How To Get PAID As A Music Producer (Streaming $ Sucks)

One more time. Then we do it one more time. One more time. Spin it, rock, spin it one more time. Hit me, baby, one more time. Today has been a very, very tough day. Stressful a bit. A little bit stressful. I'm not loving how today's gone. Get into it. So we did an interview, probably one of our biggest guests of all time. We did this interview. It was set to drop today. And uh last night, up until the wee hours of the morning while I was sound asleep. Wee hours, mind you. Yeah. The wee, wee, full wee. Yeah. Yeah. Henry and the guests were going back and forth on, you know, what the thumbnail looked like, what the episode was like, what the clips looked like, etc. etc. And uh eventually the guest essentially backed out and wanted to not drop the interview. Uh some of the reasoning was he didn't like his outfit. Uh he felt that he was not high energy enough. Spoiler alert, it's a male. You dropped the pronouns. So, but yeah. I think 90% of our audience and guests are male, unfortunately. What's up, bros?

We we did have a whole female, you know, ladies' week, but that was short-lived. We should do it again, though. We definitely should, because that was hard. Because the women are killing shit. Killing shit. But no. so so to get back on track, we basically had to scramble last minute. Um because we've been doing this for two years, and we've dropped an interview every fucking Thursday for two years. So we were not about to let some clouded up producer fuck that shit. You're giving them a lot of hints now, but god damn. But yeah, no, we weren't about to miss that. So yeah, we had to go in the archives and thank God we had those. Well, I said that we lost them and then found them to make it like. cool. Which was a complete lie. Now I'm admitting that we actually had them the whole time. Yeah, so we had some interviews in the Tuck. We did uh some backstage interviews at a big event here in Atlanta, um, beer and tacos, and we interviewed, like I said, Tony Snow, Domani, who's T.I.'s son, super dope artist, and then Ray Daniels, who's one of the most entertaining music executives uh in the game right now. And podcaster and podcaster, the God show is his is his podcast.

Goats and underdogs. But yeah, so I think you and I had slightly different reactions to this whole situation that unfolded. Both pissed. Super pissed. Yes. Yeah. But I think that, you know, my approach would have been all right, uh, this guy's asking us to not drop the interview. And my response was basically, fuck you. Yeah. Uh for lack of a better word. Drop the bomb. It was basically Funk Flex. I wanted to really come at it with the approach of like, hey man, uh, appreciate it if you don't want to support it, if you don't want to promote it, if you don't want to tell a goddamn soul that we did this interview. And we did offer to cut out any parts that maybe you know were undesirable. We were that we were down to edit it. Super flexible, I felt like on our end. And it went super well. The day of recording. The day of recording, there were no complaints. It's a great interview. I think it's an awesome interview. Like, we're we're self-aware enough to know when an interview did not go well.

We have we have some interviews in the tuck that are maybe you know not gonna be the best interviews. Yeah, but my my philosophy was you know what? We coordinated it, we hosted you, we prepared, we paid editors, we bought you know drinks and you know, stuff to provide for you to have a good time. Uh, and I was basically like it's our fucking content, we're dropping this shit. That was my approach. It was very aggressive. So yeah, I had to bring you back down to Earth. Well, I woke up to 30 text messages that were going on in the hours between 12 a.m. and 3 a.m. Yeah. I wake up at seven and I'm like, what the fuck has happened overnight? For me, it's not worth burning a bridge. It sucks, and we eat a huge L. We lost a lot of time out of our lives, we lost money that we've paid editors. But you know, if people want to be like that, people are self-conscious. I get it, you know. Um, people may maybe don't like how they look on camera, but it's you, man. It's just like be you. It's fine.

