music app business plan

Music Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Music Business Plan

You’ve come to the right place to create your music business plan.

We have helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans and many have used them to start or grow their music businesses.

Below is a template to help you create each section of your Music business plan.

Executive Summary

Business overview.

Musicians First Studio is a startup music company located in Nashville, Tennessee. The company is founded by Michael Smith, an experienced musician who has gained valuable knowledge on how to manage a music business during the past ten years while working at My Music Production & Management, another local music company. Now that Michael has experienced managing a music company, he is ready to start his own business, Musicians First Studio. Michael is confident that his skills as a musician, combined with his understanding of business management, will enable him to run a profitable music company of his own. Michael is recruiting a team of highly qualified professionals to help manage the day-to-day complexities of running a music studio – sales and marketing, production, artist management, music instruction, financial reporting, studio equipment maintenance, and client relations.

Musicians First Studio will provide a full suite of music production, management, and instruction services for both novice and professional musicians in the Nashville area. Musicians First will be the go-to music studio in Nashville for its client-focused services and dedicated professionals who are experienced in all aspects of the music industry. The company will be the ultimate choice for the needs of aspiring and professional musicians.

Product Offering

The following are the services that Musicians First Studio will provide:

• Artist Management
• Music Recording, Production, & Post-Production
• Private Music Lessons & Group Classes
• Venue Booking & Live Event Management
• PR & Marketing for New Artists

Customer Focus

Musicians First Studio will target new and experienced musicians in Nashville who are looking for professional production, management, or marketing services. The company will also target aspiring musicians and children looking for music lessons taught by industry veterans. No matter the customer, Musicians First Studio will deliver the best communication, service, and professionalism.

Management Team

Musicians First Studio will be owned and operated by Michael Smith. Michael is a graduate of Tennessee University with a degree in music. He has over ten years of experience working as a manager for another local music studio. Michael will be the company’s chief executive officer. He will oversee the recording/production process, music equipment, and studio staff’s activities.

Michael has recruited his former administrative assistant, Jessica Garcia, to be the company’s chief operating officer and help oversee the studio’s operations. Jessica will handle the day-to-day operations, including budgeting, scheduling, client relations, and logistics.

Michael and Jessica have recruited an experienced marketing director, John Brown, to become a member of the Musicians First Studio management team. John is a graduate of the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in sales and marketing. Michael and Jessica rely on John’s expertise to execute the company’s marketing plan and advertising strategies.

Success Factors

Musicians First Studio will be able to achieve success by offering the following competitive advantages:

• Skilled team of music production technicians and veteran musicians who will work one-on-one with clients to reach their individual music goals whether they’re looking to record a new album or learn a new instrument.
• Musicians First Studio is one of the only studio’s in the area that offers a wide range of services for musicians of all skill levels and goals.
• The company offers competitive pricing and discounts for referrals.

Financial Highlights

Musicians First Studio is seeking $800,000 in debt financing to launch its music business. The funding will be dedicated towards securing the studio and purchasing equipment and supplies. Funding will also be dedicated towards three months of overhead costs to include payroll of the staff and marketing expenses. The breakout of the funding is below:

• Studio build-out: $340,000
• Music equipment, supplies, and materials: $280,000
• Three months of overhead expenses (payroll, utilities): $160,000
• Marketing costs: $10,000
• Working capital: $10,000

The following graph below outlines the pro forma financial projections for Musicians First Studio.

Company Overview

Who is musicians first studio.

Musicians First Studio is a newly established music company in Nashville, Tennessee. Musicians First will be the first choice for aspiring, novice, and experienced musicians in Nashville and the surrounding communities for its full-suite of professional services provided by industry veterans. The company will provide a wide range of services including recording/production, music lessons, artist management, and marketing for new musicians.

Musicians First Studio will be able to guarantee high quality production thanks to the latest and most innovative music technology operated by expert music production technicians. The company’s team of highly qualified professionals experienced in music, production, and marketing will manage the suite of services offered at the studio. In addition to customized services for musicians, customers will be able to book studio time that comes with use of equipment by the hour.

Musicians First Studio History

Musicians First Studio is owned and operated by Michael Smith, an experienced musician who has gained valuable knowledge on how to manage a music business during the past ten years while working at My Music Production & Management, another local music company. Now that Michael has experienced managing a music company, he is ready to start his own business, Musicians First Studio. Michael is confident that his skills as a musician, combined with his understanding of business management, will enable him to run a profitable music company of his own. Michael is recruiting a team of highly qualified professionals to help manage the day-to-day complexities of running a music studio – sales and marketing, production, artist management, music instruction, financial reporting, studio equipment maintenance, and vendor relations.

Since incorporation, Musicians First Studio has achieved the following milestones:

• Registered Musicians First Studio, LLC to transact business in the state of Tennessee
• Has identified an ideal location for the studio that is available for lease
• Reached out to numerous contacts to include local musicians, production technicians, and venue managers to help spread the word about the new studio
• Began recruiting a staff of musicians, music instructors, production technicians, marketing experts, and office personnel to work at Musicians First Studio.

Musicians First Studio Services

Industry analysis.

The global music industry is an estimated $60B market and is expected to grow by 8% by 2026. The broad music industry can be categorized into three primary segments; recording, live music, and music publishing. In the United States, the recording segment generated approximately $8B in revenues last year, while the live music segment brought in an estimated $9.5B, and the publishing segment totaled $1.8B. A majority of revenues generated in the recording segment come from streaming (28% of total industry revenue), with digital downloads and physical media coming in much lower (6.7% and 7.5% respectively). Revenue for the live music segment is generated primarily through ticket sales (37.1%) and sponsorships (10.3%). Publishing accounts for approximately 8.9% of total industry revenue.

Music streaming is one of the most significant trends in the industry, with the number of Americans who pay for streaming subscriptions at approximately 82.1M, up from 7.9M in 2014. Another trend is the emergence of independent artists and small record labels. These groups are earning more revenue than in years past and their percentage of revenue increase year over year is growing faster than that of larger record labels. With more options open to them when it comes to where and how to get their music out to consumers, artists, managers, and record labels have more opportunities for success than ever before.

Customer Analysis

Demographic profile of target market.

The precise demographics for Nashville, Tennessee are:

Customer Segmentation

Musicians First will primarily target the following customer profiles:

• Novice-to-experienced musicians looking for recording/production services
• Aspiring musicians of all ages looking for music lessons
• Musicians looking for artist management, booking, and representation services

Competitive Analysis

Direct and indirect competitors.

Musicians First Studio will face competition from other companies with similar business profiles. A description of each competitor company is below.

My Music Production & Management

My Music Production & Management is one of the largest commercial music studios in Tennessee. The company was established in 1997 and offers professional music recording and production services for local musicians. My Music Production & Management also handles the business management activities for musicians including marketing, booking, and legal representation services. The company is well known for providing high quality production for some of the top artists in the region and has been recognized in various publications and music industry associations for its outstanding work in the local music community.

Genre Music

Founded in 2018, Genre Music is a small music company catering to local musicians in Nashville, Tennessee and surrounding areas. Genre Music is owned and operated by a veteran musician who has over 40 years of experience in the music industry. The company specializes in artist branding, marketing, and representation in addition to its top notch recording services. Genre Music has worked with a variety of up and coming artists in multiple genres and has a loyal customer base of regular musicians who use the company’s services.

