 So one of the things I've done for work over the years has been to take on an artist who's had some success, let's say they have a few songs with a few million plays and still have a few hundred thousand monthly listeners. So they still have a lot of money coming in, but they have a feeling they didn't quite do it right from day one and maybe missing out on some royalties and income. I go in and I look around and make sure that the income streams are coming from all the different places that you may be able to make money from music. But inevitably as I do this for them there comes a moment of extreme ang and luckily it's not towards me since uh these guns aren't exactly firing off many shots. What they're instead mad about is they see all the royalties that they could have received if they just set up things properly from day one. But unfortunately they didn't take a few hours to like read a book or something you know like this one or they trust a manager who didn't have their mind on their money and their money on their mind. So all this is to say musicians are already compensated far less than they should be. So it's super important that whether you started your project last week last year or 10 years ago that you get everything in order so every dollar gets collected and you don't miss out on the money you're entitled to. Especially since this is only a few hours of work and if your songs start blowing up it can ensure that you don't have to be angry in the future at all the money you let go to someone else instead of you. So I'll walk you through the income streams you should have set up from day one for your music. The first one most people miss because it's a little intimidating is sound exchange which is a service that collects royalties for performers of songs. Meaning the people who played on it. Now here's the best part you pay no money for this just each time you put out a song you enter in the percentage of royalties due to each performer and they'll send you money if your song is being consumed on the internet or other digital means. And this is the most common income stream missed and I have great news if you have missed this and you have songs with streams on them already they've been collecting those royalties for you and have them sitting there waiting to pay you and if you register your songs with them for free there may be money already sitting there as long as the streams aren't more than a few years old. The next one is one of the most easy and overlooked ways to make money which is setting up a merch store. My last video gave you tons of tips on how to run a successful merch line and make sales but I really want to instill this in you with print on demand you need to put no money down to get merch up for sale or a small monthly fee if you want to use Shopify and get your merch for sale on Spotify and YouTube with some minimal setup time but truly getting a few designs together and an hour or two of setup you can enable another stream of income since when people connect with your music they want to support you and show off to others that they like your music and there's no easier way. Okay for our next tip let me remind you of something that so many people overlook we all know that you need to go through a site like tunecore or distro kid to get your music online but so many of those sites or the big distributors take 10 percent of your royalties at minimum sometimes whereas tunecore and distro kid take no percentage they just charge an annual fee while you need to pay them each year to put your music on those stores it's well worth it to have them not take a percentage if you're getting streams let's remember a million streams of your song is around ten thousand dollars in royalties if you're giving 10 percent of that to a service because you were lazy and didn't do your research well you're a thousand dollars less rich for every million streams because you signed a deal as well if you own all the rights to your music and you're on a distributor that takes percentage you can always switch to one that doesn't without losing plays playlist placements or royalties your songs will be down for a few days if you switch maybe three but they go right back up with all the same plays and then you're making all the more money as well one of the other things musicians forget is the biggest music fans use bandcamp to support aris so having your music up there with a name your own price model where they can tip you could be an amazing way to enable people to fund you while you should suggest a normal price there for your music allowing the fans to name how much they would compensate you really can help get tips from the more financially well endowed i routinely tip young artists i love hundreds of dollars on there or through spotify through their tip jar since i think musicians are poorly funded and want to say thanks for their art when i really enjoy it which reminds me even if you are a small artist if you're playing live having some music to sell like cassettes even though no one listens to them can help you get funds if you're playing live and that's a regular part of what you do if it's a real regular part of what you do and you're getting hundreds of thousands of streams all the more reason that in most genres you should have vinyl because most people don't have a record player that works but they'll still buy it to support you next we have registering with a publisher like bmi ascap or csack these are nonprofits who collect your publishing royalties for things like radio airplay or public performances and bars or even at your shows all you have to do is pay a fee to sign up and they will do the rest as long as you register each song you release and upload your live performance sets you'll make money and truly forgetting to upload your set is one of the biggest ball drops i see musicians do on a regular basis so don't forget that even if the show is sparsely attended it can help because oftentimes they do it by the average amount of people who attends that club so here's the thing while you just learned all those ways to make money there's tons of other things you should do whether you're a new artist or not which is why you should watch my video on how to start a music project from scratch to make sure you don't miss anything else which is up on the screen right now