In 2019 and the future, nobody really makes money from music. Even the music superstars who earn a lot from royalties and music sales. These income streams represent only a small percentage of the annual profits. Instead, they sign exclusive deals, go on tours, concerts, sell merchandise, and the list goes on.

There are no rules.

You can do whatever you wanna do. Don’t stick with what others did before. Rather try out new ideas that pop up in your head - or listen to the feedback of your fans.

Be innovative - be unconventional.

Don’t give a shit about the “normal” way. There’s no “normal” way in music anymore. And if there was one at a time, it was a niched-down version. Look at any musician of the past thirty years - big or small - you won’t find one identical success story.

Of course, you’ll find patterns. And I highly encourage you to get inspired by others. But that’s all.

Be a visionary.

Once you have more than one fan...

(That one fan is you btw)

...engage with them and create great products they thrive to buy. You are neither sales-y nor sleazy when you do. You run a business. A music business. And a business got revenue and expenses that result in an annual profit or loss.

Wanna be on the losing side?

Yeah, me neither.

So let’s find a way to make your music business even more profitable next year. And the best way to do that is by planning out your year. Not in detail, but in big-picture. 

First, take a pen and paper.

Right now.

Stop reading.

Do you have them?

Okay, so…

What do you want to achieve in 2020?

How many releases, how many new fans, how much more profit… think of everything that you’d like to reach in 2020.

Next, we need to break these things down.

For example, if you wanna get 1,000 new fans in 2020, what do you mean with fans? Youtube subscribers, Instagram followers, mailing list subscribers, buying customers? 

Let’s take a linear approach. 1,000 whatever per year mean 2.74 fans per day. But you don’t work each day, don’t you? So we assume you work 200 days after we subtract weekends, vacation, holidays, sick days, and random events.

This leaves us with 5 new fans per workday.

Five per day doesn’t sound that much, does it? Especially once you built systems that run for you.

Whatever it is you wanna achieve in 2020: Break it down so that you can measure it in small steps. The last you want is an unrealistic goal that deters you. And make sure it’s actually achievable. If 1,000 new sounds too much or too little, tweak that number. Maybe 200 is a better starting point, or 20,000.

If you’ve done this exercise, you should now see a much clearer path for 2020 in front of you. Now you only have to make it a habit to follow these small steps each and every (work)day.

Let me know what’s your plan for 2020. I’d love to give you feedback to help you turn your goal into reality.