Like, we thought it was fine. We've been doing this, we've done a lot more interviews than you have. Yeah. So we know like it's if it's okay to just let something fly, and um, just moving on from there, man. He you know, he was talking about a reshoot, but I don't think we're gonna do that. That was what I was gonna bring up. He he really did was like, yo, if you want me to reshoot it, like, you know. Because then this shit's just gonna happen again. I was like, no chance. Yeah, that that was like a no-chance response. Like, actually, we didn't respond yet. Should we respond? I'm team ghost. Yeah, I I don't love that approach. I do think that's slightly unprofessional, but we're kind of combating unprofessionalism, obviously, from from their end. Damn right. So, anyways, the point of this episode though. Let's get to the good positive side. We interview, like I said, a lot of you know, music executives, but we also interview artists, producers, songwriters, engineers, etc. Kind of the whole music industry spectrum, right? Whole kit and caboodle. Yep, yep. To give you guys a you know, really full grasp on like what's happening in the space. Uh, something we've been talking about is just the the continuing problem of artists and producers getting paid from streaming.

It's ass. So we wanted to break it down really more so from the producer's perspective. Yeah, Henry's a producer engineer. So we were on, like, on the topic. Yeah, exactly. So we were like, look, streaming revenue fucking sucks. The worst. Let's get creative. Let's brainstorm. Let's think on this together, guys. Like, we can do this. Let's think of alternate ways to make money in music. Let's get paid as a producer, man. There's nothing more offensive than getting a royalty statement that is single single digit dollars. It can't pay for your fast food meal. Bro. It's sad. Especially with inflation. Like with inflation. Why isn't my check inflated? What the fuck's going on here? I paid $20 for five guys the other day, and it was just unreal. Oh, you should see some of my Uber Eats. I don't want to. Sad. Especially if it's my one meal of the day, like late night. Yeah. Bro, we're talking 50, 60 bucks. For sure. That's uh I that that's an action. Yeah. So okay. So we made up a list before we got on here. Um, we just literally brainstormed this before we got on on camera.

And we were like, look, let's share some ideas that we have. Y'all drop some fucking comments of other ideas that you have because like we're figuring, we're trying to figure this shit out with you guys. Like once again, I'm trying to help Henry here. I want to get paid. He's trying to help you guys. We're all trying to help each other. We want to get our producers paid. We want to get if you're producing music out there, you deserve money for your talent. So and Spotify and Apple Music aren't giving it to you. So let's figure it the fuck out. Exactly. So first on the list. Uh a lot of YouTubers and podcasters, like ourselves, even thank God you're a producer, so you basically did this for us, but they have intro music. Intro music. They have music throughout an episode throughout their content. Yes. Producers can approach these YouTubers, approach these podcasters, approach, approach these content creators with hey, I know that you need music. You need, you know, beats, etc. for your content. Let me help you. I'm your fucking guy. Yeah. Especially if you approach them, it's like it's better that you know, if someone who approached you, it seems like they're actually, you know, invested or at least slightly interested in what you got going on, which is better than hiring a random person that probably doesn't give two hoots. Yeah, two hoots.

Not one, but not two hoots. Shout out OVA. Um, so I think the best way to approach them is exactly what you were kind of alluding to. I think you need to uh, you know, reference an episode or a piece of content that you saw, maybe comment on either the music didn't necessarily fit the vibe, or maybe there was no music. Yeah. Uh, you know, to be honest, we're not even the greatest at, you know, in your producer. We should probably up our game of like we don't always have. You fire intro. We do. The the intro is fire, don't get me wrong. But you know, content itself can always have music, and that's gonna always add a different element to it. So just comment on you know, something that you saw, uh, share some of maybe your work or some ideas on like the type of music that you think would fit well for their channel, and just shoot your shot and shoot a thousand shots, to be honest, because it's it's gonna be a numbers game at the end of the day. And the other way of going about it is approaching companies who lease out music to YouTubers. Sometimes a YouTuber will just go to websites, you know, these companies that just have huge databases of you know, leaseable, licensable uh songs, and you can even just batch potentially put a lot of your shit on these websites and they'll move them for you. Exactly.

