How do music industry work

You could teach theory or a specific instrument. If you like encouraging people, sharing knowledge, and practicing patients, a career teaching music could be right for you. For example, teaching in a school will likely require more certifications than going down a self-employed route. Be aware that it may take some time to build up a profitable clientele. Schools are supported largely by property taxes so schools in wealthier communities are typically able to pay more.

Your job here is to get the band onstage. Booking agents facilitate a lot of the logistics around live performances, including securing concert venues, negotiating deals, arranging technical equipment, and hospitality.

What to Learn: A degree in music management, marketing, or accounting would help you prepare you for a career as a booking agent. Begin working in event promotion and administrative roles to understand the foundational elements of booking shows. A music publicist works closely with media outlets, marketers, and venues.

It can be tough to break through to journalists in a media landscape that is increasingly cutting staff and eliminating outlets that cover music. What to Learn: This is a communications and marketing-based role, so start there. Learn the basics of public relations strategy and develop your people skills.

Arm yourself with on-the-ground experience as well as writing, crisis communications, and publicity campaign development. You might also want to learn about music careers in marketing and social media. They can also write and arrange recorded or live music across genres. Other genres, you might have more success in this endeavor. Also, understand you will likely be rejected…a lot!

After all, there was a record label, executive, or person who rejected U2, Madonna, The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Lady Gaga and countless others who eventually found success after meeting initial rejection. Social media is one tool to use to help you achieve this goal. You can let followers know you are dropping a new song on a certain date, for example.

Be your own public relations person at least until you can hire a professional to take over. However, even when you can afford to outsource this, you might want to keep doing your own social network communication. Just consider the hugely successful artists who still tweet their own thoughts out and have thousands upon thousands of fans watching their every move as a result.

Talk about brand building! For the majority of times when somebody listens to a song, both types of copyright kick in, generating two sets of royalties that are paid to the respective parties. Sometimes labels work with agents that can license bigger catalogs all at once, saving time and trouble but wedging in an extra fee. The specific percentage payouts within these deals depends on the type of service and the negotiating power of all the names involved.

Putting music in film and television and commercials, a. A fee is paid upfront, and royalties are also paid once the particular film or television show has been distributed and broadcast.

The process is further different for radio services, though, which typically use blanket, buffet-style licenses that determine payment rates on mass scale. That difference — which the music industry largely considers an unfair loophole — means that whenever a song is played over the airwaves, it only makes money for its writers, not artists. Live events are quickly shaping up to be the most lucrative space for musicians in the digital-music era, and for good reason: As listeners become inundated with cheap access to music provided by streaming services, dedicated music fans crave more intimate experiences with their favorite artists.

While album sales dwindle and streams may only pay out fractions of a cent at a time, live shows — be it tours, festivals or one-off concerts — are commanding some of the highest ticket prices ever. There are a ton of music performance types for recordings, each generating different types of royalties with different rules, regulations, and companies that help them along. Services and platforms come in all shapes and sizes, and they all can generate different types of royalties with different calculations.

Again, please remember that this article is just talking about recorded music. Live performances i. An easy way to think of those two groups is like this: if it is a performance-based service, then performance royalties will be generated and paid to PROs; otherwise, it is a non-performance-based service.

Where does that leave us? This is pretty exciting About The Author. Isaac Shepard. Isaac Shepard is a full-time independent musician, pianist, and composer. He is also the owner of Shepard Audio, an indie record label and publisher. His music reached 1 on several iTunes charts in the US and in many other countries, and has been streamed hundreds of millions of times worldwide on music services such as Pandora, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube.

He has published dozens of albums and has written music across many genres for TV, commercials, short films, web videos, and for over 15 video games. Isaac lives in Orange County, California. With three decades of music experience, he created TheMusicMaze.

How does the music industry work? Give me the high-level overview! June View Archives. All rights reserved. Record Label. Performing Arts PA Copyright. Sound Recording SR Copyright.