People don’t want to buy music anymore. Okay, maybe that is a bit of an overstatement, but that is the trend music industry is facing more and more often. There are so many alternative ways for music consumers to listen to music they like that buying records and even paying for downloading isn’t appealing anymore. You can go to pandora.com or last.fm to listen to your favorite bands and discover new music, you can download your favorite music from peer-to-peer and BitTorrent networks illegally, and now you can also go to spiralfrog.com and listen to ad supported music for free legally. So, you still want to make living with music? Then don’t try to sell it directly, there are other ways to generate revenue.

First of all, use your recorded songs rather as a promotion tool than a revenue source. A while back I made an article listing the best music promotion platforms on the Internet, check it out here and use the list. I’m still updating it as I find more noteworthy services. As for making a living as a musician nowadays I would say that the best way is playing live gigs. That is still untouchable for music pirates and you can’t download the experience from peer-to-peer networks.

Another good way to generate some income, which is often left unexploited by many independent artists, is trying to license your music to games, commercials, movies etc. There aren’t so many music licensing services online, but there are some. Try Pump Audio for starters, they seem to be the most established online music licensing service and they work with many high profile ad agencies, TV networks and production companies from all over the world. YouLicense is another good licensing service and definitely worth a try. They take only 9% commission from each licensing deal, which is much lower commission than with Pump Audio. However, the service is not as established as Pump Audio, which might mean less licensing deals and lower income per deal. Magnatune has also a licensing scheme for indie artists, but it might not pay as well as the other services since they have standardized licensing prices depending on various factors. Normally music publishers negotiate the licensing price depending on the case in question, which might lead to higher revenues for the artist.

I have a friend, who plays in a metal band that is signed to a big indie label and I asked him how much he makes money with his band. He said that not even close enough to make a living. Revenue from record sales was basically nothing due to fairly high recoupable advances that were used to produce the records. However, he said that selling merchandise was generating some revenue and the sales were growing as the band’s reputation grew. I have seen many MySpace artists, who have many fans, but don’t make a penny with their music. It’s at least worth a try to create a brand out of yourself and try to sell merchandise.

So, my fellow readers, do you have any other ideas for indie artists and bands to make some money? It can be something that is possible now or it can be something that technology doesn’t even allow yet.