That's a nice way to do it. Yeah, and by the way, guys, we're fully aware that these are not the sexiest revenue streams. Like everyone wants a platinum plaque with Drake. We're trying to pay the rent over here. Exactly. Like we get it. We're not buying Lamborghinis. Like Approaching the like licensable platforms for YouTubers that you know, we get it. It's not as sexy as a Drake placement. But like I said, this episode is devoted to like we're trying to figure this shit out. So number two, uh, you came up with this one, I think. Uh loop slash drum packs. Speak on it. Absolutely, man. Um, you guys are as producers, you know, you are you probably make a lot of loops for your own beats. You're putting melodies together, and when you make a loop, you have a lot of options. You could make one beat yourself with the loop, or you can send it to a thousand people who can maybe make a thousand beats, and all of those you have the opportunity to be a part of and collect revenue from. So sending out loops just in general is a dope. You can go back in your old beats, open up old sessions.

If you thought the melodies were fire, just mute the drums, export the loops, you know, the the melody stems, and you got a loop. Um, it's super easy if you have if you backed up your shit and you still have all your files. Yeah, and then um, and then drum packs, uh, you know, every producer is hoarding and just making all the best drum collections that they can. Put your favorite drums into a pack, label it nicely, come up with a nice little cover art that you know looks like something clean, you know, don't sell for like maybe five bucks, maybe it goes crazy. And you meant you might not make a ton of money, but again, we're trying to pay the rent over here. Yes, and this these are things that are potentially already just sitting on your hard drive collecting digital dust. So why not make some money? That's the worst kind of dust. I mean, come on. Yeah. Um, you so you can also put those up on like Splice or other Looper Man Looper Man is free. Anyone can make an account and do that. Splice is a little more they're selective of who they want to do. Okay, but if you have some clout or you just have a great pitch, maybe hit up Splice.

Absolutely. I'm still trying to get a pack on Splice. Splice, hit me up. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, so the next one I wanted to talk about was uh making beats for like film and TV. All right. So there's multiple ways to do this. Uh aka sync licensing. Sure, yes, yeah, exactly. So that that's the like industry term, okay? But we want to lay that out there. Yeah, yeah. That's that's helpful for sure. Uh so there's a few options here, I think, right? Um, what I've heard is that you can, of course, approach uh music supervisors directly. So a music supervisor is basically the person that's responsible for selecting which music goes into the project. Exactly, exactly. So you can literally look them up on like LinkedIn on the internet, and you can just hit them up. And once again, it's all about how you approach them, do your fucking homework on maybe what they've worked on, compliment them, you know, show value on like how you might be able to help them, you know, make their life easier, right? Like this is all about that's just sales 101 too. Like you do need to any of these, you need to feel make it feel like you're adding value to someone's day. You're helping someone out in their job.

You'll have a lot better results if you're approaching it that way. Yeah, stop taking the what is it in what's in it for me approach and what's in it for them exactly. So you can approach them directly. Uh similar to what you've talked about, there's actual like sync libraries, right? Is is you know, basically what it's called. So you can, you know, research those. There's tons of different options, right? You can uh upload your music, and uh music supervisors can just log on there, and that's where they get a lot of their music from because they don't want to have to deal with you and a bunch of uh you know other producers or other songwriters, other artists hitting them up directly. They just go for stuff that's already approved and basically ready to clear immediately because they got to move quick, right? Like they gotta move really fast. They're not always, you know, gifted the luxury of time to like put together this master score for their film or or you know, TV episode for months and months and months. right? It's a database and they got to type in a keyword and hopefully you tagged your shit correctly And it pops up and then hopefully it's fire.

Exactly. And so then there's, I think the third option I've heard about is uh basically sync agencies, yeah. Right. So essentially there are companies who represent producers. You have an agent who pitches your beats. Exactly. So they are supposed to have, of course, better relationships than you do with the music supervisors themselves, right? So they're constantly getting, you know, uh, you know, newsletters or I can't remember what the fuck they're called, but basically they're getting like uh, you know, they're they're receiving what it is that the music supervisors are looking for. Requests. Yeah, like cue sheets and shit. I don't know what the fuck it's called. Some some like industry term. But basically, they're getting all those requests from the people that make these decisions. So if you find the right sync agent uh or sync licensing company, uh basically they're gonna pitch your music, they're gonna kind of know what it is these people are looking for, and you can maybe serve them exactly what you you know have that that meets that meets what they're looking for. You know what I mean? Yeah, um, so I think most people get really intimidated by this because they want their sh uh their song on like a Netflix show or a HBO show, whatever. There's a ton of independent filmmakers and like TV producers, et cetera.