Retro Recording & Productions

Retro Recording & Productions is a trusted Nashville, Tennessee-based music company that provides superior production and recording services for Nashville and the surrounding areas. The company is able to provide a wide variety of recording, production, and post-production services using its state-of-the-art music recording equipment. Retro Recording & Productions serves local musicians and national musicians. The company prides itself on being the number one choice for classic sound produced through modern technology. Retro Recording & Productions also manufactures its own collectible vinyl records in limited quantities.

Competitive Advantage

Musicians First Studio will be able to offer the following advantages over their competition:

• The company offers competitive pricing on studio rentals and discounts for referrals.

Marketing Plan

Brand & value proposition.

Musicians First Studio will offer the unique value proposition to its clientele:

• Musicians First Studio provides a full suite of services tailored to the individual musician’s needs. Professionals are equipped to provide services for all skill levels from the aspiring and novice musician, the the industry veteran.
• The company’s studio is expertly designed for the clearest sound quality. The equipment is carefully selected to ensure the best sound possible.

Promotions Strategy

The promotions strategy for Musicians First Studio is as follows:

Social Media Marketing

The company’s marketing director will create accounts on social media platforms such as Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. He will ensure Musicians First maintains an active social media presence with regular updates and fun content to get customers excited about using the studio’s services.

Professional Associations and Networking

Musicians First Studio will become a member of professional associations such as the Nashville Music Association, American Music Educators Society, and the Tennessee Music Production Association. The leadership team will focus their networking efforts on expanding the company’s artist and vendor network.

Print Advertising

Musicians First Studio will invest in professionally designed print ads to display in programs or flyers at industry networking events. The company will also send direct mailers to local residents advertising the services it provides.

Website/SEO Marketing

Musicians First Studio will utilize the in-house marketing director that designed the print ads to also design the company website. The website will be well organized, informative, and list all the services that Musicians First is able to provide. The website will also list information on the company’s events and featured artists.

The marketing director will also manage Musicians First’s website presence with SEO marketing tactics so that when someone types in a search engine “music company” or “music studio near me”, Musicians First Studio will be listed at the top of the search results.

The pricing of Musicians First Studio will be on par with competitors so customers feel they receive value when purchasing the company’s services.

Operations Plan

The following will be the operations plan for Musicians First Studio.

Operation Functions:

• Michael Smith will be the CEO of the company. He will oversee the music production technicians, production process, and the music equipment maintenance. Michael has spent the past year recruiting the following staff:
• Jessica Garcia – Chief Operating Officer who will manage the day-to-day operations, client relationships, scheduling, and logistics.
• Nancy Johnson – Chief Financial Officer who will provide all accounting, budgeting, tax payments, and monthly financial reporting.
• John Brown – Marketing Director who will oversee all marketing strategies for the company and manage the website, social media, and outreach.

Milestones:

Musicians First Studio will have the following milestones complete in the next six months.

12/1/2022 – Finalize lease to rent the studio facility

12/15/2022 – Finalize personnel and staff employment contracts for the Musicians First Studio management team

1/1/2023 – Begin build-out of the studio, purchase equipment, and test the acoustics

1/15/2023 – Begin networking at industry events and implement the marketing plan

2/15/2023 – Finalize contracts for musicians, instructors, production technicians, and marketing professionals

3/15/2023 – Musicians First Studio officially opens for business

Financial Plan

Key revenue & costs.

The revenue drivers for Musicians First Studio are the fees charged to customers in exchange for the company’s services and fees charged to book studio time by the hour.

The cost drivers will be the overhead costs required in order to staff a music company. The expenses will be the payroll cost, utilities, equipment and supplies, and marketing materials.

Funding Requirements and Use of Funds

Key assumptions.

The following outlines the key assumptions required in order to achieve the revenue and cost numbers in the financials and in order to pay off the startup business loan.

• Average hours booked per month: 120
• Average fees per month: $30,000
• Overhead costs per year: $640,000

Financial Projections

Income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, music business plan faqs, what is a music business plan.

A music business plan is a plan to start and/or grow your music business. Among other things, it outlines your business concept, identifies your target customers, presents your marketing plan and details your financial projections.

You can easily complete your music business plan using our Music Business Plan Template here .

What are the Main Types of Music Companies?

There are a number of different kinds of music companies , some examples include: Recorded Music, Music Licensing, Live Music, Music Publishing, Music Production, Music Business Consulting, and Retail Music Store.

How Do You Get Funding for Your Music Business Plan?

Music companies are often funded through small business loans. Personal savings, credit card financing and angel investors are also popular forms of funding.

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How to Create a Music App Like Spotify: Features, Tech and Cost

Check out this complete guide on developing a music app, with each step discussed in detail along with the cost evaluation.

Table of Contents

Step 1: research, step 2: narrow down on the app features, step 3: finalize the design.

• Step 4: Choose the tech stack

Step 5: Conduct robust testing

• Cost to Make a Music App

Build a successful music app with Simform

Technology has brought about a colossal change in every industry in the past few years, including how we listen to music. As we’ve shifted to mobile apps to do pretty much everything, music streaming apps have become more popular than ever.

The number of users in the music streaming industry is expected to grow to 913.2 million users by 2025, according to Statista . And revenue from the segment is projected to grow at an annual rate (CAGR 2021-2025) of 10.08% till 2025. Therefore, if you have an idea for an innovative music application, it might be an excellent business opportunity to explore in today’s music streaming industry.

This blog explains all the steps of creating a music app, including the technical aspects with examples. Developing a basic music app with essential features can cost around $38,000- $53,500. However, there are multiple variables to it about which we’ll discuss in the article below.

Simform provides leading end-to-end app development services that will bring your app idea to life with the best technologies, highly skilled engineers, and robust development practices. Contact us today to discuss your project needs and get free consultation!

How to Create a Music App ?

Here are the major steps involved in building a music app

You have a brilliant app idea, but where do you start? Before getting on with the development of a music app, you need to prepare a planned concept for the project. It involves understanding the music app market, researching the target audience, and defining the type of future app you will develop. Analyzing the target audience will also help decide the target platforms or devices you want to run your app on.

In this step, you also conduct a competitive analysis to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and then define your unique value proposition. For instance, the global music app market is highly competitive with dominant players like Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and more. Therefore, it is crucial to find your niche and develop an app that beats the competition.

The first step in music streaming app development also requires you to determine the type of app you want to build.

Types of Music App

Choosing the type of music app you want to create is the first step in refining your app idea. Music streaming apps exist in various formats and offer different listening options. However, the most popular music services fall into three common categories:

• Music libraries

Popular music streaming apps such as Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music fall into this category. Here, the music is stored in server-based libraries, and users have unlimited access to the music, but under the conditions of the app owner.

• Cloud Storage

This category of apps offers cloud storage to users to store, organize and manage their music. The users can stream the music from anywhere and anytime they like. AudioBox is a popular example of a cloud music player. 

• Radio Stations

Music radio apps allow users to stream various online radio stations arranged by specific themes such as genres, artist-centric playlists, decades, moods, and more. Such apps also filter the search results based on your needs, suggest radio stations you might like, and are a great way to discover new music.

You’ve probably figured out the type of music app you want to create. But did you know that if your app plays a song without the label’s or the artist’s permission, it attracts a penalty of $700-$150,000 per song every time it is played? So let’s discuss in detail the licenses and approvals you will require as a music application owner to avoid legal hurdles.

Licensing requirements for a music streaming app

• Public Performance Rights

Firstly, you will have to acquire Public Performance Rights. It is a type of agreement between the music app owner and the music composer or any other person/agency who has the copyrights to that music piece.

