5 Reasons Why You’re Not Making Money As An Artist

Many up and coming rap artists have been in the music industry for a few years now and are not making any money from their craft whatsoever. They claim that they’re not hot enough as yet to sell albums, go on tour, or even sell merchandise. My response is always “You are not making any money as a new artist because you simply don’t know how to.”

This is the truth. Armed with the right knowledge, resources and talent, you can make money from your music within the first 6 months of you starting your rap career. If you are a year deep and over into the music industry and still haven’t made any money rapping, you simply don’t know how to.

Also Read: How Artists Make Money On Soundcloud

Is it totally over for you? No, not at all. you just need to acquire the knowledge to do so and put forth action to accomplish the goal at hand.

This is why we created this blog. It’s here to help you become a successful music artist. In this article we go over 5 reasons why you’re not making money as an artist.

Here Is Our Top 5 Reasons Why Indie Artists Don’t Make Money

1) Lack of Performances

One of the major keys to success as a rapper is performing. Performing can do a multiple things for you music career including give you exposure, help you garner more fans, and connect with music industry professionals. Another major aspect that performing is getting paid; something we spoke about in our most recent article: How Indie Artists Get Paid To Perform . It doesn’t matter if you are a new artist or not. You should be getting paid to perform in two ways:

• By the venue owner
• By your Performing Rights Organization

2) Lack Of Radio Play

I find that a lot of indie artist don’t take advantage of getting their music played on radio, but it is a platform that distributed millions of dollars in royalties each year to many artists.

I know that commercial radio is hard for new artist to get played on, but there is non commercial radio, internet radio, and satellite radio that play indie rap music all the time. And those who are on it are making some good income!

My suggestion is find a list of internet radio and satellite radio to submit your music to, and notify Sound Exchange of the spins you’ve been getting. They will then go out and collect your royalties from the radio stations that have been playing your music. yes even from internet radio!

3) Not Registered To A PRO or Sound Exchange

One thing that I see is that there are some artist out there that are performing and that are sending their music out for radio play. But the reason why they are not making any money is because they are not signed up to A Performing Rights Organization or Sound Exchange. These two organizations say that there are literally hundreds of thousands of artists that are owed money , but they haven’t registered and claimed the royalties that are owed to them.

So the solution for you artist who have been putting in work, is to register and file the proper paperwork so these organizations can do their job, and that to collect your money and send it to you!

4) Not Taking Advantage of Licensing Opportunities

There are absolutely countless ways you can license your music but it seems like up and coming rappers don’t bother to take this route. You can license your music to tv, radio, film, video games, and to individuals who would like to use it as background music for their professional projects. My advice is to find ways to license your music and you can either set the prices yourself and collect the funds or hire a manager or administrator to do it.

5) Selling Your Own Merchandise

Independent rappers like Tech N9ne have made millions of dollars off of selling his own merchandise at his shows or online at his website. Merchandise can make you lots of cash due to your fans wanting to have and own a piece of you at home. Merchandise can be sold in the form of a T-Shirt, Jeans, Hoodies, Hats, and shoes. You get t set your own price, sell it and watch the dough roll in.

There is absolutely no reason why a new artist should be broke, while record labels and artists are making billions of dollars from hip hop every year. We have just armed you with knowledge on how to get that bread. Now it’s up to you to go get it. Peace.