Translate Your Music Skills To Make Make Money With These Creative Strategies
Music is a universal language understood by everyone worldwide. However, musicians and others specialized within the music industry possess a unique set of skills, translating to multiple jobs. For example, some music experts know how to play an instrument, sing, work with audio and sound, or even video. All of these music skills can convert to paying gigs in various ways.
So, how would you translate your music skills into something more? And perhaps the more significant question - how can you make money with your skills?
If you’re bold enough, trying any of these ways or creating your own strategy or spin-off of one of these positions can be a very lucrative way to bring in income utilizing your music expertise. Besides being a musician, music offers many different avenues to increase your cash flow, maybe even substantially.
CREATE MUSIC COURSES OR WORKSHOPS
Chances are your skills in music are specialized. Maybe you know how to write songs or lyrics or the ins and outs of mixing audio recordings. Whatever your specialty is, you can develop your own lesson surrounding that subject and package it into a course or workshop for people to purchase.
The great thing about doing it this way is that all the work is done upfront. Once you have completed doing the research and planning out the curriculum, you can either make videos or step-by-step visuals for people to walk through. You have the opportunity to be as creative as you would like and provide as much in-depth information and knowledge on the subject that will help bring your customers more value. Studying other music artists that offer these types of services can help get you started.
You can launch the course for an introductory price of your choosing for a limited time and then raise the cost depending on the popularity of your offer. As things progress and update across the music industry, you can also go back in and add other areas, lessons, or updates to your course or workshop. In some cases, you can take things a step further and offer live, interactive workshops centered around a shared goal that can either correlate or work alongside your course.
While it seems like a lot of work (and it is), you can take pride in your finished product. You can also relax because once it’s completed, all you have to do is sit back and allow customers to purchase. This is what is known to many as passive income because you can generate profit from having it available for months or even years as long as it is relevant.
TEACH MUSIC LESSONS
Perhaps you have skills in singing, or you know how to play the piano. You can easily convert these skills and teach others easy piano songs or vocal fundamentals. Teaching others to share in the love of music by learning an instrument or working with their voice is a fantastic method of using your music skills and earning income at the same time.
Alex W., a piano teacher from Music To Your Home, says that he has genuinely enjoyed the rewards of teaching others musical skills while continuing to pursue his own aspirations as a musician. A significant advantage of teaching is that you can be highly flexible and work around your schedule. Independent artists sometimes have difficulty working an “average” job since gigs and rehearsals at odd hours can pose scheduling conflicts.
CREATE A MUSIC PODCAST
Developing a podcast will be an excellent platform for your music skills if you are into marketing, content, and brand building with your musicianship. While podcasting may not help you earn money right away, the effort you can put into making your content and building your community will go a long way to bringing income in whenever you launch a new product or service that is related to that brand.
You don’t have to be a successful podcaster to monetize your podcast right away, either. You can begin monetizing once you reach listeners in the 500 range, which can help cover distribution for your podcast and your website costs. Getting a podcast started doesn’t take a lot; you just have to have a clear focus and an ideal audience and provide weekly, valuable content to your audience. The possibilities and ideas are endless, so there is no limit to your creativity with a podcast to translate your music skills.
WRITING ARTICLES FOR MUSIC BLOGS
Maybe your special music skills are more involved in writing and copy. A great way to turn that into substantial income is by writing technical articles for music blogs. Most blogs can pay anywhere from around $25.00 to over $100 per article, which can be a great side hustle.
You should begin by creating a writing portfolio of samples of articles you can write surrounding trending music topics. Then, pitching through email is a great way to get your foot in the door with businesses, and searching different blogging positions where companies are proactively looking for someone to write blogs for them can help get you going. There are tons of websites with blogs that continue to search for updated content and new writers to help provide a unique and creative perspective.
If you enjoy writing on your own time, you can also use those skills to create an e-book or website with your own unique blog. Blogs have the power to draw in clients and help earn businesses money. You could develop a specialized e-book, checklist, pamphlet, material, or resource where you can exercise your writing and use it as a vessel to provide value to readers.
LET YOUR CREATIVITY GUIDE YOU
As an independent musician, artist, or someone with a vested knowledge and skills within music, there are many options to help earn income. Of course, many musicians can easily take to more straightforward means of payment such as licensing their original work (with assistance from a music lawyer), streaming their music on multiple platforms, and performing online or in-person to earn money. However, tapping into the more creative side of your skills helps you to understand that these are not the only ways to use music skills that can help open up so many new doors to opportunities.
Don’t sell yourself short; sometimes musicians find that they instead enjoy doing one or a few of these side hustles over all of the performances and attempts to make it big in the music industry as a solo artist or band. In other instances, you may just want to utilize some of these ideas while you continue to work on your music.
Either way, all of these options allow you the ability to still build a steller following and fanbase and gain significant popularity by using other means to share your musical knowledge. So, get out of your creative block and find ways to use your music skills in a new, innovative way that can help you earn money!
Author: Melissa Waltz