Ableton Forum

Tone Deft wrote: how to write without actually saying anything, just being a dick.

Nice. So a guy asks how to make a living from music. I find it funny that so many people are shocked.

From this you deduce I'm a kid with no life experience, we're all talk, and the OP just wants money without putting any work in. When you know nothing about either of us.

But you think I'm being a dick?

Do you just log on to argue with people? You could make a successful music career with all that energy.

Making money in music is very important for a lot of people. And I believe I hold the key:



What I have here,is a specification for, "THE FLUX CAPACITOR." Its what makes time travel possible. Currently I am taking donations to build the prototype. Theoretically, you would be able to travel through time, to a point when the music industry actually existed, and things were quite profitable.

I'm not saying you can't make it right now in music.. surely you can, and people do it every day.. but its much harder than it used to be!


Never give up. Never surrender. To infinity, and beyond
cheers

andydes wrote: From this you deduce I'm a kid with no life experience, we're all talk, and the OP just wants money without putting any work in.

tone has more than 22.000 posts on this site, of which about 10.000 will be insults. That kinda says something about "just talk".

Linear Phase wrote:Making money in music is very important for a lot of people. And I believe I hold the key:



What I have here,is a specification for, "THE FLUX CAPACITOR." Its what makes time travel possible. Currently I am taking donations to build the prototype.

Excellent. Will it run as a VST, or will Ableton incorporate it into a new Live Instrument Rack? Soon Youtube will be full of videos of poor guys who went into the studio to make some phat beatz, but end up being hacked to pieces at the Battle of Agincourt.

It would be cool if you could also make a plug-in that monitors the most lucrative music genre and modifies whatever Ableton set you're working in, on-the-fly, to create the best track for the greenbacks. Here comes da Benjamins.

I make a living making music and not gigging, and have done all of these things. I can't speak for session playing or cruise ships or whatnot because I've not done them

Here come some general truths from my experience:

Commercial big name label mixes/remixes can make you lots of money. It's a very tight knit circle to get into however and you most of the time end up selling your soul.

Underground 'cool' music won't make you much unless you gig the crap out of it. If you do make it big, you are no longer underground, see above

TV spots pay fantastic royalties if the show is large and televised globally. Ideally get music in that they rotate between episodes.

Movies and commercials can pay obscene one off amounts, but it's akin to winning the lottery as they have kajillions of songs to pick from thanks to all the publishing houses shopping tunes around.

Flux compression may or may not help your beats.



TA's Tips to make money making music:

1. Don't be an asshole. Nobody likes working with an asshole, and the music industry is very small. Be nice to everyone.
2. Be ABLE to make really good music. Sometimes you will be asked to make bad music for money, that's fine. Just be able to make good music when the time comes.
3. Arranging loops from Sample CD's and preset picking from synths will only gets you so far. See point 2.

It's not a sin to want to make money from music is it? I think a lot of people unconsciously recoil from the idea of their music being tested by a market place. A lot of people will be turning purple because 'Market Place' was mentioned near music in this post. Why?

Nearly everybody pays for most of the music they listen to courtesy of their broadband bill which is pocketed by a service provider who's business model cashes in on the collapse of the record industrie's old model.

Meanwhile the artist convinces himself/herself that they shouldn't get paid, the big' music industry finds a new way of 'paying" mainstream artists with temporary fame, a tour or two, the lifestyle for a few years and retire to being half recognised in shopping malls and the smaller operators in the long tail hussle and graft and the smart ones get paid.
I have a day job but happily for me it involves music.

That said making money in electronic music, the traditional way i.e. off the back of really good music requires a much more 'people' oriented skill set and creativity that goes beyond the music. It's very off putting, for me anyway, to put so much work into a track and then have to spend months politely telling people how good it is and "would you mind listening to it when you get a chance please?" most times I don't and the same 200 people or so only get to hear it.

timothyallan wrote:I make a living making music and not gigging, and have done all of these things. I can't speak for session playing or cruise ships or whatnot because I've not done them

Here come some general truths from my experience:

Commercial big name label mixes/remixes can make you lots of money. It's a very tight knit circle to get into however and you most of the time end up selling your soul.

Underground 'cool' music won't make you much unless you gig the crap out of it. If you do make it big, you are no longer underground, see above

TV spots pay fantastic royalties if the show is large and televised globally. Ideally get music in that they rotate between episodes.

Movies and commercials can pay obscene one off amounts, but it's akin to winning the lottery as they have kajillions of songs to pick from thanks to all the publishing houses shopping tunes around.

Flux compression may or may not help your beats.



TA's Tips to make money making music:

1. Don't be an asshole. Nobody likes working with an asshole, and the music industry is very small. Be nice to everyone.
2. Be ABLE to make really good music. Sometimes you will be asked to make bad music for money, that's fine. Just be able to make good music when the time comes.
3. Arranging loops from Sample CD's and preset picking from synths will only gets you so far. See point 2.

sounds like a good overview, thx!

Grappadura wrote:

djshiva wrote:Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Seriously dude. Become an investment banker or something. If you're not doing music because you can't live without doing music, then you shouldn't be doing music at all.

so what are you living of?

A job.

A job that I love, thankfully. But I don't make my living off my music, nor do I really expect to. Lightens the burden of needing to make crap that I'm not interested in.

Grappadura wrote:I assume making jingles is more profitable than say 8-bit death core. What kinda music would you do if you did it only for the money? Doing film scores is probably a nice way to get paid. Ring tones... What else is there?

All of the big money is in Country Music in the U.S.

kitekrazy wrote:

Grappadura wrote:I assume making jingles is more profitable than say 8-bit death core. What kinda music would you do if you did it only for the money? Doing film scores is probably a nice way to get paid. Ring tones... What else is there?

All of the big money is in Country Music in the U.S.

Actually, have a look here:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/2 ... try-Report

Going by that report, the real money (or at least, the big sales) is in Rock, followed by Alternative, and then R&B. Country is a distant 4th.

thx devisor, the nielsen report has been pointed out in this thread before.

Grappadura wrote:thx devisor, the nielsen report has been pointed out in this thread before.

Sure, I knew I had seen it SOMEWHERE!

Hi guys,

I missed the boat last week on the "producing reports on music stuff"

Earlier this year IMS had their annual conference, and released an extremely thorough report that I thought was absolutely cool! It also revealed some of the trends previously discussed.

I highly recommend reading their report -- it's titled "The State of Dance"
It's part of their market research into:
A) What is the current global market
B) Where are the biggest opportunities to bring dance music into the mainstream (and as such, profit from it).

Extremely well-designed report with very cool insight (Recommended to download actual document, instead of viewing in browser -- it loses a lot of formatting):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5jfos8xc6ae6k ... %20v09.pdf

The raw nerd data:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... 5YWc#gid=0

The most interesting things I learned from it:
-People of all ages (young and old) across the U.S. prefer country music to EDM.
-People are twice as likely to prefer rock and pop to EDM in the US at all ages.
-Young people in the U.K. like EDM as much as Rock/Pop, but as they get older, they appreciate Rock/Pop exponentially more (As a yank, I always imagine everywhere in Europe as some magical 24/7 EDM Kingdom).
-While the U.S. is nearly dead last in "EDM Appreciation" across the world, somehow we manage to lose that title to Japan,
And Finally
-People in the UK still appreciate DnB, and us hosers sadly do not.

You will also find breakdowns of "edm appreciation" and "edm genre appreciation" for many countries in this report. It seemed extremely enlightening when I read it earlier this year.

for EDM, if that's all your life is narrowed down to.

Comment removed, because it contributed about as much as Tone Deft's.