Venturing out as a solo musician can be daunting and often lonely. But when it comes to making money, going it alone has some perks.
How can you make money as a solo musician? If you’ve got talent, making money as a solo artist might be easier than you think. There are lots of performance and online income opportunities available to solo artists, including house concerts, festivals, and coffeehouses, teaching private lessons online or in person, and various ways to make money from your original and cover songs.
While there is no real “quick and easy” way to find success and start making money from your music skills, the process doesn’t have to be scary.
What You Need Before You Can Start Making Money as a Musician
- Talent
- Tested + Reliable Skill
- Recording(s) of your Skill (can be video or audio)
- Exposure +/or References (not always necessary, but it helps)
- BONUS: Your own instrument(s) and essential gear
What’s the Best and “Quickest” Way to Make Money as a Solo Musician?
The best and “quickest” way to make money as a solo musician is and will likely always be public performance.
I know you fellow introverts are quaking in your boots… but as a super hermit myself, I can tell you that you can get used to public performance, be good at it, and start making money performing pretty quickly (though probably not a lot at first).
How Can a Solo Musician Make Money from Performing?
- Music + Merch Sales – Besides potentially making money from the performance itself, live shows are the best way to encourage sales your merch and music recordings! As likely as it is for your music to be shared for free online, and unlikely it is that anyone will order physical copies online, it’s funny how many people want to but hard copies after hearing an artist perform. And when first starting out getting gigs, you might not be paid at all for performing, and so having a physical recording (CD, EP, Flash Drive, etc.) of your music to sell at the show is really helpful.
- Direct Payment, Tips or “Donations” for the Performance Itself – It can take a little while before you start snagging gigs that will pay you for your performance, and ironically, you might find the best paying gigs for solo artists are often the smallest ones, or, the most “boring” ones. You might also find that the bigger the gig, the less likely a venue will be to compensate you as a small artist, and you may even be asked to sell tickets and promote the show in other ways to justify them giving you a shot (after trying this once, I never took another gig like this, and thankfully didn’t need to).
- Other Compensation (Free Meals, Hotel Stay, etc.)
Other Ways Public Performance is Helpful to a Solo Artist
- Exposure
- Practice
- A Chance to “Sell Yourself” as an Unknown
The Best Way to Get Gigs as an Unknown Artist
Start with an open mic. Or an open coffeehouse, or church event, or anywhere where people can hear you and see how you perform live.
Not only is playing an open mic a good way to hone your performance skills and get rid of some newbie jitters before attempting to book some “real” gigs, but you just might be surprised by some offers to do gigs, or collaborate with other artists.
If you’re already feeling pretty confident in your performance skills, you might want to be intentional about the type of open mic you attend, and focus on the ones that you already know are a good fit for you and your style. For instance, if you’re a folky singer-songwriter, try to find open mics in your area that cater to that genre, and have a good reputation. This will be the best way for you to start networking with the people who are already likely to appreciate your sound, and if you play an open mic that’s part of a venue, it might boost your chances of getting booked at the venue. You might meet some other artists you’d like to collaborate with as well.
Open mics are exactly how I “fell” into booking my own shows; before I even tried to intentionally book myself, I just played at a few open mics for fun, and had people coming up to me asking if I’d like to play or collaborate with them for such and such.
Then from there, it was typical to have more offers at those shows. My first handful of “real” shows happened this way, and not only did it give me more confidence that I could make more of an effort to book myself, but it gave me some real experience to better pitch myself to more venues.
When and When Not to take an Unpaid (or Low-Paying) Gig
Taking an unpaid gig is not always a bad thing, and in fact it can sometimes be a great thing! For instance, I once got a $100 stipend to play 2 songs in front of 5000 people at a huge music festival (it was a performing songwriter contest, to be exact), and then a longer set during an intimate “writers in the round” performance for a few hundred people. While I didn’t make much from the festival itself, it was an invaluable exposure and networking opportunity, that actually ended getting me an invite to do an impromptu house concert… where I made $500 from 20 people! (More on house concerts below!)
That said, contrary to popular opinion, I firmly believe that you shouldn’t take just any offer that comes your way, even as a brand new artist. Nor should you spend all of your energy trying to book crappy gigs that will likely only lead to more crappy gigs.
When you’re starting out, it’s tempting to take any kind of opportunity that presents itself, because any kind of exposure is good exposure, right?
Ummm, I beg to differ.
First of all, if you’re an introvert like me, you have to really manage your energy level, and gauge whether each opportunity will be worth the time and energy put in, or just drain and discourage you.