To meet the copyright regulations in the USA, you can get a license from either ASCAP or BMI. ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) is a non-profit organization managing the works of independent artists who are not associated with giant corporations such as Sony Music and others. And BMI, Broadcast Music Inc, is a performance rights organization that is an intermediary between the music businesses and the music composers/artists.

In Europe, you can purchase a license from SESAC (European Stage Authors and Composers). You must always check out the copyright protection bodies in the market of the country you are entering.

• Sound Recording license

Secondly, you can also acquire a Sound Recording license, which is an agreement that covers the usage of recording rights. Spotify, for instance, has licenses received from big record labels, including Sony Music Entertainment Group, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, which gives it the legal rights to publish the content of these labels.

The research and analysis done above help you list out the app’s key features and advanced functionalities tailored to match the needs of your target audience. It will also help you draw out a rough budget, marketing and monetization strategies for your app. 

To earn money from your music app, you can charge the listeners or charge artists to upload and promote their music. For instance, Spotify allows users free access to the music but offers premium features with paid subscription plans. It also helps artists create and manage their ad campaigns on the app for a price.

But you do not want to create just any other music app, rather a competitive product that wins over the audience. You need to offer features that attract users and make them stay. Thus, planning and working out the app features accordingly is critical to the success of your music app.

Basic features

Here’s the list of must-have features for a music streaming app:

• Login & Registration

User registration is optional in music streaming apps but highly recommended. It can be used to learn more about the users, such as their music preferences in genre, artists, language, etc. The sign-up and login should be as quick as possible. Ideally, in just a few taps. You can easily implement it with users’ social media or Google login. You can also include the classic email + password approach and phone login.

• User Profile

After registration, users must be able to set up their personal profile, which allows them to create and manage their personalized playlists. It will enable the app owner to analyze users’ data and learn about their preferences. A personal account can also allow users to share music and even upload their own tracks.

The search function allows users to search for their favorite songs quickly and also look for artists, genres, albums, and more. It helps users easily navigate through the platform.

• Music Player

Certainly, a music app cannot function without a music player. It is a core feature that lets users stream and listen to music. The player screen allows the users to perform actions such as play, pause, next or previous, control the volume, and more. It can also have additional controls for liking a song, shuffling music, adding to the user’s playlist, etc. Moreover, the player screen also shows the album cover, information on the artist or album, and displays the list of songs in an album.

• User’s Library

Your app must allow the users to create and manage their own playlists as per their choice. It will help increase user engagement, and you can charge users for making unlimited playlists in their library.

• Artist & Album Profiles

Adding album and artist page is optional, but users might want to know more about what they’re listening to. The pages can be simple with information like release date, list of tracks/albums, popular tracks of the artist, etc. You can also add some interesting information about the artist or song to hook the listeners.

Advanced features

Here are some advanced features you can add to make your music streaming app more outstanding:

• AI-based Personalized Recommendation

Embedding the AI feature will analyze the user behavior and preference in music to make personalized recommendations. It will suggest songs, albums, and even podcasts that the user might like based on observations such as the user’s listening habits, geographic location, etc. 

• Discover Music

It is one of the most exciting features of leading music apps. It allows users to discover new music and listen to pre-made playlists that are sorted based on mood, genre, etc. For example, Spotify has playlists for productivity, workouts, rainy weather, sleep, meditation or yoga, retro songs playlist, top 50s, and so on.

• Offline Mode

Offline access will allow the users to download their favorite music on their device and listen to it offline. You can add this feature in the paid or premium version of your app.

• Push Notifications

It can also enhance the user experience of a music streaming application. It can keep users informed about the arrival of new songs, new albums or artists, news or events, etc. 

• Social Sharing

It is easier to enable social sharing when users sign in to the app with their social media accounts. Music enthusiasts love sharing their preferences with friends, family, or even on their social media feeds. However, the social share must be achievable with just one or two clicks for users’ delight.

• Payments Integration

Typically, all music streaming apps have in-app purchases such as monthly and premium subscriptions. Your app must have the mechanism to complete the payment for such purchases, so the users do not have to leave the app.

Now that you know what you want your app to do it is time to design and develop your music streaming app. It makes up for 60% of the overall app development process. So you must hire an experienced app development team known to deliver successful app projects.

Below we will discuss the approximate tech stack of a music app, its typical architecture along with case studies of some popular music apps, and other essential factors you must consider while developing a music app.

UI/UX design stage

Your app’s UI/UX design is one of the critical factors responsible for its success. A user-friendly but appealing, intuitive, and modern design will help attract and retain your users. Thus, hiring highly skilled UI/UX designers from a software development company is of utmost importance. 

The designers will need a minimum of 150 hours to develop UI/UX for one platform. It might include the following stages:

• Wireframing , where the designers create a black and white app sketch to show the general design concept of the app.
• Mock-ups are developed to show the app’s static but colorful screens and include icons, buttons, etc.
• Prototyping is where the team develops an interactive app model to show how the app acts where you can tap, swipe, drag, etc., to see the results.

Step 4: How to develop a music app: Tech stack required

Firstly, the tech stack will depend on the platforms/devices you’re targeting – commonly Android, iOS, and a web version. If you’re on a tight budget, you can build an app for one platform based on the target audience and later target another platform. Or you can use technologies like Flutter or React Native to build a cross-platform app with a single codebase that runs on multiple platforms.

Here is the list of diverse programming tools and technologies that can be used to develop a music app:

And more such as Java Android SDK, Retrofit, Fresco, Crashlytics, and Realm to provide smooth app performance. It might also require miscellaneous technologies depending on integration of other app features such as:

Note: The final tech stack will always depend on your music app project’s technical needs and requirements and should be chosen after consultation with your development team.

How does a music streaming app work?

Most popular streaming apps like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Youtube Music store their music on millions of servers. So when a user wants to listen to a track, the mobile app “asks” the backend to fetch the data. And the backend does all the heavy lifting of finding the tracks from the servers and sending them back to the device. The server logic also performs all other tasks such as working with the databases, user authentication, searching, suggesting artists/albums, and updating the library.

This streaming method does not require files to be downloaded on the devices. Instead, the music is delivered in small “packets” over the internet and buffered into the device. The packets are kept small to avoid delay between the send and receive events, so the music is played instantly. 

Below is the most basic architecture of music streaming application:

Of course, a more thought-through, broader architecture will look more complicated. However, building a solid architecture with your technical team will provide a clear roadmap for developers before commencing the development and save time.

• Reliable Storage Architecture

The storage architecture plays a crucial role in streaming apps as it handles millions of requests per second. If you plan to create data storage with self-hosted servers, you must ensure that the music files are recorded in a reliable manner. It enables users to listen to music smoothly without unexpected distortions or failures. The hosting quality may not seem important initially, but you will need a robust server architecture once your users grow to thousands or millions in number.

• Cloud-based Streaming

Cloud services are another good option for reliable storage and hosting for music streaming apps. Cloud services are preferred for live streaming and offer high scalability while saving money on buying hardware. You can also choose ready-made cloud solutions like Amazon S3 by AWS. For instance, Soundcloud uses the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) combined with Amazon Glacier for its storage solution.

Furthermore, you can use CDNs to deliver content with low latency and security. CDNs can incur additional costs, but they help scale the servers and ensure flawless delivery. For example, audio files can be stored in Amazon S3 and cached at edges with Amazon Content Delivery Network, Amazon CloudFront, for low-latency delivery.

Note: However, it is important to note that your development team will help you choose the most appropriate solutions for your project’s specific tech needs based on their expertise. Simform is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and houses many AWS certified professionals that can help you set up AWS cloud server architecture if suitable for your project.

