This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
My music was played on a Romanian TV show. Welcome friends, we're gonna hear today from a musician who licenses songs for placement in TV shows worldwide. And one day he gets a check in the mail for a show he's never heard of, so he starts doing some more investigation. This is "Side Hustle School." I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Today's episode is part of a feature called "Your First Thousand Dollars." It's all about how somebody in fact makes their first thousand dollars.
How do they go from idea to income? And of course they often go much beyond $1,000 as well. But the steps required to go to the next level are often easier than that first real paycheck. So we have all kinds of stories about how they get going. And today's feature comes from Evan Oxhorn.
We first featured him way back on episode 175. That was a long, long, long time ago. Lawyer earns extra $400 a month with stock music "Side Hustle." Well, Evan is still going strong. He's in fact earning a good bit more. So let's hear about that.
And especially about the first thousand dollars. How did he make it happen? What did it feel like? What did he learn? Any tips for us, et cetera?
Let's hear it from Evan. I'll come back at the end with a few words of wrap up. [Music]
Hi friends. This is Evan from stockmusicemusician.com and from episode 175 of the "Side Hustle" show. But I wanna tell you a little bit about how I made my first thousand dollars licensing music.
Well, actually it's not gonna be the story of my first thousand dollars, but the most exciting thousand dollars that I earned and the first time that I earned more than a thousand dollars in a single moment. So the basics of music licensing are you write songs, you record them and you upload them onto a website and then you make a little bit of money every time somebody licenses that song. So if you're a musician, it's a really great way to earn sort of semi passive income because your music markets itself and the websites that you work with market themselves. And after a year or two of doing this, uploading maybe one or two songs a month, I was earning probably about a hundred dollars a month in income. And that was fantastic.
I was really happy about it. But I never had like a breakthrough moment. It was just glowing slowly but surely. And then one day out of the blue, I got a earnings statement from one of the royalty companies that I work with called BMI. And BMI basically helps musicians earn money from the public performances of their music on TV or at concerts or something like that in movies, radio.
And I opened it up expecting maybe $5 or $10, which is what I had seen in my previous quarterly statements. But to my shock and very pleasant surprise, I saw a check for $1,900 for one of my songs that was being played in Romania. Yeah, somehow this song of mine had apparently become very popular or had been included in a very popular Romanian TV show and earned me $1,900 in the first quarter and over time earned me about $3,000 total. So it just goes to show that music licensing can be surprising and wonderful and rewarding. I'm gonna play a quick clip of that song just so you can hear.
It's not my best work at all, but it surprises you what sells. [Music]
Now that was a few years ago and over time I've gone on to continue to earn and learn more having had songs on shows like "The Real Housewives" and on Netflix documentaries and all sorts of things. But there's nothing quite as sweet as seeing that first fat royalty check for $1,900 because musicians, just like anybody else, I think, feel a bit of imposter syndrome, wondering if your music is good enough or if you're making what people are interested in. And to see that somebody found so much value from my music that they wanted to include it repeatedly on their show really felt vindicating. And it inspired me to wanna teach other people how to learn, how to license their music.
So that's something that I've been focusing on over time and as I've been also just improving my music skills, I have yet to see another check that big come in, but I'm really hopeful for the next quarter. I know I've had some song, some really nice placements according to my publisher, so I'm really excited to see what those are gonna look like. And I'm really optimistic for the future of creating music, of licensing it. And I just wanted to thank Chris and the gang for letting me come by and share my story a little bit more. Thanks so much for listening.
Have a great one. [Music]
Thanks so much, Evan. Listeners, check out stock music musician.com or head to YouTube and type in stock music musician. He's actually got 589 videos at the time I'm recording this. Some of them are from a few years ago, so I'm not sure how much is still current, but lots of tips and tricks for anybody out there who wants to get started licensing music and so on.
Anyway, interesting business model. There's all kinds of ways you can make money without quitting your job by using a skill you already have, et cetera. So thank you for being out there as well. Much more is coming up. You can always access every single episode 3,400 plus from the Side Hustle School Library at sidehustleschool.com.
New episodes come out every day, seven days a week, wherever you like to listen. Until next time, my name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
