A full-time job as a music producer for a major label sounds like peanuts.
But how does it compare? As a writer for Inverse at the time, I found it to be about $8K a year; $30K for a gig as a music video director for a small indie release; and a whopping $50K a year as a full-time music producer for a major label.
A typical songwriter’s budget per year is about 5X that of a music video director. I was talking with some high-profile musicians about their production costs and they all came in at about 9X. So even though they made less, their incomes were probably closer to 1.1X what someone like Drake or Meek Mill makes.
As it turns out, musicians aren’t the only ones using YouTube to make a living. Here are a couple of other examples, from indie artists to big-name artists:
How many views can you gain per month on YouTube? In March, YouTube announced that it had grown to 1.6 billion monthly active users. According to the company, they account for 90% of all video views.
How much does YouTube allow artists to make per month? Just under 8¢ per month per YouTube ad. That’s a rate that’s almost 1/10 of the amount YouTube offers per ad.
What does a musician make on a song per day? A musician in New York made more than $11K per day on YouTube. I’m guessing he’s got a decent ear for music and knows how to make money. He probably does a lot of touring as well.
These examples weren’t included in the numbers, but there weren’t many. You may wonder what artists are making per video, so I went back to the numbers and looked at a number of artists that did have video ads. As it turns out, musicians (and a few other types of artist) can make a pretty high per video rate. Here are the top 10 performers from each category from Ad Age:
YouTube
Video Views Per Video – artists
Actress
Actress
Film/TV Actor/Actress
Actor
Film/TV Actor/Actress
Actor
Actor
Film/TV Actor/Actress
Film/TV Actor/Actress (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Film/TV Actor/Actress (
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