The development phase of your app does not end without in-depth testing and quality assurance. Therefore, it is fundamental to ensure that your streaming app runs smoothly and as expected before the launch.

Of course, testing is carried out throughout the development process, but it is also essential to conduct after the whole app is developed. Once the bugs or issues detected by the QA engineers are fixed, your app is ready to be released in the market.

Now you know how to develop an online music streaming app, but have you thought about how much it will cost to create a music streaming app?

How Much Does it Cost to Make a Music App ?

There is no clear-cut figure of how much a music app costs to develop. Instead, it is determined by various factors, including the app’s features, complexity, the number of target platforms or devices, the technology stack, the size/structure of your development team, and even their geographical location. Let’s assess the essential factors that affect the music app development cost .

Target platforms and devices

Choosing the kind of app you want to create- whether a native iOS app, native Android, hybrid app , or web app- is an essential step in the app development process. It is best to decide after analyzing factors such as target market, audience, market localization, and more.

The total cost of development will nearly double if you want to build both iOS and Android apps. The price will increase proportionally to the number of supported devices too. And the cost is also affected by the technologies and frameworks used for app development.

On the other hand, cross-platform app development takes slightly more hours than development hours for one native app. But their overall development and maintenance are cheaper compared to separate native apps.

Next, we will discuss the development hours required for app features. It majorly influences the total development cost depending on the number of features and their complexity. The number of hours can also increase based on the complexity of backend features and third-party API or library integration.

Moreover, the entire music app development process will also include stages such as business analysis or discovery, app design, and testing that add to the overall cost. You can refer to the cost breakdown based on all essential stages of app development below for a better estimate.

To sum up, below is how much the development of your music app will cost for one selected platform (iOS/Android) based on the above estimates.

An up-and-running MVP with some key features may cost less than $38,000 , whereas a highly complex app can even cost more than $200,000 at times. It can cost approximately $70,000 to make quality music streaming app for two platforms. And finally, other expenses will include app store fees, app maintenance, marketing, and the cost of regular feature updates according to user’s feedback. However, the final prices will vary depending on your project needs, complexity, and the tech stack used.

Note: The above estimates are based on the average rate charged by app development agencies in our region, i.e., $25/h. The hourly rates will differ based on the development team you hire and their location, which brings us to our next point.

Development partner and engagement model

The hourly rates of the development team are a significant influencer on the cost of developing a music app. It is mainly affected by the size of the team and their geographical location. But hiring resources with the right skills and experience is essential to any app development project. And you can do it in three ways given below:

• Hire Freelancers

Hiring freelancers for your project will comparatively cost less than hiring an agency. But you will face the hassle of hiring different professionals for designing, coding, testing, and managing the team yourself.

• Hire App development agency aka Outsourcing

On the contrary, outsourcing your music app project to an app development company may prove more valuable. Their teams consist of the following professionals that can help you right from the business analysis to deployment of the product:

• Business Analyst
• UI/UX Designers
• iOS/Android Developers
• Quality Assurance Engineers
• Project Manager

The number of members on the team will directly depend on the size of your project, its complexity, and the engagement model. But the agencies hire highly qualified and experienced individuals with their proficient employee vetting process. So you can get timely and quality-assured results with security. 

• Hire Dedicated Remote Developers/Extended Team

With Simform, you can also hire dedicated remote developers if you want to add development capacity to your in-house team. You can employ project managers, QA engineers, and other professionals without any hassles of vetting candidates, managing payroll, etc., and get a high-quality workforce. And unlike freelancers, our dedicated developers /extended team will only work on your project, so it does not hinder their productivity and quality of work.

While on-demand music streaming is a hot trend, you still have an opportunity to earn a chunk of music streaming market revenue with a million-dollar idea. But to capture a large audience and beat your competitors, your idea must be executed with perfection into an app. And our experts at Simform are happy to assist you in developing a successful music app. We have helped our clients create stunning and innovative apps in numerous industries with highly experienced professionals. So feel free to reach out to us ; we’ll discuss your project requirements and calculate the budget for free.

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Hardik Shah

Working from last 10+ years into consumer and enterprise mobility, Hardik leads large scale mobility programs covering platforms, solutions, governance, standardization and best practices.

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A music business plan: Why you need one and how to create it

• Best Practices

Can’t wait to become a musician and hang up your business casual wear? We get it. But there’s just one more administrative task to accomplish before you can do that: creating your music business plan . 

A career in music allows you to put your passion to work by recording tracks or performing for live audiences. But in order to make the most of it (and ensure you earn enough to meet your financial goals), you’ll want to start out with an artist business plan .

What is a business plan ? Essentially, it’s a document in which you state your goals and chart how to reach them. Think of it like manifesting, even if it seems more like office work. 

If you’re about to start a career in music, we’d venture to guess you have a dream. A solid business plan can help you get there. Stay with us in a corporate (okay, semi-corporate) mindset a few minutes longer while we explain the importance of a business plan for musicians . 

Why do you need a music business plan ?

We hope a major record label stumbles upon your music and offers you an incredible deal. 

But until you make your big break , you should plan to drive your own success with a business plan that maps out where you hope to be in five years. You’ll determine whether you’ll need to raise money to get started, how much you’ll need to earn, and what revenue streams you’ll have to help you get there. You may be starting your business plan now, but you can continue to modify it as your career develops and changes. 

Creating a music business plan: what do you need?

Ready to get to work? Start by outlining the following sections or use a music business plan template to help you stay organized.

1. Executive summary

Writing an executive summary might seem easier said than done, but trust us, it’s doable. In your own words, explain who you are, what kind of music you make, and why you do what you do. That’s right, this is your mission statement! An executive summary is a high-level view of your work, which is why it’s sometimes tricky to write. Don’t get lost in the details. If you get stuck, try creating this summary after you’ve finished the rest of your plan. 

2. Business description

Unlike the executive summary, which is your would-be elevator pitch, a business description gets down to brass tacks. Imagine you score a meeting with a music mogul who thinks you have what it takes to be a star. They’ll have questions about how your business is structured and registered, and they’ll also want to see some stats on your earnings, fan base, and growth. Provide all this information in your business description. 

3. Offerings

If you offer services like music for events, backup singing, or play-for-hire gigs, include a section in your business plan that lists out all that you provide. It’s important to diversify your income streams, so if you play solo gigs but also provide freelance songwriting or music production services, be sure to list all that here.

4. Audience analysis

Everyone has a target demographic. If you have a hard-core metal band, you’re probably not trying to attract pop fans. Or, maybe you have some serious crossover potential that you must mention in your audience analysis. In this section, highlight who your listeners or future clients are. If you plan to jam at weddings, then your target clients are brides- and grooms-to-be. If your goal is to become popular on streaming apps with your bassy house tunes, then your target audience is club-goers, say, from ages 18-30. 

5. Market analysis

A market analysis exists more for you than it does for anyone who reads your business plan. It helps you familiarize yourself with the industry. Do some research, and outline how much money is in the industry to determine what’s trending (aka what’s profitable). How’s the industry projected to fare in the next three, five and 10 years? Get to know your competition and figure out what businesses or platforms you can depend on to support your work. If you plan to become a recording artist, familiarize yourself with the big labels and major distribution platforms. 

