Velvet Revolver’s Dave Kushner: “You don’t have to be a big famous name in order to earn enough to make a living”
Making it big as a musician is hard, and in the age of streaming even making money at all from your music is hard work, too. But, there are still some tried and tested, “old fashioned” ways of making revenue outside of streaming figures.
Dave Kushner has shared some advice on how artists can make money without needing to have “made it” in the traditional sense, and some pieces of work he says would earn him a nice cheque of three grand, sometimes six.
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In an interview with Rob’s School Of Music on YouTube, Kushner shares (via Ultimate Guitar), “There’s so many different ways to make a living. Not to say like, ‘Oh, you should be a musician!’ You should play music because you want to play music. Like I said, if you get to make a living, that’s the gravy.”
He adds, “I’ve written theme songs for reality shows and I’ve written theme songs for regular shows. I just did a thing with Fox Sports where I wrote these specific one-and-a-half pieces of music, where they were like, ‘Oh, we want something like this,’ you know? But it was generic in the sense that you split it up and you make stems, and then they can kind of put it together, take stuff out if they want, or whatever. But it just lives in their library.
“And that stuff has paid me on the back end. There’s that term ‘mailbox money’ where you just do it, and you get paid for it, and then you go along with your life. And then, all of a sudden, you get this little, nice surprise mailbox of… Now it’s on your phone, like direct deposit. But it used to be in the mailbox where you get a cheque and be like, ‘Oh, what? Three grand for those things I wrote?’”
Kushner says he’s also made money from writing for commercials, including one for the drink brand Mountain Dew, and also from composing original songs to be placed within indie movies.
While all this is great advice for both budding and established artists, there is one worry that is on Kushner’s mind: “I get a little nervous because of AI, and I figure they’re going to definitely take some of the less important songs. And it’s like, ‘Oh, we need an inspirational rock, 32nd track for this, you know, healthcare commercial.’ It would be easier to just do it with AI than have someone write it.”
Still, any opportunity to make money from your music is worth a shot, no? Watch more below:
The post Velvet Revolver’s Dave Kushner: “You don’t have to be a big famous name in order to earn enough to make a living” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
