back at it again how to release music
more affordably forgot to add this part
but if for those that don’t know me my
name is Nick I’m an independent artist
with give or take 4 million monthly
listeners on Spotify and I just like to
share my thoughts on growing as an
artist hope you like the video in
The cheapest way to release
general I just think a lot of artists
pay too much to get songs
out whether that be paying too much for
an instrumental paying too much for
mixing and mastering giving up too much
much of a percent on the master side the
the streaming Revenue side to whoever by
far the cheapest way to release would be
to own the means of production right so
you record yourself at home you have a
Macbook or just a computer a doll an
interface and a microphone record
yourself at home and obviously the
cheapest cheapest would be to mix and
mass yourself produce for yourself and
that’s all just just skill stacking
right me personally I don’t produce for
myself um in the grand scheme of things
I don’t mix and master I record
myself um but I’m still able to release
very
affordably and I think like a practical
tip would be just to use like Royal
royaltyfree
Loop um services like splice or waves I
use splice a ton here’s a rear World
scenario I made a song called good
enough on a splice Loop and I didn’t put
any drums on or anything I just looped
the splice it was guitar I looped the
splice Loop for however long the song
was 3 minutes and I just recorded vocals
over that and released it and that song
I released years ago it’s not one of my
best performing songs but over the years
it’s
done
200,000 give or take 200 200,000 streams
on it so that song that cost
me $0 for the beat because I well I $9 a
month or whatever splice costs and then
$50 for the mix and
master uh I was able to release the song
and it did over2 200,000 streams to as
of today and that’s you know just
under that’s probably like 750 bucks uh
so in my mind that’s a great investment
right a song that you released or that I
was a with release for under
$60 uh has made me$ 750 bucks so I made
$700 profit off of a song and I know you
probably heard that and said where can I
get $50 mix and
master so for me obviously I was just
reaching out to people and say hey what
do you charge blah blah blah and
obviously some people will be charging a
ton of money some people will be
charging thousands of dollars for mixes
and
Masters um some people would charge $300
$500 but there’s people out there who
are willing to work with you so if you
just reach out to a bunch of people and
say you could even start with hey my
budg is 50 bucks for a mix can you work
with
it um most people probably say no but
you will find someone who is willing to
someone who’s building their career
currently who wants your
business and you’re not you know de
devaluing or undervaluing the producers
time
or sorry the the engineer’s time if they
agree to it that means that they’re okay
with it and one thing that I did to in
order to
like kind
of make it worth my Engineers time was I
prepped my songs really well so that
means I prepped my vocals well I
Consolidated my vocals into less vocal
tracks you I’m not sending 9 10 vocal
tracks over 20 vocal tracks over I’m
sending two three four vocal
checks um making it really easy for the
engineer to work with I wasn’t sending
beat stems I was sending an MP3 of the
beat MP3 of the beat with two three
vocal tracks and you have an engineer
who you know knows what they’re doing
they can fly through that and then one
other thing that I was doing was I was
giving them a lot of work so some months
I would give them 15 20 songs to mix 10
songs to mix then you know it doesn’t
matter so if if the engineer knows that
you’re going to be coming back
frequently and my engineer um created a
vocal preset for my vocal and for uh the
way that I was consistently delivering
them the vocal so the vocal always sound
the same from my end they can for the
most part just apply the preset and
that’s you know 80% of the work is done
right there immediately preset on 80% of
their jobs done so if you’re an engineer
and you’re able to mix songs in 20
minutes mix and master done 20 30
minutes you’re more willing to take 50
bucks especially if you know that you’re
going to be getting 10 mixes a month 15
mixes a month and and it allowed me to
create faster because I wasn’t having
to uh learn mixing and mastering and
Engineering so I was able to create much
faster which was enabling me to release
much faster um Etc
I’m going to change locations for the
producer talk or like the how to get
Beats for
How to get beats
Less so autofocus better not mess with
me man as far as a producer goes there’s
also producers that are willing
to work with you for Less um there’s
producers who are just starting their
career there’s I mean one one thing that
I was doing early on was I was waiting
for people to post beat sales and I
would just buy a ton of
Beats so so for example somebody would
post Black Friday beat sale on my
SoundCloud exclusive beats 75 bucks a
beat right and then I would hit up the
same producer and be like hey would you
bundle you know 10 beats for 500
bucks and you know that’s 50 bucks a
beat so instead of 75 bucks a beat now
I’m getting them 50 bucks a beat
exclusively I got 10 beats for 500
bucks and I record on those and I own
them 100% so when I release them I’m
getting 100% of the master back to me so
at that time you know I got a $50 beat I
got a $50 mixing master I’m releasing
songs for 100 bucks and and that was the
way I was doing it for a long time until
obviously I you know you get into a
rhythm with a producer and so you know
right now I currently I give a split of
the master uh
because uh I’ve built a relationship a
friendship with my
producer um and I obviously producers
always should get their publishing and
