3 Income Streams for Producers
As a producer, it’s very important to have multiple streams of income. If you only have a single income stream and it gets interrupted, you wouldn’t have the means to pay your bills or invest back into your business. With that being said, here are three different ways that you can make money as a producer in addition to selling beats:
1. Selling Loops or Drum Kits
This is a great option because there’s not a lot of extra work involved. A lot of producers have beats that are just sitting on a computer because they didn’t get finished for whatever reason, but that can be turned into revenue as well in the form of sound packs and drum kits. You can revisit a beat, strip it down completely (loops, instruments, drum kicks/snares/rolls, etc.), turn the stems into individual WAV files, neatly package it all up, and put it out on the market. Other producers will buy that from you because they can utilize it for inspiration. You may have had an idea that you didn't finish, giving another producer the opportunity to create an entire beat out of your loop or drum kits. It’s a win-win situation because you’re receiving money and they’re making use out of something that you aren’t planning on using.
2. Selling Services
This option can be a variety of things depending on your skillset. For example, some producers are great at mixing and mastering their own beats. There’s an entire market of producers who either don’t know the mixing/mastering process very well or don’t want to do it, so if this is a skill that you have, you can charge for it as a service. If you have a week where beat sales or loop pack sales are down, you can be assured that clients will still need their work to be mixed or mastered on a consistent basis. You may also be a really talented graphic designer, which is a skill that you can monetize and utilize in the production business. Producers need cover art all the time for various things such as sound packs, loop packs, beats on Airbit, or even social media, so you can provide your graphic design skills to them, creating another income stream for you as a producer.
3. Sync Licensing
Sync licensing is when you give a TV show, movie, or some type of media permission to sync your music to film. Companies use a lot of music in the background of shows and movies to create the intended mood in each scene, meaning there are many different opportunities to license your music. As a result, sync licensing is another great revenue stream for producers because it allows you to monetize your music and generate royalties passively once your music gets placed (every time a show or movie airs, you get a performance royalty for it). In sync licensing, you get paid in two ways. You can get an upfront sync fee, which isn’t a guarantee because it’s dependent on the deal that you’re in. On the backend though, you get performance royalties which is where you tend to receive the majority of your money. Sync licensing also adds to your credibility as a producer because having credits on networks such as NBC, ABC, VH1, etc. not only gives you a resume boost, but it also helps you generate more income in other areas such as mixing/mastering or selling beats to artists.
