”How exactly are independent musicians going to make money off of their music in 5 years?”

This is a very real, and frankly a very frightening question for anyone who wants to be a writing and touring artist. With the rise of production tools like Ableton Live and Pro Tools, creating at a professional level is more accessible than it’s ever been (by a long mile), but how you make decent money off of that music is becoming more and more shaky. Just look at what the landscape ahead is like:

Online streaming services continue to expand. The business model is unsustainable, but they will evolve, not die off.

Indie musicians make pennies off of streaming royalties, and that’s not likely to get a whole lot better any time soon.

CD’s are a couple years from being obsolete — mobile will see to that.

If CD’s are out, so goes the impulse buys at the merch table — a very important piece of income for musicians grinding it out on the road.

Things look bleak, yes. But there is a consumer movement now that the indie artist can take heart in. Our culture is very willing to support the causes we care about. We are eager to discover genuinely good work and be in on the ground floor of something special to us.

Finding your tribe

“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.”

- Seth Godin

Tribe, Fan Club, whatever you want to call it — the long-standing convention that Seth is talking about here is a powerful connection that artists can create with their fans.

If you can find your tribe — the people that love your work, that align with your ideals and with your cause — you will find a group of people that are very willing to put food on your table and good money in your pocket.

Enough concept talk. Let’s look at what monetizing this really looks like for indie musicians in 2015.

The membership and subscription model

The problem with relying on album sales for your income is the same as with any other product: getting someone to buy from you for the first time is much more difficult than getting a repeat customer to buy from you again. This is an obvious point, but it’s one that hits musicians especially hard — because it gets very expensive to create new ways for customers to make those repeat purchases.

Creating new music to sell is expensive, even for the DIY indie artists. You’re either investing around $10,000 in production costs, musicians, studio time, mastering, and graphic design, or you’re investing a lot of your own time in doing it all yourself. Most artists only have the capacity for one new album every couple of years. Even with a decent sized following and a lot of touring, that’s not enough when you have to first make back the cost to make the record.

That’s why the membership model becomes an intriguing answer for musicians. You are creating a way for people to support you on an ongoing basis that’s not only dependent on new records and merch.

The product is access

The question we ask for any membership site is always the same, why is it in your customer’s best interest to enter into a long-term buyer/seller relationship?

So in this case, why should people pay you every month to support your music instead of just buying the latest album and a t-shirt?

The answer is access. Access to you, to your music and to your process.

Remember what Seth Godin said about tribes? ”A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.”

Your tribe wants to be connected with you on a unique level — a level that other passersby aren’t getting. By opening up that access to what you’re creating, you are going to find people who are willing to pay $5-$10 per month. But in order to sustain that, you have to be consistent and you have to find ways to provide access that is valuable to your fans.

Here are some ideas on how you could do that:

1. Stream live “house-show” concerts

Using live streaming options like YouTube Live Events or Dacast, you can host private concerts from your home or a local event spot (at least once per quarter). Just be sure to invest a little money in some microphones. The quality doesn’t have to be perfect, but spending a couple hundred dollars on a good room mic is will keep it from sounding like a tin can.

2. Exclusive singles

Get into a rhythm of writing and recording a new song every month that you can send out to your members. Your tribe is much more interested in the exclusive access of these songs than it being perfect quality. Even a demo version of each song is going to hold a lot of value for them. At the end of each year, you have a new album to release.

3. Record a songwriting video journal

As you’re writing and recording new songs, create a video journal where you give “behind the scenes” access to what you’re working on — your thought process behind old and new songs, a sneak peak of a new chorus you’re working on, stuff that’s going on while you’re on the road. Just use your phone and upload the raw footage for members. You would be surprised at how enthusiastic fans are about this kind of content.

4. Early releases on new albums and music videos

You’ll find more and more perks to give your members, but an obvious one is early access to anything you’re creating. Being the first to get a listen to new songs or to a new video is very appealing to super fans.

5. Funding campaign for big projects

Most of your tribe just wants to support you. Knowing that part of the subscription revenue is going to fund a large project (new album, professional music video, the next tour) is icing on the cake for the fans that want to help you create awesome things and become more successful. And of course, you’ll keep them in the loop with your members-only “behind the scenes” updates.

The right tools for a simple, cheap, DIY membership site

Keep a close eye on Patreon, which is more of a funding platform for creators, but still offers a really easy way to start getting recurring support from fans.

If you would rather go the full membership route, where you have complete ownership and control over your audience, we do recommended a platform using WordPress, WooCommerce and WooCommerce Memberships. Their membership extension that they released this year is getting really great reviews, not to mention the simple integration with their ecommerce plugin.

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We first published this article on our site at memberup.co. Here are some other reads that may help you with this idea: