Lawyer Earns $400/Month With Stock Music Side Hustle

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. Here with you once again, another daily story of someone who quits their job with no notice, withdraws all the money from their savings account, takes a huge risk and becomes an entrepreneur. Wait, that's not what Side Hustle School is about. I must be thinking of something different.

Side Hustle School is all about starting where you are, not quitting your day job, but still establishing a second income or a third income. Using what you already know, just finding a way to create more security for yourself, possibly a backup plan, if nothing else, some extra money and a creative outlet. All good things. I talk about artists from time to time. I know we have some musicians out there.

So what if you like to play music? What can you do besides playing gigs and trying to get famous? Like if that's your goal, more power to you for sure. I wish you every success. But as you probably know, not every musician is gonna get famous or be able to make a living from playing gigs.

And that's why I like today's story. It's a story of a lawyer who earns $400 a month in mostly passive income, creating stock music that can be licensed. So here we have somebody who loves playing music, kind of missed it when he got into his career, but then found a way to express this creativity through the lens of an income generating project. So if you've ever wanted to make stock music, or if you're just curious about how that whole world works, all those details are coming up in just a moment. [Music]

You've probably heard the old joke, or maybe you haven't.

How do you get a million dollars? You start off with two million and try to make a living playing guitar. Well, a few years ago, Evan Oxhorn found himself at a law school working as a successful lawyer, but with a ton of student loan debt and almost no creative life. As a longtime musician, he had a hard drive full of half-finished songs and his dreams of having his music heard by someone other than his friends and family were slipping past him. During law school, he had put aside all serious attempts at making music a part of his life, but now that he had a steady job, he wanted to bring some creativity back.

Evan first looked into self-releasing an album on iTunes or Spotify, but quickly realized that without a way to promote his music, it'd be pretty hard to reach a lot of people. Plus, unless he sold a ton of songs or had hundreds of thousands of streams, it probably wouldn't be worth it. With his student debt looming in the background, he knew he needed something, no matter how small, that represented a net positive. And that's how he got started with music licensing marketplaces. These music marketplaces deal with the logistics of selling stock music to corporations and anyone else who wants to license music for specific use, allowing musicians to produce songs and then make money from them.

After a lot of research, Evan was confident this was the best route for him, someone else dealing with the marketing and promotion so that he could focus just on making music. So he started submitting his songs to two marketplaces, Audio Jungle and Pond Five, which of course I will link up in the show notes for anyone who's curious. It took a couple months of writing and uploading for his songs to gain traction, but once that happened, he was able to figure out what kind of songs sell the best. Now here's where this gets helpful for anybody out there who's hoping to do this themselves. Evan originally said, you know, there's no real magic to it.

It's just about improving your music skills, et cetera. But after we talked to him a bit more, he realized he did have some specific tips for anyone interested in creating a similar side hustle. The first tip, keep it short. Your song should be about 30 seconds long. People buying stock music are looking to establish a mood quickly.

They don't want an extensive montage, short and sweet. And second, make sure you clearly establish that mood. Whether it's joy, anger, fear, surprise, or something else, you want the listener to feel something since they're considering buying your song for a reason. It's not just because they like it, they have a usage in mind. So the mood of your song needs to match their intended usage and you don't want them to have to guess what it is.

Third, even though the first tip is to keep it short, you still need to tell some kind of story with your song. There should be a clear beginning, middle, and end. And that leads us to Evan's fourth tip, have a strong ending. The last note should be interesting and leave a clear lasting impression. When Evan began following that formula, as well as improving his production in general, he noticed that he started licensing a lot more songs.

And now that his songs are selling, he's also motivated. He doesn't have a ton of time, but he enjoys coming home from work and writing and recording, as well as researching more about production and equipment. And that equipment is pretty simple. He uses the audio software called Reason, which is just a few hundred dollars. He has an audio interface that costs about a hundred dollars.

And then of course the guitar gear that he already had. Now on the business side of things, one of the reasons he's happy with this route is that marketing is built into the marketplace fees. So because of that, the 20 or so hours that he spends on this project a month is mostly spent on writing and recording music, which again was one of his main goals to express that creativity that had been lost for a while as he began his law career. For these efforts, Evan is making about $400 a month and it's steadily growing. He says he knows it's not a ton of money, but the side hustle is stress free for him, which is important.

And even though he continues to upload new songs, he has a goal of uploading three to four songs a month. A lot of the money that's coming in are for songs that are already in his catalog. So he's essentially earning passive income for those. And of course he would love to increase that as he goes on. Another fun benefit is that his songs have been broadcast on NPR and used by Verizon on TV commercials.

And one of his next steps is to create a website and course, providing credible, useful information for anyone who hopes to enter this world. He says when he started researching, it took a lot of time and there was some conflicting information out there. So he wants to share what he's learned and make this process easier for anyone else. Perhaps like he just did. And those four tips he shared through this story.

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So there you have it. An alternative for musicians who want to make money, maybe not a ton of money, but they feel it's important to them. And they're more drawn to recording on their own instead of pursuing a more traditional path of playing gigs or uploading to Spotify just like Elvis used to do. Here is something that you can do completely on your own. You can spend most of your side of the whole time making music.

These agencies or marketplaces are responsible for getting your songs licensed. And as I said, there's this passive income aspect to it, or at least a potential for that. Once you kind of figure out a good blend between the kind of music you like to make, the process you enjoy, and something that is commercially attractive. Of course, this won't work for every musician or every kind of music because there are some specific requirements for that kind of commercial music. But for a lot of people, it's totally something worth looking at.

You might want to check that out. Whatever you do, don't fret. Take your side hustle to 11. Inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. Today's show notes, including links to those music marketplaces I mentioned, will be at sidehustleschool.com/175.

We've got a weekly recap coming up tomorrow and lots of fun stuff next week, and probably the week after that too. Wherever you are, have a wonderful day. I'm Chris Guillebeau for "Side Hustle School." [Music]