Income

Last weekend at the ASCAP Music Expo at the Loews Hollywood Hotel I attended the Music Supervisor panel containing 5 music supervisors who actively place music in film and television.Over the course of my career, I've had about 30 TV placements (20 in the last year from my new re...

I'm sitting in on trumpet with another band at a gig tomorrow. The bassist (and head 'chart maker') just sent the horn section a Dropbox link to the charts and mp3s as a refresher to listen to before the gig.I clicked the mp3 link hoping it would open a player and I could just pl...

We're nearing the holidays and musicians have been asking me what rates they should pitch to buyers who request their services. Be it a corporate holiday party, rotunda in the mall or a corner in a restaurant. This is an entire business in it of itself. I have friends, well, one...

I outlined in Double Your Income...No Really why merch is so important and how it can directly lead to you becoming a full time musician. It's the way every one of my tours is financially successful. I should say that again. The reason I'm one of the few musicians who has made ev...

Scott Palahniuk wrote in (via the Request a Topic below) and asked about cover songs and how an opener should order their set. And Ian J wrote in asking: 'they ask you to play for three hours, but having that much original material is hard. Is it singer/songwriter suicide to sing...

I know basic US music copyright law. I mean, I'm no lawyer, but I studied it in college and just spent a couple hours on the US Copyright website to brush up. Technically as soon as you put your song in a fixed form (paper, cd, digital counts - performing it does not) then it's c...

You may have heard the Amanda Palmer story on how she made $19,000 in 10 hours (3 years before her $1.2 million Kickstarter) on Twitter. Or maybe you haven't, but it's quite impressive. But the thing that always bugs me about these stories - especially when they're titled 'Indie...

**The biggest news story in the music world last week was David Lowery's response letter to the NPR intern Emily White about the moral implications to not purchase music. This has been a massive debate ever since Napster hit over a decade ago. My post below was written before Low...

When you're on tour, merch is your #1 income generator. This can't be stressed enough. Believe it. Bands stress over their guarantees and door splits and turnouts. If you want to survive financially with your music you must understand the importance of merch sales and approach it...

I never had a backup plan. The moment you create a backup plan is the moment you accept that failure is an option. Convincing your parents that everything is going to be ok is still probably the most difficult thing a musician has to do - next to finding the right hair product....