How do you make money in music? Here are some examples:

• A working musician in a function band or cabaret band, playing 3 or 4 regular gigs every week, could expect to earn around £2-300 per week on average.
   
• Social Clubs pay about £40-50 for an organist or drummer for 3 hours. A well-known vocalist on the club circuit could charge more than this.
   
•  A musician in a successful touring ‘tribute’ band, on the road all the time, could expect to earn £500 a week or more, depending on the size of venue played.
   
• A DJ can earn from nothing to £5000+ a night, depending on track record and popularity. Many DJ’s earn around £50-£100 per night.
   
• A recording artist earns money as a musician by performing music and by selling their records. They may also receive an advance on royalties from a record label, which is recoupable (they have to pay it back from their earnings). Its difficult to predict earnings, as it depends on the deal, the territory and the actual amount of records sold, but an artist would normally have to sell several hundred thousand albums before generating a reasonable income.
   
•  A songwriter earns money by having their compositions publically performed on radio, TV and in venues. They also get a share of any records sold which have their songs on (Mechanicals). Successful songwriters generally earn more money than any other type of musician. For example, every time a composition is played on BBC Radio 1 for 3 minutes, it generates a performance fee of around £50, most of which the songwriter can claim. However, remember that out of the 33,000 writer members in the Performing Rights society, only 5% make more than £10,000 a year, while half of them make less than £250.
   
• Commercial music composers earn one-off fees for commissioned music, such as title music for TV shows, film soundtracks etc. This could be several hundred pounds for a short jingle for incidental music on a TV/cable programme, up to six figure sums for top film composers. They also earn from public performances in the same way as songwriters. Sometimes they publish their works with music libraries, which TV companies use for many purposes. A successful commercial music composer can easily earn £50,000 a year.