I also believe that if you don’t set some standards for yourself and the type of reputation you want to have as an artist, no one will do it for you. If you set yourself up to play covers at bars (nothing wrong with that), you’ll likely attract more bar gigs, but have trouble getting booked at a more artist-friendly venue, and vice versa.
Before accepting any gig (paid or unpaid), I think it’s important to consider the type of shows you want to be playing, and whether an opportunity will likely help or hinder you getting to where you want to be. I personally never wanted to be known as a bar or cover artist, though I did sometimes incorporate covers into my shows. So, I focused almost exclusively on artist-centered opportunities that would allow me to play my originals and, in most cases, be appreciated for it. And while I accepted plenty of unpaid opportunities, they generally provided some great quality exposure with the type of audience I wanted to attract, and/or an opportunity to sell my merch and promote myself further, or they were just for a good cause I wanted to support (like a benefit concert). Here are some things I always considered before accepting a show:
- Is the audience meant to pay attention, or will I be background music?
- What’s the reputation of the venue? Classy? Dodgy? (Actually look for reviews)
- What kind of artists generally perform there? Do I respect them? Am I similar or complementary to them?
- What does the venue expect from me, and how much time and energy will it take me to prep?
- Will I be paid by the venue, and how much?
- Will I get some good exposure with the right kind of audience?
- Am I allowed to sell my merch, and if so, what would that look like?
- Do I generally feel this will be worth my time and energy?
Why House Concerts are the BEST way for [most] Solo Musicians to Perform
After playing all kinds of random gigs with varying pay rates and levels of exposure, by far the best paying and best overall experiences I’ve had performing have been house concerts!
Ironically, they have generally been the easiest to “book” as a solo artist, especially when starting out.
I actually hosted my very first house concert myself, in my own home, for family and friends. I wasn’t really thinking of it as a house concert at first and had no idea if anyone would actually want to come. But people did want to come… so many that it actually turned into a 2-night event, because we could only fit about 30 people at a time.
It was when I was still brand new to playing my music publicly, and could barely sing and play 10 of my own songs consistently. In fact, the main reason I wanted to host this concert was to practice getting through my first 30-minute set in front of some friendly faces. I had very low expectations, and as a new college grad, was shocked when we had about 60 people come out over the 2 winter nights, almost $600 in “tips” and tons of great photos and video footage.
From there I moved on to other shows and concerts in other people houses, but I could see myself making a self-hosted concert a regular occurrence, and being rather successful with it.
In general, house concerts just tend to have the best, most intimate and friendly vibe of any kind of gig you could get, because they are generally so small and intimate that both you and the audience can just feel it’s a special time. And the people who come to a house concert at coming specifically to hear you play, and they will sit quietly at attention and do so. For me, though they generally have the smallest audience, they have generally paid extremely well, even compared to much larger gigs.
Getting booked for house concerts, again, mostly came about naturally for me, with people coming up to me after a show and asking if I wanted to do a house concert. However, I also successfully booked some house concerts with friends and fam, and with ConcertsInYourHome.com.
The Next Best Gigs for Solo Performers
After House Concerts, the next best types of opportunities I’ve had as a solo artist have been Music Festivals and Competitions (generally don’t pay much if anything, but are the best exposure for musicians and can lead to other opportunities), Local Festivals and Hotels (generally pay pretty well — up to a few hundred dollars for a pretty short set or two — and exposure can be pretty valuable as well), Coffeehouses (generally no or little pay, but can do well selling merch and networking)
Booking Yourself as a Solo Performer
There are lots of ways and suggestions out there for booking gigs for yourself, including directly contacting a venue, and contacting them again and again until you get a response. Personally, other than opportunities that came about naturally, I always had the best luck using a service like Sonicbids to help me find and apply to new opportunities. While it does cost some money, I found it much less stressful than trying to locate, “cold-email” and keep track of correspondence with random venues on my own. It was often difficult to find each venue’s booking policy, if they even had one, and juggle all of their individual rules and steps for even being considered. And as a new artist I quickly learned that most venues didn’t want to hear directly from an artist, and especially not from an artist that wasn’t already well-established and able to bring in their own crowd. While this was also often the case with Sonicbids or Reverbnation, venues posting on there are often intentionally trying to make it simpler for new artists to apply. I was personally surprised how many “there’s no way I’m getting this but let’s try anyway” opportunities actually did accept me as a newer artist, even though I was unable to bring a crowd with me to most locations. Sonicbids is how I ended up playing at almost all of the festivals and songwriting competitions I’ve been a part of.