6. Marketing plan

Until you have a record label or a team behind you, you’ll likely be in charge of your own marketing strategy. In this section of your business plan, outline your ideas for social media and any other type of online or print marketing you plan to do. If you hope to get your latest track out to music lovers around the world, build your reach on social media by opening accounts on all major platforms and posting consistent content that’s coherent with your “brand.” If you want to reach local audiences, perhaps an ad in regional papers or magazines is a good idea. Don’t forget to link to your merch site and streaming outlets, too, by putting a Linktree multi-URL in your social bios. 

7. Operations 

You know what you hope to achieve, but how are you going to get it done? Think of the operations section of a business plan as a generalized to-do list. Write out the tasks you’ll have to do every day to keep your music career up and running. If you can’t do it all yourself, think of whom you could outsource the work. This is also a good space in which to plan how you intend to reach your long-term goals, like accruing 10,000 social media followers. 

8. Finances

If the idea of creating financial statements makes your head spin, here’s where you may want to hire an accountant. In this section of your business plan, you’ll provide an income statement, cash flow statement and a balance sheet. Creating this section will help you identify the costs of running your music business and make more accurate financial projections. 

Having a business plan gives your career some shape. Not only will you feel more confident in your ability to make it in a tough industry, but investors and brands will believe in your potential as well. 

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How to Build a Music App: Features, Revenue & Business Model

Are you planning to build a music app? If yes, then you are at the right spot. 

With the advancement of technology, the time has changed, and our way of performing routine tasks has caught up with a new face, like grocery shopping, ticket booking, hotel booking, and our mode of enjoying music. Today, we use music streaming apps to tune in to our favorite tracks without downloading them immediately.

According to a report , the global market size for online music streaming is expected to increase significantly from US$23.9 billion in 2022 to US$78.5 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16% during the period of 2022-2030. The report highlights that the audio segment will experience a CAGR of 14.6% and is anticipated to reach US$42.7 billion by the end of the analysis period. Additionally, considering the ongoing post-pandemic recovery, the video segment’s growth is adjusted to an 18.1% CAGR for the next eight years.

The music streaming service market study reveals that the music revenue is higher than other services. 

Compared to other industries, the audio streaming industry is likely to rule in almost every situation, be it a pandemic, as “ the music is the biggest healer ” and the best way to spend your leisure time. 

Being impressed with the growth of the music streaming market, many businesses, despite their size, are coming forward to grab an opportunity in the same sector. 

You might also be planning to move on the same pathway to test your destiny. 

This article will provide you with essential learning about music apps, their types, top mobile streaming apps ruling the world, key features, cost of development , and much more. 

After reading this post, we can bet that you will get explanations for all your confusion and get answers to all your queries that you need to know before developing a music app.

Table of Contents

Music Apps – A Brief Introduction

The music streaming apps allow music lovers to play any track by any singer right at the moment with just a click. They usually consume a few resources, are faster, and provide access to any soundtracks available online. 

Do you remember when we needed to gather CDs of our favorite tracks, and for every new release, we needed to buy a new one or exchange it with our friends? 

Today, things are different than they used to be; we no longer need to do such stuff to enjoy the music we love. 

Types of Music Apps – Which One Do You Want to Build?

As per a layman, a single type of app plays music with just a click. 

But, as you here with a business perspective and a plan to develop a mobile app, you need to know about different types of music apps. 

There are three types of music apps:

Music Streaming Apps

Apple Music, Spotify, and Soundcloud are a few apps ruling this market, and these are highly popular and widely-used music apps. 

The key objective of such apps is to play music available in the music service’s database, make personalized playlists, and recommend similar songs. 

Let’s check out vital elements of these music apps:

• Recommendations: To offer users more relevant song suggestions, one should implement a recommended engine for the music streaming app. 
• Search: The chief element of user engagement is your app’s music availability and caliber to discover akin genres. 
• Social Networking: You can apply custom playlists as educational or promotional tools in your app, which will facilitate the users to share playlists via social media platforms. 
• Categorization & Personalization: The users of the music streaming apps can sort the music by genre, mood, period, tone, composition pace, or performer association. 

Requirements for Developing Music Streaming Apps

• Effective social media platforms integration
• Varied categorization systems to segment content
• Public Performance License, issued by PPL PRS for U.K. services and ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC for the U.S. 

Besides, you can integrate an off-the-rack solution, like the API of the current music streaming app, to offer a unique experience to the users. 

Music Store Apps

When a significant commercial trading element is appended to the music streaming service to expand it, it emerges to be a music store app. 

Music apps like GarageBand, Pandora, and YouTube Music work in the same niche. 

The key features of such music-store apps are:

Engagement: As music is the chief source of user engagement, such apps apply standard eCommerce engagement strategies, like season discounts, special offers, and bonuses. 

Monetization: Most of the latest music store apps motivate the listeners to buy a subscription or the release to open up a way to premium features. 

Feedback: The networking element holds significance as Music Store Apps motivate user input through reviews and comments that assist other users while making purchase decisions. 

Requirements for Developing Music Store Apps

• Anti-fraud features 
• Social media platforms integration
• Payment systems integration
• Large licensed product inventory (embraces physical media and related merchandise)

Music Storage Apps

Top music app players, Google Music and Amazon Music are music storage apps plugged directly into your storage, which can be general cloud storage or your phone’s internal storage. This way, you can build your music player entirely curated by the user. 

The main characteristics of the music player app are:

Requirements for Developing Music Player Apps:

• Payment systems integration, like Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal
• Scalability for seamless media playback
• Varied media formats compatibility
• Third-party cloud services integration, like Amazon Web Services’ Google Cloud

Top Players – Leaders of the Music Streaming Market

Before making your music app, you should also check out your competitors; watch out for their footmarks and the standards they opted to catch up with. 

The first name that strikes our head while thinking of music streaming apps is Spotify. It’s the most prominent music app that provides audiobooks and podcasts also, besides music services. Along with its audience, its annual revenue is also constantly growing. The best parts of this app are accurate recommendations, its ease of discovering new artists, and more. 

The first and top music app that prioritized personalization was Pandora; later, Apple Music and Spotify adopted it. Pandora uses artificial intelligence to make suggestions, and the monthly active users started falling.

Apple Music

This audio app offers a fantastic music collection that one can use with connected devices and Siri. It also boasts a connected radio station. With the increasing audience every year, this music app’s revenue is also increasing. 

Why Are Music Apps so Popular?

• The market size of the music streaming market worldwide was valued at about $29.45 billion in 2021.
• From 2020 to 2030, it’s likely to grow at a CAGR of around 14.7% . 
• In 2020, the music streaming market reached a total revenue of around $11.8 billion . 
• Also, in 2020, the subscription service segment of this music streaming app attained approximately $10.5 billion in total revenue, which was about 89.4% of the total market value. 
• In 2021, the individual segment attained the largest revenue share of approximately 60% . 
• The music app segment caught up with the largest revenue share of 85% in 2021. 
• In 2022, $26.61 billion in revenue will likely generate in the music streaming segment.
• By 2026, in this segment, about 959 million users are expected. 
• User penetration is predicted to be 9.4% in 2022 and should hit approximately 12.2% by 2026. 
• Global Online Music Streaming Market to Reach $78.5 Billion by 2030

Why Should You Develop a Music App?

Before jumping on to the steps to make a music app, first, you should know why you should develop it. 

Let you know that music is the most popular industry developing steadily and quickly in the entertainment department. 

Around 14% of the population and even more access streaming apps daily. 

So, your plan for developing a music app is perfect as its growth is moving on and on constantly. So, you can expect a growing audience and growing revenue ahead. 

