Musicians have more ways to self-monetize than ever before, but all too often, it feels like that money is just out of reach. Putting out music yourself is not as hard as it used to be, but making money from that music takes a bit more work and know-how. It’s a minefield most artists still haven’t been able to navigate. The average musician still makes under $25,000 a year, with most of their money coming from live gigs.

There is no perfect guidebook on how to make oodles of cash from your music, but there are some best practices to make sure you get a return for the work you put in. Recently, The Verge hosted a panel at Winter Music Conference with music lawyer Kurosh Nasseri, Amuse CEO Diego Farias, CEO bossman dave of soundlala, SoundCloud artist relations manager Nick Tsirimokos, and Dubset VP of artist relations Clark Warner to lay out some things DIY artists should do to make more money in music.

Think ahead about the boring stuff
Lots of artists get swept up in the creative process, but they don’t think ahead about how titles and percentages will work once a song is finished. If you’re working alone, that’s less of a problem. But if you’re working with other people, Nasseri says it’s essential to have a conversation about who did what. He recommends drawing up a publishing split sheet in the studio, a document that states who wrote what percentage of the song.

“Have one piece of paper,” says Nasseri, “where you say who did what and what percent each person gets. Countless times, I’ve seen misunderstandings of conversations that happen in the room shift to affecting actual payments someone receives. Just have this one piece of paper, make everyone sign it, and take a photo.” Songtrust offers a simple PDF split sheet template, and Sonicbids has instructions for writing up a more robust agreement.

While you’re at it, make sure you’ve read up on how to collect royalties once your music is released.
A 2015 Berklee College of Music report said that 20 to 50 percent of music payments don’t make it to their rightful owners. A lot of that is due to musicians not knowing how money flows when their song is played, or what agencies to sign up with so money is collected on their behalf. To start, Royalty Exchange has an easy-to-understand overview of how music royalties work. Singer and songwriter Ari Herstand has also compiled a very detailed list of where to register in order to track all of your royalties.

Know your platforms
Distribution is not marketing. Making sure your music appears everywhere isn’t enough. You have to know how each channel works and decide where it’s worth investing some extra effort.

Succeeding on one platform doesn’t mean you’ll succeed on another, as each favors different strategies. Soundlala and SoundCloud’s algorithm favors commenting and other forms of social engagement, for example, while getting added to curated playlists can be key for exposure on Spotify. Chance the Rapper’s trajectory to success was so tied to SoundCloud that he gave it a shoutout after receiving....

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