How Do Musicians Make Money? Here Are 7 Ways!

Are you hoping against hope that the Spotify thing is going to work out for you?

Look at all the news stories. All the musician coaches. All the people pushing Spotify. It's got to be a good thing, right?

If you've been an artist for any length of time, you know payouts for streaming royalties are dismal. Maybe you've seen a little improvement year over year, depending on how your listenership has increased. But you can't possibly believe this is someday going to work out for you—that you're going to make a living wage from streaming royalties.

It's crazy to me that people spend so much time and energy on this. Even at conferences, musicians flock to the sessions about Spotify and ignore the ones about music entrepreneurship—which is where they should be going.

As artists, we are entrepreneurs. That's just a fact of life. That's the way things are now.

I can point you to so many opportunities that are far better than Spotify. If you just replace all that time and energy you're putting into Spotify—into creating products, into creating offers that people want—for the same amount of time and energy and money and resources, you're probably going to be making a much higher income.

Don't get me wrong. Spotify can be a great promotional tool. I'm not saying it's a complete bust for listeners or even artists. But the delusion has permeated the industry. No wonder the industry is so enthusiastic about it. They benefit from Spotify. Not you.

The bottom line: there are things you could be working on that are far more productive—both in terms of your overall satisfaction and fulfillment, as well as your income.

Maybe you just want to continue putting your faith in things that don't work. Maybe that's the way we've been conditioned—that believing in something is its own reward, and that's all we should ever expect to get out of it.

But there are other roads you can take. If you took the same amount of time, money, and energy you're putting into Spotify and put it somewhere else, it would dramatically change your results.

To become a successful independent artist, you must approach things from a different angle.

In this post (and video), I share why hoping Spotify will work out for you is a delusion—and what you should be doing instead. https://davidandrewwiebe.com/?p=28076