With budgets that have at least once again, we're trying to pay the fucking rent here. Yes. We're not trying to buy a boat off of this sync license necessarily. We're trying to just. These tips aren't for Metro Boomin. No. For, No. You your bedroom guys, man, cooking up heat that don't get the recognition. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that, you know, um these are great opportunities for you to just like look up small films. Like there's a bunch of like small film festivals. You can go to those, for example. Like you can meet the people in the industry, like do your homework. You don't gotta always swing for the fences. I'm not saying don't hit up Netflix and HBO people too, but like maybe, you know, definitely look at some of the smaller folks in the industry. You know what I mean? What else? Um, all right. Number, I don't even know where number one number four, I think. Uh, learn how to engineer slash have a studio slash recording hourly. I went crazy with the slashes. There's a bunch of slashes on this note. On that one, um, this is the approach I took. So when I learned how to produce, I was simultaneously learning how to engineer. I learned them at the same time. Um, I work in logic, which is a great program if you do both, but whatever you do, whichever program you use, everybody needs an engineer, man.

And holy shit, the most valuable way to get your beats into the hands of artists is to also be able to record them, have a place to record them, maybe be able to mix on top of that and provide these other services that are just a little more rare, man. A lot of people make beats, it's it's a very sexy thing to do. Engineering, not so much, but that makes it that much more valuable. So, and a lot of people don't realize that engineers are the ones playing beats a lot of times. A lot of times artists goes into a session and says, play some beats. Sneak your fucking beats in. If you're an engineer, like I'm playing my shit first. Like, check this shit out right here. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Does it sound like shifting your career path completely? Like a little bit. I get it. But I just think if you're a producer and you want to make the best song possible, these are skills that you need to know anyway. These are valuable things. You want to learn the engineering language anyway, just to be able to talk to an engineer and tell him to roll off some of the highs off the vocal there.

It's too bright, or there's a little bit of mud in that in those keys and just shit like that. Like, it's it's valuable to learn, and you can make money off of it a lot easier. I did both, I started learning both at the same time, and I made money from engineering a lot faster than I made money from producing. I'll tell you that. Once again, we're talking about how we're paying the fucking rent and the light bill here. We're keeping the lights on. Yeah. I mean, you know, we got hella lights in here. So yeah, Jesus. The power bill here is crazy. Thank God we got solar. Um, yeah, we had another one, but I want to skip that one because I'm not really a fan. Uh, all right. One price exclusive beats. Speak on it. What you know, we'll do that. This is a cool one. This is a cool one. All right. Um talk to me. I want to say I learned this one from one more time alumni, Adam Ivy. Okay. And to me, it's just a genius kind of sales move. Like, yes, you could have a beat store. We'll touch on that. Beat store, very valuable. Coming soon. Kind of a interesting flip on a way to sell your beats is having an email database. So we uh admittedly suck at this.

We haven't even really started. We're trash. You need we should have an email database. We're not good. All these social media platforms could disappear tomorrow, and then how are you reaching all your people? We're fucked. Start an email database. Get all the get a giant database of artists that at least kind of like your beats or love your beats or whatever, maybe or just people that you think might like your beats that don't even know you yet. And it's the it's basically the method is you send one beat. I guess you could send more than one, but no, let's say one. One beat. Yes. One price. Yes. Exclusive only. Right there. First person to buy it, gets it. So it has this time element. If you know anything about sales, putting the pressure on people to like buy now or like one day sale or like Black Friday, it's all the same shit. When there's this like feeling of, oh shit, if I don't buy it now, I might lose it. People are a lot more inclined to buy. So consider making one fucking banger beat. You send it to everyone on your list, and the first person to buy it at your exclusive price, and this is exclusive. They own the rights to it.