Another reason in the queue is the opportunities one can explore in the music industry. The market players choose advanced technology integration into their apps, such as AR , VR , 5G, AI , and more. 

Something that can relate to everyone is music, and with this evolving and changing market, you will always have niches to stuff the gaps. 

That’s why most business-minded people come forward to make a music streaming app and hire a team of developers to assist them in attaining their objectives. 

Core Idea Behind a Music App – The Inner Logic 

Let’s first check out the inner logic behind a music streaming app to get a precise idea of how to start a music service. 

• Store music on diverse servers.
• The music app finds a random track to play on your device on millions of servers, catches up with that, and then sends it to your mobile. 
• In such a case, servers are your music streaming app subscribers’ computers and every other gadget. 

Well, one finds this concept better than sending tracks and downloading requests to the servers. 

Besides, by offering such a music service, your app becomes a critical link for the worldwide music sharing network, that’s pretty engaging. And this way, the users get a chance to tune in to the tracks legally by paying the royalties to the authors. 

Now, let’s know the key features that you can include in your app to make it successful. 

Key Features of a Music App

Consider the list of crucial features of a music app below:

Signing Up/Registration

It’s an essential feature that recognizes the user to sync his music and playlist in the service. You can use social media authorization and get new subscribers soon.

You can offer the users a music catalog to assist them in finding music content your app provides.

Track Search

Make your app users the power to find music they would like to hear and get a loyal crowd. 

Push Notifications

According to recent research, push notifications result in higher engagement across every category. 

User Profile

After signing up or registering, users should find it easy to set their profile that may facilitate them to craft and manage their customized and personalized playlists. This way, the app owners can analyze user data and learn their preferences. Using this account, they can share music and even upload their tracks.  

Artist & Album Profiles

Well, it’s optional to add an artist page and album. But, let you know that users would like to get the details of the track they are tuned to. You can keep the pages simple and loaded with essential information, like popular tracks by the same artist, release date, number of likes, and more. 

User’s Library

Your app needs to facilitate users to craft and manage their playlists to meet their choices. It will assist them with enhanced user engagement, and you can motivate users to make unlimited playlists in their libraries. 

Spatial Audio

With the assistance of spatial audio, artists will find it easy to mix music to provide an immersive audio experience and make users feel the sounds thoroughly. Top websites like Tidal, Amazon, and Apple have already included this feature.

Listening to the best quality tracks is the lossless music streaming. Its algorithm makes sure that a compressed digital audio file holds its best quality post the compression process. 

Music Player

You must ensure that you embrace such features to craft timing, shuffling, and tuning options for your app’s music player. Also, it should permit the users to save their favorite songs for later use and create personal playlists. 

Music Videos

In the audio streaming app, people would enjoy watching videos also. So, you may offer them such a fantastic experience by incorporating such a feature that may allow them to watch videos while listening to music. 

One more feature you may implement in your audio app is radio streaming, allowing users to tune in to their favorite tracks without disturbing ads. 

Advanced Features of a Music App – Make Your App Competitive

Next comes the improvement and advancement of your app when it is flooded with enough users to make it more engaging. 

So, when it’s about the second stage of music app development, you can consider the below features to include in your app. 

The navigation of your audio streaming app should be user-friendly that may help users to search and append tracks to their playlist or library. Additionally, append more options that may allow people to explore their favorite tracks by the album title, name of artists or song, etc. 

Social Media

Most people love sharing a track while enjoying it with their friends via various social sites, like Snapchat , WhatsApp, or Instagram. This feature will assist in spreading your brand awareness also. 

Well Thought Out UI

UI can make and even break your application. To develop a popular music app, you must think about crafting a seamless, accessible, intuitive, and visually engaging user experience. 

High Performance

The performance of the apps is primarily a decision point, and it needs to perform at better speed and less resource usage. A song should take <300ms to start playing instantly when the user clicks on it to enjoy. 

Be it an energetic party with friends or a family get-together, your app should make the user feel the ambiance, the aura through your tracks. Today, the listeners prefer enjoying their playlists on audio apps despite tuning in to radio stations. Your app should emerge with a customized or personalized playlist for your users or facilitate them to create playlists of their choice. 

The song needs to be digitized for music streaming, which may break down into a sequence of audio snapshots. Next, our brains elucidate all those snapshots as a continuous track. The streaming music’s quality is called bitrate. 

Below are three distinct audio qualities available for mobile apps:

• Normal (96kbps) 
• High (160kbps)
• Extreme (320kbps) 

High-resolution tracks target better sound in a well-suited package of streaming from your device or as a digital file on a specific, dedicated player. 

Business Model of a Music App – Let’s Consider Spotify To Understand It Better

A house of 70+ million songs , Spotify stores all the tracks on its servers. This music app depends on a P2P network; it doesn’t bog down its servers, internet bandwidth, or internal computers to stream audios for millions of listeners. 

This leading audio streaming app uses social networking and nearby users’ searches using the services to check if their caches hold the song requested by a user. If it keeps that requested track, Spotify facilitates those computers to play that audio. 

This assists Spotify servers to stay free from getting overloaded. 

Spotify uses Cached files to speed up the playback. The tracks played by users get temporarily saved on their device in a file known as a cache, and it replays locally from that file whenever users wish to replay it, despite downloading again. 

Besides, Spotify preloads successive audios of an album to delay playback. 

The songs on Spotify are saved in Vorbis format, making the audio file smaller and easier to transfer. On this platform, many songs stream at about 160 KBPS. But, for Premium users, the songs are usually streamed at around 320 KBPS (for high-quality).

Regarding business, Spotify purchases licenses from publishers, artists, labels, and all the right holders to get audio streaming permission on its platform. 

The platform bears an amount as a royalty to the artists, for which it uses a complex algorithm that fixes the royalty price per stream for all the labels or artists. 

Monetization Models – How to Make Money with a Music App?

The revenue that comes from the music apps is better than other categories. People tend to move towards audio streaming services despite separate music tracks. This proves beneficial for a music app to catch up with enhanced profit without investing any new effort. 

You can monetize your music streaming apps in the below two ways:

Play Advertisements

Offer the app users free access to your audio app as long as they tolerate listening to advertisements. 

For example, you can play an advertisement after every 3 or 5 audios, which is one of the best ways to earn revenue. 

Subscription-based Method

You can offer unlimed access to any track or premium features to your subscribers only. 

It’s of two types:

Trial period: Before moving on to the free trial period, the user fill-in cart and payment details. After a free trial ends, the app charges a subscription amount automatically. 

Freemium: A free account on your app will offer users access to basic features. But, one can’t access premium functionality in such a model. 

Alternative Revenue Sources

Besides the traditional and general monetization methods, you can also try the below revenue sources. 

Paid Content

Despite giving access to every track in the catalog, you can sell specific tracks and albums in your app. A user should pay for tuning to a particular song or album.

Apple Music and Google Play Music follow such a monetization strategy. 

Transaction Revenue

When a user purchases something from your application, you can charge an amount as transaction revenue. 

For example, Pandora’s app permits users to buy tickets for their partner from the app, namely, Ticketfly, and charge an amount.

Karaoke & Live Streaming

A Chinese audio streaming brand, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), emerged with this monetization model that makes about 70% of the revenue. 

A paid feature, Karaoke permits users to sing karaoke and stream it online.

Challenges You May Face While Building a Music App

Well, nothing is easy; when we start something new, we usually get stuck with various challenges. 

The same happens when it comes to developing music streaming apps. We need to face various challenges. 

Let’s talk about a few below:

Getting Around the Competition

The competition may be tough to introduce a project between the leaders with deep pockets, like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. 

