How To Profit From Giving Away Music

GregJames | Feb 24, 2011 |

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The internet has forever changed the way music is distributed. In much the same way the printing press did hundreds of years ago, the web has not only made music more widespread, but it has altered how it is paid for and distributed. Considering this, musicians need to be constantly thinking of the new problems and opportunities created by this change.

In order to succeed with music in this new paradigm, producers of music should first consider the problem with the old model. Selling albums always had the issue of costing a lot of money and thus being the reserved business of a few big labels. Now that music is cheaper to produce and can be spread freely online, we will never see the big record label type of situation again.

Music can be transferred almost instantly between people and without any control or tracking. This at first threw the industry off, but slowly people are developing ways of dealing with the problem of peer-to-peer sharing and illegal downloads.

One essential principle that solves this problem effortlessly is to just give away music. The benefits of this are that you don’t have to worry about illegal downloading since it’s all legal, and you can spread your music as far as possible, since it's free. These are some nice benefits, but the downside is of course that you are getting no money in return for the music you produce.

So the question for music producers, bands, and classical composers becomes whether to fight the uphill battle against the hordes of torrent users and file sharers, or just use the environment to your advantage and figure out how to profit from their actions.

There is a culture of free downloading and instant sharing that will be impossible to change. With that in mind how can you make a living with your art when its being given away free of charge? One method that has been tried with varied success is donation based downloads.

This method lets listeners obtain your music for free with the option to send you any amount as a donation. Not only will this let you profit from giving your music away, it is also by nature very easy to set up on your own website or something like that. The problem is that our culture is not one of donating to valued producers. People just do not have the virtue or far sightedness to send composers money if they don’t have to. Especially when they have downloaded tons of music from others for free.

With a different culture, this method would work much better than it does, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t work at all. It may work under the right circumstances, so it is worth a try. Its ease of use and construction makes it a nice experiment for just about any artist.

The other main method of profiting by giving away music freely is to use the wide distribution this will grant you as promotion for other money making manners. An example would be releasing your album for free so that more people will attend your live shows. This is a model that has been used with some success as well, but it will not work for people who do not play out much, or cannot, for whatever reason.

However, this philosophy can also help you get exposure and turn it into profits from licensing or future commissions. For example, a composer could release their music freely and someone who otherwise would not could hear it and use it in a TV show. This would be a very long-sighted method that may or may not pay off, but it could work.

It is becoming clear that there will have to be some manor of free distribution in your music selling game. What you need to do is find the best amount and manner for your particular audience. It will take some creativity and testing, but the internet should be seen as an increase in opportunity overall, and it’s just a matter of finding out how to take advantage.