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“To become successful from making music you must; Be Hungry To Make Music, Understand Who Your Audience Are, Be Optimistic at Every Turn, Form a Strong Professional Peer Group as Your Sounding Board” these are the words of digital strategist and influencer, Alajede Ibrahim.
The head of BMG media who is also known as Biyi The Plug shares some knowledge on how musicians can earn money from their craft.
Alajede noted that being a musician is not just about recording a song, dropping an album, selling it, earning money
from your sales and going to shows.
He said a self-made musician trying to make a living with music
must understand the kinds of royalty streams are out there.
“If you have ever been baffled with the
thoughts of How to become successful from making music, don’t worry, BiyiThePlug got you
covered”.
After all, he is a digital media strategist, Music curator, and influencer with over eight years of experience.
He started in 2012 and has worked with so many brands and personalities, the likes of Sean Tizzle, Olamide, Tiwa Savage, VectorThaViper, Fireboy, and many more. BiyiThePlug is the
head of BMG Media House; a CAC registered Brand & Music promotion and advertising agency in Lagos. The young music enthusiast has over 212k+ engaging followers on twitter and 45k+ on Instagram. BiyiThePlug can pull a trend and spark up a debate anytime. He’s versatile, vast in knowledge and also a conversationalist.
Ibrahim revealed that the first thing to understand is that there are two “sides” to every piece of
every music: the song itself and its rights to be published. The song is what you listen to MP3s,
vinyl, YouTube videos, CDs, and many more). The publishing side is concerned with the underlying musical composition – rhythms, notes, chords, lyrics, melodies, and more.
“If you write your song by yourself, record it, and release it to the public, you will then earn both for the song- and its publishing royalties. Music is used in various ways these days, and as music
technology and industry evolve new streams and royalties are created.
Here are some ways musician earns from royalties”.
YouTube recording royalties: YouTube makes money from its advertising partners, then shares
it with artists and music rights owners who help the site generate billions of views. YouTube
earns royalties through the use of the innovation called Content ID, which creates an audio
footprint of your account, ingests it into YouTube’s database, and tracks every time someone
uploads and broadcasts your music on Youtube. This implies that when someone you don’t
know, uploads a video with your music on YouTube without getting your permission. YouTube
will put ads on the video, and adjust it to your advantage.
Master-generated royalties: this is the royalty musical artists, and labels get every time their
master recording is downloaded (on iTunes, Beatport, and more) or streamed (on Spotify,
Rhapsody, etc.).
Publishing-generated royalties: the eminences of performance are gained when a melody is
communicated or played freely here and there.