So, to thrive in the crowd, you need to emerge with an exceptional idea and seamless execution. These two conditions are enough to compete with the top players and increase the chance of becoming successful. 

List out the top needs of listeners that other apps are not meeting and try fulfilling them using the latest technologies. 

Copyright and Licensing

When we emerged with the idea of developing an audio streaming app, the law came ahead of everything. Here also, the app would require the rights for streaming copyrighted tracks of artists. 

A music streaming app needs to follow Public Performance Rights to conduct operations as there’s no other way around it. 

In a technical tone, legality and copyright shouldn’t be categorized as challenges; they are just like the things to do beforehand. 

Splitting the Revenue

Every streaming service needs to share revenue with the copyright holders and artists, as we need to pay for using the others’ property. 

For example, Spotify shares its entire revenue with the artists, songwriters, and labels after keeping a share of just 30%. 

How to Develop a Music App – Steps to Follow 

There are nine main steps to developing an audio streaming app:

• Step 1. Refine your innovative idea and value proposition
• Step 2. Define your target audience
• Step 3. Pick features and tech stack you need to include
• Step 4. Hire a dedicated app development team
• Step 5. Choose your business model
• Step 6. Licensing
• Step 7. Craft an MVP
• Step 8. Build an app
• Step 9. Updates & support

App Development Team – Who Will Help Develop a Music App

To make a music streaming app, you need to hire a professional team of developers. 

• Business Analyst (BA)
• Project Manager
• Creative UI/UX Designer
• Android Developers
• iOS Developers
• Back-end Developers
• QA Engineer

Technologies to Consider

• Server: Nginx
• Programming languages: Python, Java
• Cloud storage: Amazon S3, Google BigQuery
• Hadoop frameworks, Apache Storm, Hub Framework
• CDN: Amazon Cloudfront
• DevOps: Docker, Datadog, TestFlight
• Tools: Bootstrap
• Database: PostgreSQL, Cassandra

Tech Stack for a Music App – Core Tools & Technologies 

Well, the choice of tech stack relies on the device/platforms you plan to target, like iOS, Android, and a web version. 

You can develop an app for a single platform based on your target audience if you have a limited budget. Later you can focus on another platform. 

Or, you can use the technologies like React Native or Flutter to develop a cross-platform app considering a single codebase that runs on various platforms. 

Moreover, the final choice of tech stack will also depend on your music app project needs. So, before choosing a tech stack, you should consult with your team of developers. 

How Much Does it Cost to Build a Music App?

Well, no one can let you know a clear-cut estimate for developing an audio app, and it’s because we need to consider various factors to determine the cost. 

Various factors affect the music app development cost. Let’s check out a few essential ones:

Platforms & Devices

The cost gets almost double if you develop both Android and iOS apps. 

The cost of music app development is directly proportional to the number of devices your app will support, and the type of frameworks and technologies we will use to make our app will affect the price. 

The features you include in your app majorly influence the cost. 

The number of features you want to include in your app is directly proportional to the complexity of your app, which affects the app development cost. 

Engagement Model & Development Partner

The rates of hiring a development company, a team, or freelancers vary and thus influence the cost. You can:

• Hire app development agency
• Hire freelancers
• Hire a dedicated team of developers

Whatever way you choose to develop your app will follow a different pricing model. 

More factors may affect the cost of an audio streaming app, but the above were the basic ones. 

How Can We Help You?

To make your idea a reality, we can provide you with a team of professionals and experts who will help you make your dream of developing a music app come true. 

Emizentech holds a robust portfolio of building music streaming apps thriving in the market. We offer end-to-end app development services using the best and latest technologies, scalable app development practices, and highly skilled teams. 

Wrapping Up

The music streaming sector is going on trend nowadays. If you are interested in grabbing a big chunk of revenue in the music streaming market, you must catch up with a large audience and stay competitive with the leaders. 

Holding an exceptional idea is not enough; you must execute it flawlessly to grab the success. 

So, hire the right team to develop a successful audio streaming app. 

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CTO at Emizentech and a member of the Forbes technology council , Amit Samsukha, is acknowledged by the Indian tech world as an innovator and community builder. He has a well-established vocation with 12+ years of progressive experience in the technology industry. He directs all product initiatives, worldwide sales and marketing, and business enablement. He has spearheaded the journey in the e-commerce landscape for various businesses in India and the U.S.

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A step-by-step guide to developing a music business plan

June 17, 2021

Why you need a music business plan

Where to start, the main components of a music business plan, the importance of multiple income streams, subscribe to greenlight by thimble..

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Making a living in the music business is the ultimate dream of every serious musician. But out of the countless individuals with a passion for music, only a select few will make a profitable business out of it. That doesn’t mean reaching your goals is impossible. If you want to earn reliable income from your music career, you need to treat it like any other business. That means making a detailed blueprint that will take you from passionate hobbyist to successful professional. This step-by-step guide to developing a music business plan will set you on the right path.

Whether your goal is to have a career as a professional musician, recording artist, producer, or music teacher, documenting the path you’ll take with a music business plan will be helpful to your cause. Your business plan outlines your goals, identifies the practical methods you’ll take to achieve them, and lists the resources you have and will need.

Not only will a concrete business plan keep you on course, it will also demonstrate your credibility in the eyes of others. Potential clients and business partners will see you as a professional and not another starving artist. If you ever need to take out a business loan or raise money for investors, a business plan is a must-have.

Crafting your music business plan isn’t something you can do in one sitting. You’ll need more than an afternoon to get this right. Take your time, bite off piece-by-piece, and chew your thoughts over thoroughly.

Our first piece of advice is as old as time:  know thyself.

You need some clarity of purpose before you can craft a useful music business plan. Ask yourself:

• Who is my audience?
• What is my ultimate goal?
• Why do I want to do this?

Having this understanding will make it easier for you to explain your vision to others and convey your enthusiasm. It will also establish the framework for your music business. This step is crucial if you’ll need people to buy in to help you reach your goals.

The content of your music business plan will vary depending upon whether you’re aiming to start a music school, be a producer, or work as an artist. But the fundamental components are the same either way. Here’s what you’ll need:

• Mission Statement
• Executive Summary
• Audience Analysis
• SWOT Analysis
• Marketing Plan
• Financial Considerations

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Mission Statement:

This can be as short as a few sentences, as long as it adequately describes who you are as an artist or a musical entrepreneur and what you’re trying to accomplish. While this might sound simple, think things through a bit before you try to draft your statement. Everything that follows here will hinge upon it.

Executive Summary:

The executive summary is a one-page synopsis of your plan. It should include an introduction as well as a description of your endeavors. Details about the funding you already have and what you’ll need in addition to a brief accounting of your plans for putting all of it into play are important too.

Most experts recommend saving the drafting of this part for last. It’s essentially a digest of all the other parts of your plan. Doing it last allows you to draw upon the information you’ve drafted for all of the other steps.

Audience Analysis: 

Here’s where you’ll demonstrate your understanding of your target audience. If you’re already performing, teaching, or producing on the side, think about what traits the people who follow you have in common.

If you’re just getting started, find someone doing what you want to do whose style and circumstances are similar to yours, and analyze their target market. Create a demographic sketch of your target audience based on gender, age, location, musical tastes and favorite venues.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats:

Think about the qualities that make you unique. List everything that comes to mind, from technical mastery and creative spark to teaching older demographics and networking. Your skills might not seem extraordinary on an individual level, but combine all your best qualities and you’ll find there isn’t anyone quite like you on the market.

