This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
How do songs get licensed for background music? This is a great question. We're gonna hear from an independent musician seeking advice on skipping out on Spotify. Royalties for a lot of artists are dismal on streaming services, although there's a lot of debate about why that is because Spotify actually pays out a majority of their income in royalties. I think the biggest problem is just that there's so much music these days compared to how it used to be.
But nevertheless, is corporate licensing for background music a better option? And the short version is yes, at least on a comparative basis, meaning that if you can get your music licensed with the right agency, and if a business chooses to use it, and then actually uses it frequently, then you're definitely gonna make a lot more money than you would for the same number of people listening on Spotify or Apple Music or whatever. Now, of course, those are a lot of conditions that need to be met, so I don't wanna suggest it's easy. And for a lot of independent musicians, you might actually do better in trying to get your music out to the most amount of people as possible, which means being on streaming services. But let's focus on the topic at hand and do our best to answer the question, how do songs get licensed for background music?
I'll try to give some tips to our caller and maybe our other listeners as well. Stay tuned. [Music]
Hi, Chris, this is Blake, and I just recently found your show through Spotify. Speaking of which, I'm an independent musician, and I've been learning about uploading my songs to Spotify and other platforms. So far, I've got five of them up, and while it's cool to see them there, no one's 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's gonna happen anytime soon, so. 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, so.
How can I get my big break? Thanks for any help you can give me. [Music]
Well, as I said in the introduction, it is absolutely true that licensing your music commercially and having it played in stores or as corporate hold music can end up paying more than the average Spotify stream, et cetera. But of course, it's not easy to enter the market, 'cause with Spotify, you just go through a registration process, you upload your music. It's pretty simple, right?
For the store background music idea, you typically need to work with an agency that specializes in that. So I did a little bit of searching. One option is harryfox.com, used to be known as Rumblefish. There are a bunch of others. Some of them have a submission process on the site.
For others, you might need to poke around or send some emails, ask for some introductions and so on. And just be aware, of course, that some music is naturally a much better fit for this usage. If you're thinking about, okay, background music, corporate hold music, then you need to have a certain type of music. I mean, it could be a few different types, I suppose. But the point is, it's usually meant to be background by design.
So think about that. But also, as I said, why not also upload to Spotify and Apple Music and all the other services as well, especially if you want to reach as many people as possible, or even if your goal is strictly commercial, if you're not doing it for art, you're just doing it because I think it'd be cool to get some streams and get paid for that. Again, why not upload to as many places as possible, unless there was some question of exclusivity. But in that case, presumably, you'd be getting paid a lot more. So I wouldn't worry about that too much until it comes up.
Anyway, good luck. Let us know how it goes. Listeners, there's so many different ways that you can make money. There's something you can do as well. If you have had an idea, if you haven't taken action on it, I hope you will do so this year.
And if you're still not sure what you want to do, well, guess what? Buckle up because this year we've got 365 episodes with all sorts of ideas, tips, case studies, models that you can follow. The whole goal is to get you thinking and taking action. I hope you will subscribe, follow, come back every day, new episode every day, always free. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
