Audiomack ARTIST GUIDE
Artists 101
How do I make money from streaming?
As an artist, making money may not be your number-one priority, but you will need to earn revenue from your music if you hope to turn it into a career. This brings us to DSPs. Digital Service Providers (DSPs) are online stores like iTunes or a streaming service like Audiomack, which hosts digital releases. Typically, your publisher or distributor will collect your royalties and distribute your revenue to you based on your contract. To put it simply, making money from streaming involves creating music, releasing that music onto DSPs, and attracting listeners to stream that music. You’ll want a fanbase who know where to find your work, and who are willing to engage with your every release so your streams—and revenue—go up.
“Making money solely from streaming is about creating scale, but for developing artists without many fans, using streaming to drive other revenue might actually be more important. Regardless, you must create a listener base by releasing music regularly and consistently, giving fans new opportunities to listen and engage. Also, remember that streaming platforms are discovery tools, places where potential fans can find you. Make the two work together by optimizing your profile and finding ways to engage with fans so that once they find you, they not only stream your music, but connect off-platform where you can monetize them elsewhere.”
—Mark Tavern, Music Industry Educator
“To get paid from streaming, there’s two copyrights in every piece of music. There’s the master recording and the underlying composition. There may be a songwriter, who’s totally different from the actual performer. The songwriter would hold all the publishing and the performer/record label would own the master recording.
“The way you get paid from a distributor, is you fill out all the information they ask of you. They collect all your streams from DSPs, and they compile it, and they pay you out on a set schedule.”
—Adam Freedman, Entertainment Lawyer