So you could charge a decent amount for it. And I think you'd be surprised the type of sales you could get from that method. Yeah, for sure. No, that's that's fire. Um we're dropping gems, yes, yes. No, I I love it. I mean, I'm feeling like I could maybe make it as a producer right now. Ben's about to learn. I might start making beats. He's gonna get a cracked version of FL Studio after this. There's so many revenue streams at this point, right? Um, all right. So moving on. Uh, make music for companies. So I I put this one on the list. So, you know, I still work a corporate job because you guys don't fucking you know donate anything to our donation. Like, no, I'm just playing. Tap the screen if you're on TikTok live right now. Yes, please. Because we send a galaxy. We've never had that before. We don't know what it means. Yeah. So, all right. So, we um as like corporate America folk, we have all these like fucking training videos, right? Like, there's so much content that my company's pushing out, and like there's music behind it. So, in my mind, I you know, I I wrote this down because I was like, dude, someone's making the music for these corny ass, cheesy fucking training HR videos. And I was like, look, my producer homies can make this shit easy in their sleep, yeah, and they're gonna get paid because my company's got fucking budget for it.

You know what I mean? So just don't sleep on, you know, approaching companies, whether it's your you know, local pizza fucking store, and they want to have some sort of jingle for something, whatever, or if it's a big ass company like I work for, and it's like they just have so much content they're constantly pumping out. Imagine the guy that came up with but up uh he's paid. Damn, he's paid, bro. Damn, we need that guy on the pod. Jingles. Yes, yes, that one is less sexy, just as a producer myself. My immediate thought is like, oh my god, I'm sacrificing my art, I'm making shit that I hate and is corny and lame and whatever. Yeah, but also I'm thinking about keeping the lights on. In my mind, it's dollar signs in the eyes, bro. It's it's just it's a struggle, man. We're we're trying to get we're trying to get we're trying to get y'all paid. But we should have a whole episode on like the art versus the money. Because we so many of these topics that we discussed come back to that. Like, how much do we just love the art and want to make what's in our souls versus how much do we just not want to get a regular job? Yeah.

Which another thing we didn't have on the list is just get a fucking side job. But that's get a job. Yeah, just get another job. That's one way to make money. Don't Be fucking embarrassed about it. Like, I work for corporate America and I do this fire podcast that is amazing and you know fulfills me. Um, all right, moving on. Something you came up with, ask for an advance. That sounds like basic, bro. It does sound basic, but I've just seen it multiple times now, um, in my experience as a producer. So this might not be for like the beginner producers, but when you do end up getting a beat with an artist that has, you know, a label, or just has some people behind them, whatever, an investor. People are kind of afraid to even bring that up or have that conversation. Yo, money's the hardest thing for people to talk about. bro. Especially creatives, man. We're not like always about that that life. I don't even like it as the non-creative. It's awkward. It is, it is.

It's a tough thing to bring up, but like I won't name names, but you know, I had a placement on a project and I asked for an advance, a nice one, and then I got it immediately. Thousands. thousands. And another producer on the project hit me up, like, hey man, like what's up with that, you know? And I was like, Yeah, did you ask for an advance? No, like I don't know how to do that. Like, what do you mean? What do I ask for? Like, you gotta you gotta have if you're not the person to do it, you gotta have someone on your team at least find someone, like a business person that is willing to have those conversations, approach the people in charge, and ask for your advance, bro. Ask for some points on the master, even though streaming revenue sucks, which is the title of this episode. You totally killed that one. There's just it's it would it's it would suck to just not make money because you didn't ask for it. So I thought that was worth talking about because as creatives, it is an awkward conversation. But if you're trying to keep the lights on, I think it's important. Try and get more comfortable talking about it, normalize asking for your advance, setting your price, sticking to it. And if you don't get the song, maybe that's okay, because then maybe you get three more.

Um, don't be afraid to like miss the placement. Is giving a free beat out for a placement also like maybe valuable? Oh god, we can't do that. Probably so. We can't do that right now. But don't miss your opportunity. I'm saying we can't talk about that, right? I know that's kind of the opposite of what we're talking about. Well, or just like we don't have time for that. We don't wanna unpack that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, next one that we you know have on the list. Uh content creation. So I put this one down. Basically, uh, we know several producers. I want to shout out our girl sides, who are actually starting. Sides. So we're starting a company with her, um, and she's a fire content creator. She is the girl who you've maybe seen on TikTok or Instagram. Here's a super cool logic pro tip. I've learned so much Oh my God. And I've been in working in Logic like three times as long as her, and I learned new shit from her all the time. Yes, she's amazing. She's partnered with pretty much every brand imaginable, up to the likes of Apple. Like, she just got like the newest iPad to show off logic in iPad and shit. Just crazy, crazy partnerships.

