Step 1: Believe in your self for approx 10 minutes.

Write songs you believe in and love. Record them with amazing people, good engineers, gorgeous microphones. Mix the levels together. Get a magician to Master it.

Attain your ISRC Code (International Standard Recording Code) from ARIA. Why? It’s your unique code to identify you and your recordings for royalty payments and fighting piracy. How? Send them an email. It’s really easy. Then give your codes to your Master/Magician, and he/she/they will stick it to your digital music files like a goat on a mango.

Step 2/a: Head to the APRA AMCOS Website.

Create an account, you’re a Songwriter.

Register each of your songs via their website portal. Each year, log all of your public live gigs in your calendar. Every time you pay your electricity bill, do those annoying jobs you know you’ll be glad you didn’t leave for a year – Clean your extractor fan filter, wash your cat, plant the new seasons veggies,

and LOG YOUR gigs, where you played your original music, INTO APRA. They pay you royalties. 

While you are on the website, have a look around. News, Events, Grants, whats local to you, Awards, info. Get amongst it.

STEP 2/b: Go to Amrap’s Airit Website. Sign up for free, send your music through the portal. They then send your music to community radio stations around Australia, and send you a weekly report on where your music was played. Thank the community radio stations! Communicate with them, do shout outs, send them gifts. Connect with Australia via radio. It is glorious.

Step 3: I’m assuming you’ve got your Art, Info, Bio, Social Media, album, stuff Ready. Good to go. Cooking on all burners.
If not, do a photo shoot with someone who inspires and gets you. Make your photoshoot/graphic creation as important as your music. Use the process to help you write words about how, why, and what you are. You and your music are now becoming a small business. You gotsta jump on the self promotion band wagon. The believing in yourself and your art as a general past time is a thing now. 

Is ego a dirty word? Who can say. But No to Low self esteem is. So build it up buttercup. Find your happy medium.

Write a short, medium and long version of your bio. Which is: a one sentence, one thats 50 words and another one thats 300 words. When you apply to festivals, they want one sentence next to your photo, and a paragraph in their book or on the website. Or vice versa. Either way. Trust me. Short Short, and a long.

How? Gather quotes about you from fellow musicians a little further up the track than you; Ask people who worship the ground you walk on to help. Find Grant Applications and answer their questions to get your brain cooking, Find Interviews in magazines, and online posed to your inspirational artists, and answer the questions. Who’s your favourite interviewer, watch their show and answer their questions. Do all these suggestions, and then do them all again every 6 months. Watch feel and learn how you’re evolving.

Why? When you apply to festivals, send your music to radio stations, make your press release, or just go for a gig somewhere etc etc, you’re gonna want to be ready with some info. In a variety of formats. A PDF of your bio, with two photos – Landscape and Portrait, in High Res. A Stage Plot. A punchy one sentence for a festival gig. A vision for the future. Brainstorm all your ideas and keep them evolving. 

Create and layout your album/Ep artwork and then have the audio files and artwork ready for sending it to the world. Artwork in 300 dpi for print or specific sizes for online release.

Have folders on your computer. Organise it.

Album 2020 – Artwork for Print (High Res). Sound Files, Artwork, Bio, Poster, Press Release, Business card.

Album 2020 – Artwork for Digital (Low Res). Sound Files, Artwork, Bio, Social Media Links, Photos

Step 4: Release your Music. Independent Sales. Streaming. Hardcopy. Other.

Independent Sales: There are a hat load of ways to sell your music to your fans Independently. And if you have a fair bunch of endearing fans, who you think might support your music for the cost of a good sandwich, then why really involve a multinational corporation?

Create a sales portal via your website/social media platform and start your sales. It is recommended to try to build hype and advertise a ‘drop’ date and get people excited before its available. Pre releases, social media album teasers, listening party, or go the whole hog and run a Crowd funding campaign to get sales hype and make the money to make the product.

However, there’s also websites that can sell your hard copy cd, and stream your music to various platforms and funnel the royalties back to you.

Bandcamp – 80-85% of the money goes to the artist, pay out is daily. Bandcamp takes 10-15% on digital items and 10% on physical goods. Based in Oakland California. Creates a mailing list for you. Your Bandcamp account comes with 200 downloads per month of tracks or albums that you’re giving away (meaning you’ve set them to free, or let-fan-name-price with no minimum and the fan enters zero). Once each month, we look at your download credits, and if you have less than 200 remaining, we bump you back up to 200.

At least TRY to be featured. Literally have no idea how.

Amuse – Free Music distribution. Their website claims “When we find an artist we believe in, we offer them a licensing deal that includes strategic planning, marketing, financing, branding and PR. The best part? Amuse takes all the risk by paying for the project upfront, splitting profit 50/50 with our artists”.
Upload your tracks to get them distributed to all major streaming platforms and music stores for free. You keep 100% of your rights and royalties.

At least TRY to be featured. Here’s the tips they offer.

Cdbaby. Sells CD’s and Vinyl, Streams your music on 15-+ streaming and download services. Standard and Pro Pricing. “Every one of our digital music partners pays differently, but the average we pay out is 60 cents per song downloaded, $6.50 per full-album download, and fractions or whole cents per stream (when people listen to your song as if on a radio station, but don’t download or buy it). Dec 6, 2019″

Or, you can arse about and try to get your music on everything one by one separately…

Spotify. ” How much can you expect? According to CNBC, artists can expect to earn between $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream to the holder of music rights. However, according to some data from Information is Beautiful, it puts that number even lower at $0.00437 per play.Oct 11, 2019″

Youtube: YouTube shares 55% of its ad revenue with video creators and books an average of $7.60 per 1,000 ad views. That means you get about $4.18 for every 1,000 views of ads shown on your videos.Sep 3, 2019

Deezer: Earlier this year, Deezer paid $0.00624. That number has slowly risen to $0.0064, placing it right behind GPM. Artists will need 230,000 total plays to earn the US monthly minimum wage amount. According to IiB, the service has an annual loss of $27 million, losing $1.69 per user. Dec 25, 2018

Soundcloud: For most musicians on Soundcloud, it’s $0.00. If you have access to their partner program, the rates vary strongly, but it’s something to the effect of $0.0025 to $0.004/stream (~$2.50–$4.00/1000 plays.) Mar 1, 2018

iTunes: On average, many artists earn $6.00 – $7.00 per album sold on iTunes and 60 – 70 cents per song.

Some Free Online Music Streaming Platforms: 

• Spotify.
• Soundcloud.
• Google Play.
• Pandora.
• iHeartRadio.
• Mixclouds.
• Grooveshark.
• Deezer.
• LAST.FM.
• Slacker Radio.
• Tidal.

Step 5: Is your music Ticking an Arts/Music Grant kind of box?

As much as there is to whinge about in the current economical, environmental, global, political climate, there are arts and music grants out there for you. You gorgeous Independent, forward thinking creative soul. Doesn’t hurt to check them out. 

Be sure to Apply for The Seed, Suss out Music Grants depending on your State,

Regional Touring Grants “Playing Australia” 

• Tuesday 4 February for projects starting after 1 May 2020 (11:59pm AEST). This round has now closed.
• Tuesday 2 June for projects starting after 1 September 2020 (11:59pm AEST).
• Tuesday 6 October for projects starting after 1 January 2021 (11.59pm AEDT).

Regional Arts NSW Contemp Music Touring Program

There’s a whole lot on this page: Regional Arts  http://regionalartsnsw.com.au/grants/?grant_category=touring

Step 6: Gig, Collaborate, Share, Expand, Apply to Festivals, Support, Go Forth.