, now there is! In this article we’ll show you a way to use people’s downloading habits to actually benefit and make you money, and I don’t mean by giving out free music and hoping some kind soul will buy your paid version. No, I’m talking about how you can get money going straight into your account each time someone downloads one of your songs for free!! Sound good? Then read on…

How To Prevent MP3 Downloads

OK, so I know some of you will have found this article by looking for a way to prevent MP3 downloads from happening. But what if I told you there was a better way to go about it, a way for you to actually make money from people downloading your music for free? Well there is, and I’ll be telling you how I and an increasing amount of independent musicians now go about doing that.

In all honesty, it seems that music downloads are here to stay. You can try and avoid the download of your music as much as you want, but if some one really wants to download it without paying for it they can. The end result is you lose out on money, as well as a lot of time trying to prevent that MP3 download. A better way would be to feed people’s downloading habits, and make money each time someone downloads your music for free. So instead of asking how to prevent mp3 downloading, you should instead be asking:

How To Make Money From Free Music

So, how do you make money from people’s need for free downloads? Well, I’ve written a full book detailing step by step exactly how to do this (This book is called ‘How To Make Money From Free Music‘ if you’re interested in seeing that), but I’ll give you a quick over run of the system here and now

First of all, you need to have a place where you can put your download links. These download links are the ones you’ll be giving out to your fans, so making sure people can get them all from one site is very important. Ideally you want your own self hosted website so people have a easy to remember place to get your new music from, but free websites work too. If you haven’t already got a website, you can make a top quality one by following our free guide How To Build Your Own Website (Link opens in a new window). While it’ll cost a little bit of money to make a website using this method (Around $50-$100 depending on the options you choose) if you was to get someone else to make the same type of site for you it could easily cost you over $600. If you haven’t got the budget to spend on a website though, you can always make a free website using WordPress.com.

Next, you have to make special links that allow you to track and be paid every time your music is downloaded from them. It is very important that you direct people to these links, as if they download your music with any other links, you won’t get paid for their download. Once you’ve created these links, you then put them on your website. Whenever some one downloads your music from one of your links (Which is free for them to do) you get paid directly into your account. You can find out more about how to create these links and this process in the book How To Make Money From Free Music.

Next, you have to get visitors back to your website. There’s no point having links with your music on if no one ever sees them. Use a combination of search engines and social marketing to get short and long-term traffic back to your website, and get more people seeing your links. The more traffic you get, the more people will see your links and the more people will download. And of course, the more people that download via your links, the more money you make!

The full process of how to do this is in the book “How To Make Money From Free Music”. We also show you advanced strategies on how to squeeze the most money from each fan (It’s actually by being honest with them and providing them a better service [Which still doesn't cost them anything], so it’s win win for both of you).

Does This Prevent MP3 Downloads?

While there’s nothing coming any time soon that will completely stop MP3 downloads, the methods used in the ebook How To Make Money From Free Music are a great new way for musicians to make money by giving out free downloads. The more people download your music, the more money you can make. And come on, how hard is it to get people to download your music for free? Making money from people downloading your music is better then trying to prevent MP3 download, so give it a try.

Many of the world’s biggest musicians such as Britney Spears and Jay Z have mailing lists (Check the top right hand of their site to see their sign up forms). Why is this? Simple, because having a mailing list can make a lot of money!

A couple of months ago in the post How To Get Your First Profitable Mailing List Up And Running, we showed you why it is so important to have a mailing list. What we didn’t give you however, were advanced strategies to make sure you could maximise the revenue you make from your mailing list. For those that don’t want to read the above mentioned post in its full detail, below I’ll break down some of the key points as to why owning a mailing list is so important. If you have a mailing list already and want to learn how to squeeze as much money and subscribers out of it as possible however, check out Advanced Strategies To Monetize Your Mailing List now! But for those of you that are new to mailing lists, here’s why you need to start yours up asap:

• Mailing Lists Drive Sales
  You can use your mailing list to create instant sales. People on your mailing list are proven fans, as they’ve signed up to keep updated about you specifically. So if you let them know you’ve a new release out, there’s a good chance you’ll make sales by mass emailing your mailing list. As well as selling your music via mailing lists, you can also sell tickets and merchandise Check out the post Advanced Strategies To Monetize Your Mailing List for the best way of doing this.

• Mailing Lists Act As A Reminder
  Your mailing list can act as a reminder to fans that you exist. A fan may not visit your website in a while, not because they don’t like you any more, but just because other acts and the internet act as a huge distraction. If they were to get a email from you however, this could jog their memory and spark their interest in you again. This is a huge advantage, and one that will mean mailing lists become more and more important as people’s attention span on the internet shortens.

• Mailing Lists Build Relationships With Fans On Autopilot
  If you use the right software (E.G Aweber) you can build up a relationship with your customers when you’re not even around. This will save you a lot of time, and allow your customers to feel more connected with you. And if your customers feel connected to you, there’s more chance they’ll spread the word about you and buy your music.

There are many more reasons mailing lists can be beneficial to your music career, but those are a few of the main ones. If you haven’t already set up your mailing list, you can sign up to Aweber here. Aweber is the industry standard mailing list service, so should suit all your email marketing needs perfectly. If you have got a mailing list up and running and want to know how to maximise the amount of money it makes you however, check out our new post Advanced Strategies To Monetize Your Mailing List. This is a premium post, so although it’s free, you will have to fill in a quick questionnaire to gain access to it (This will only take a minuet or two). Good luck with building your mailing list campaign, let us know how you get on.