So, what she's been able to do is basically continue producing, right? Like, she loves producing and making music, but what her niche has been is really creating content uh for producers like herself. So she started producing just in the pandemic. Like literally, start of COVID, she was like singing gigs because she's an amazing singer, but she was like, yo, I'm stuck in the house. I can't sing any gigs. I want to start producing. So she basically started making this content, almost like documenting her journey and all the different tips that she was learning that she wanted to share with the world. And so I'm not saying you need to do exactly that, but like making content is a way you can monetize that shit, right? Like she's getting paid. I mean, I was working with her for a bit and she's getting paid thousands of dollars per post because of the audience that she's built only from social media. She does a social media course because she's just crushed it online where people are paying her to learn how it is that she did it, right? So there's multiple revenue streams, honestly, that can come from this one concept of content creation.

And the fact that we left it like towards the bottom of the list is almost a disgrace. But like these were not in order. No, they weren't because this should have been a number one. But but yeah, man, um, you know, shout out to her and and people like her who are turning like content creation as a producer into a revenue stream. She could give a fuck about a placement, bro. I don't think she has many, if at all, yeah, to be honest. But she's making more money than both of us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So to wrap it up, I want to talk, or I want you to talk about um kind of YouTube, just YouTube in general as a producer. Like, what are the thoughts there? How can we use that shit to get these guys paid? It kind of piggybacks off what you were just saying with content. It is just another form of content, it's just longer form, and YouTube continues to be the number one social media platform in terms of getting paid. And number one search engine. Number two search engine. Or sorry. Behind Google. Oh, sorry, yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's like basically the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same company, but I was literally like, wait, what? Who's is being ahead of them? Yeah, Yahoo and fucking Ask Jeeves are in the top five, obviously. Jesus. No. Um, yeah, just kind of same thing, which you said, uh, tutorials, cookups, whatever your vibe is. That's the beauty of making content as a revenue stream, is it can be whatever you want it to be. Like, have fun with this shit. Whatever you feel like doing, show it to the world. You know, hopefully it helps people or it entertains people or it inspires people. And you can get paid from doing what you love. Isn't that what we all want? For sure. No, I think yeah, absolutely. So I think what you said is is really key, right? So sides obviously went the um educational, informational, how can I teach you something, et cetera, like that route. But to your point, man, even if you're not the best quality producer, even if you're not making the best beats, if you're entertaining, yes, you can build a content creation like machine. Yes, you know what I mean?

So, like, whatever it is your superpower is, if it's teaching people, if it's entertaining people, um, if it's inspiring, inspiring people like the third one, if you're motivational about it, like, you know, come on, producers, like we can do this, right? Like, you know, whatever the fuck your thing is, you know, hone in on it and start making content, man. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a hard gig. Like, it is taxing, but I promise you, like, it can be rewarding. And if you like, if you treat it like a fun thing, like you can kind of get into it, you know what I mean? Let's be real. We're making music and we're getting paid. This is the life. This is the life. Let's go. For sure. So hopefully, this was at least somewhat valuable as far as like thinking outside of the box. Like, none of these are revolutionary ideas, but we've talked to a bunch of different producers. Henry's obviously fighting this fight daily of like, how do we fucking make money in this game when like streaming's just not paying shit? Ain't it? So drop a comment, let us know which idea maybe you hadn't thought of, and give us some more ideas. Give y'all y'all need to pick it up other ideas.

Exactly. Let's get the gears turning. For sure, for sure. So shout out all the producers out there, As always, please like, comment, and subscribe. That helps us a lot. And I love this episode, to be honest. This is good. Yeah. Until next week, man, what are we doing? Chugging our drinks. We're getting the fuck out of here. Peace, y'all.