What It's About
Is background music licensing a smarter path than chasing streams on Spotify?
Notes from Chris
Episode 3301
An independent musician seeks advice on skipping out on Spotify. Royalties for most artists are dismal on streaming services—is corporate licensing for background music a better option? Short version is yes, at least on a comparative basis. What I mean is that if you can get your music licensed with the right agency and if a business chooses to use it and then actually does use it frequently, then you’ll definitely make a lot more money than you would for the same number of people listening on Spotify. However, those are a lot of conditions that need to be met, so I don’t want to suggest it’s easy. We’ll look at some details in this episode…"I'm an independent musician, and have been learning about uploading my songs to Spotify and other platforms. So far I have five of them up, and while it's cool to see them there—no one is listening, so I'm not earning any royalties. To make money on Spotify you need a lot of streams, and I'm not sure that will happen anytime soon. However, I have another idea: store background music. Some grocery stores or home improvement stores or really any kind of retail locations have music that plays overhead. Sometimes it's top 40 tunes, but often it's instrumental tracks or other music they've somehow licensed. I feel like this is a much more lucrative opportunity than Spotify for me, and my music is perfect for playing overhead while shoppers browse the aisles. How can I get my big break? "Listen to today's episode to learn more...
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