and get their whatever but people like
different producers run their businesses
differently different artists run their
businesses differently so I was always
looking to purchase my instrumentals
exclusively so that I would Own
100%
um so that’s like some and then and then
if you like obviously the cheapest way
to release on a budget for your
production side would be to
use places like a splice you find a loop
you like and then you can write a song
on it and you can find
a you can find a you can like a loop a
guitar Loop you find a guitar Loop and
let’s say it’s 100 BPM beats per minute
and then you go in and you type drum
Loop and you put exact BPM 100 BPM you
can find drum Loops that plug right into
that fit perfectly with your guitar Loop
you can technically create like that
right right obviously a better
product a better song is going to
come by using someone who knows more
about producing and knows what they’re
doing and if you don’t feel like
spending the time to learn it for me it
was always about how fast can I create
this you know how or how efficient can I
make this process how efficiently can I
get my songs mixed and mastered how
efficiently can I get a song from con uh
from idea conception whatever to product
and release or at least put in a folder
where it’s available for me to release
if I want to damn I don’t know if I ever
hit
record N I did we good baby and
Equipment
then obviously Distributors right like a
Dro kid that’s probably your cheapest
distributor your most affordable one I
mean if you’re thinking like equipment
right like maybe you don’t have the
funds currently to purchase to be able
to record at home or whatever your phone
is enough like your iPhone is enough and
I know you’re
thinking like shut up
Nick but for real there’s an artist Paul
Russell Paul Russell Who currently has a
like I think his song’s on Billboard or
something like it’s charting on
Billboard um I’ve made a few songs with
him in the
past
um great guy his song is little boo
thing uh I forget how it goes man
dang
yeah I forget how it goes anyway his
early stuff he was recording everything
into his phone his microphone was his
phone microphone I think he was just
recording right into voice memos and he
would send that as his vocal for
mix and you wouldn’t be able to tell the
difference I’ve actually wanted to kind
of test that Pablo actually asked me my
my engineer asked me to test that worth
a song as well to to record something on
my phone and send it to them and get it
mixed and release it and no one would
know the
difference I think people just overthink
equipment often you know the best uh the
best equipment you have is what’s
available to
you I’m still recording on uh sm7b a
Focus right
scarlet and you know my MacBook very
cheap setup considering all the options
that are
available but I like it because it’s
easy it’s
portable it’s tried and true it works
there’s no
headache you know it’s just something
that
I’m used to and I can create easier I
want my process to be easy I don’t like
headaches in my setup process and my
recording
process I don’t like heada headaches in
any part of the process so anything that
can remove a headache for
me is a is a win in my book I guess a
recap would be set your budget just make
sure you’re setting a budget for your
releases kind of in a way like obviously
at the very beginning you won’t be able
to do this if you don’t have
listeners but a general rule of thumb
that I always used was like if I’m
releasing a song for 150 bucks right I
can get a song out for 150 bucks how
many streams do I need on that song in
order to break even and I want to keep
my upfront cost so low that my Roi is
just incredible my return on my
investment so once I’ve paid off what it
cost me to release this song the rest is
profit so for example 150
bucks man I guess I’ll just do the math
it’s not going to be exact but I’m just
trying to see how many streams you need
to make 150 bucks it’s about 40,000
streams I think about 40 to 50,000
streams you can make your 150 bucks
back so if you keep that in mind it cost
me $150 to release this song I need
50,000 stream streams to break even and
then everything after I get 50,000
streams I’m making money on this
investment that was always how I was
approaching it I wanted my upfront cost
to be a realistic amount for something I
could make
back and then obviously make money on
moving forward but at least break even
right so I wasn’t in the negative but if
you’re just starting you’re obviously
going to be in the negative for a while
that’s just the name of the game you
have to be willing to uh take a l for a
while before you start seeing you know
it’s just like any business you know you
invest if you start any business you’re
going to be in the hole on the day of
opening you know you open a brick and
mortar you’re going to be in the hole
you’re going to be in debt the day of
opening cuz you invested in the you know
the equipment you invested in the
employees you whatever it doesn’t take a
lot of money like as a musician our
overhead is so low it can be so low
compared to other
businesses um and paying more for a mix
doesn’t necessarily mean a Better Mix
paying more for a beat doesn’t
necessarily mean a better
beat you can get great quality stuff for
affordable price and like I said it’s
you just take care of the people who are
taking care of you so as I was making
more money getting more streams I
started paying my producer more my
engineer more you I don’t know I think
uh I think a lot of people overthink the
process they think more expensive means
better and that’s not necessarily the
case you can um create great things on a
budget little to no money yeah I think
that’s that’s pretty much it for
creating and releasing music on a
budget or at least more
affordably and as always uh I wrote a