Don’t forget about your weaknesses. Identity these not as qualities to promote, but as areas to work on in the future. Being aware of your shortcomings will also help guide your decision on potential business partners in the future. Let your inner critic loose, but realize that this is an exercise in personal growth, not tearing yourself down.

Had enough reflecting? Let’s take a look at the marketplace. Think about potential gaps in the industry you can exploit. Perhaps your competitors are overlooking a key value and you see a way to provide it both efficiently and effectively. These are your opportunities.

Threats could include technological shifts, cultural changes, the emergence of new artists, competition, and new trends. The music world moves fast, and today’s hot act can end up as yesterday’s news before your can say “more cowbell!” Brainstorm any roadblocks you picture yourself facing over the next few years and strategies you can use to overcome them.

Marketing plan:

Your marketing plan will detail how you’ll spread the word about yourself. Consider how much money you can reasonably invest into marketing and work out how you’ll spend it to reach as many of the right people as possible. Think about how you’ll grow your online presence—including social media, a press kit, and publicity materials such as a logo and photography.

Get a full account of your current cash flow situation. List how much capital you currently have and estimate how much it’ll take to get your operation up and running. When in doubt, overestimate. Studio time, engineering talent, transportation, legal fee, copyrights and trademarks are all important considerations when projecting your budget.

Measuring your progress:

At what intervals will you go over the financials to see how you’re advancing? What are the milestones by which you’ll mark your achievements?

You’ll also need a method for measuring your impact on the market in terms of the reputation you build. Social media outlets provide analytical tools to help you track these metrics. They can also help you pinpoint the demographics of your audience.

Establishing your key performance indicators (KPIs) can help you set the standards by which you will gauge your success. Sharing this information with others makes you accountable because they can look at your projections and see how much progress you’ve made toward achieving them.

Summarizing your music business plan

As we mentioned above, once you have all of these areas covered, you can then condense the information each section contains to create your executive summary. After all, how will you know what to put in it until you’ve examined all of these other areas first?

Success in the music industry takes a lot of work and a little luck, but you can stack the deck in your favor by building multiple income streams. That way, if one area slows down, you’ll have another one in play to keep you rolling until the next opportunity presents itself. Revisit your strengths and opportunities and start brainstorming ideas. If you get stuck, here’s a quick list to get you started:

Give music lessons. Chances are if you’ve got the chops to play paid gigs, you’ve got enough skills to pass on to some novice students. Giving music lessons can be a great way to add some extra recurring income.

Start a YouTube channel. With over 2 billion active users, YouTube might just be your biggest source of untapped attention and potential. 1 The platform offers users a chance to learn or be entertained, and as a musician you’re well-positioned to offer both. You could upload instructional videos or footage of yourself performing. You’ll get to keep a portion of any ad revenue your videos make. And if the right person sees your content, it could open the doors to even greater opportunities.

Explore the marketing world. If composition is your thing, you might be overlooking a potentially huge money-maker—marketing and advertising. Brands are in constant need of good video content to market their products, and those videos need music to truly capture attention. If you’ve got a knack for putting together atmospheric instrumentals, creating music for ads could seriously help stabilize your income.

Open your own studio. If you have the capital to invest and live in an area underserved by recording studios, you might want to consider opening your own. While you’re not using it for your own projects, you can rent it out to other local musicians and producers. If there’s enough demand, you could cover the costs of equipment and rent and even have a little profit left over.

Explore session work. Sure, your band is your baby, but if you’ve got time on your hands and musical versatility to boot, why not offer your services as a session musician? Session work is an effective way to boost your income, make new connections and get your name out there as a legit professional. If an artist is truly enamoured with your work, they could invite you to join them on tour.

Another important consideration in your music business plan is protecting your livelihood from the consequences of unintentional accidents. General liability insurance is key to helping you stay focused on your business. Carrying a policy also demonstrates to potential clients that you are a serious professional — whether you’re a musician, DJ , or another kind of entrepreneur in the entertainment industry.

• Hootsuite. 25 YouTube Statistics that May Surprise You: 2021 Edition .

Written on April 19, 2021 | Last updated: June 17, 2021

Our editorial content is intended for informational purposes only and is not written by a licensed insurance agent. Terms and conditions for rate and coverage may vary by class of business and state.

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Tip Jar: How To Write A Music Business Plan

The biggest mistake artists make when it comes to procuring financing for their music ventures is the lack of a business plan. Artists and musicians must understand that music is a business and should run like one. Once you’ve decided that music is your business, you must set aside time to write out a solid business plan if you want to grow as a business, attract investors, increase your fan base, market and sell music or launch a crowdfunding campaign.  Here are the essential elements you’ll need to begin your process of establishing a business plan:

1. Write it down (the rough draft)

Whether it’s temporarily written down on a napkin or typed in Microsoft Office, you need to get your plan from out of your head. Start by considering where you are currently in your music career and where you want to be. Give yourself a realistic time frame and work backwards, citing the steps and resources required to reach each milestone in your plan.

2. Take yourself seriously

This is not a joking matter. If you don’t take yourself seriously, no one else will, so include pertinent information regarding your music business. Before you complete your plan, make sure you’ve captured the essence of your music business with the same passion you have for your music.

3. Before you dive in headfirst

Creating a music business plan can be an overwhelming task if you allow it to be. Remember, the only way to eat an elephant is one spoonful at a time, so take a moment to breathe and gather your thoughts.

4. Taking personal and professional inventory

If you have been in the music business for at least a year, you should have a basic idea how a music business operates. In fact, you are most likely implementing core business principles and practices at your current level. Now take it a step further by conducting a SWOT analysis.

A SWOT analysis is a simple assessment of your personal or professional Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats as they apply to your music business. Begin by taking a piece of paper and folding it into four equal squares. At the top of each square going clockwise, write each component of the SWOT analysis in its own square. Then create a bulleted list of all the information regarding your business in the corresponding squares. Once completed, you will have the framework to create a formal business plan.

5. Understand what should be included in your plan

At a minimum, your plan should include the following:

A ) Executive Summary - An overview of your company, including an executive summary, mission statement, goals and objectives and a brief artist history.

B ) Market Analysis - Here you will analyze the current music market, with special focus on your genre of music. Include opportunities, competitors, trends, market size and growth potential.

C ) Company Description - Describe who you are, what you offer and the audience your business serves.

D ) Organization & Management Structure - A layout of your organizational structure. Are you an LLC, corporation or sole proprietorship? List the key team players, i.e. management, promotions, legal, accounting, etc.

E ) Marketing & Sales - How do you plan to market your music to the consumer (fans)? List your sales, product pricing and positioning strategies, marketing channels, ecommerce and communication strategies, as well as distribution and promotion networks.

F ) Products or Services - Explain the music related products and services your business is offering. Are you selling physical CDs or only digital downloads? Are you offering merch for sale such as T-shirts, posters, download cards and stickers? Do you have your own website outside of your social network that also serves as an online store for your music and merch?

G ) Funding Request or Needs - How much money do you need to get your operation off the ground? How much will you need for operation costs such as fixed and non-fixed expenses? Are you or your staff taking a salary? What are your costs for manufacturing, distribution and marketing?

H ) Financial Projections - How will your music business make money? What are the current and future revenue streams of your business? Be as clear as possible, investors hate ambiguity.

I ) Appendix (if needed) - If you already have an existing music business, use this section to add documents such as: revenue model, resume of owners (founders), cash flow statement, income statement, balance sheet and any other information that can help you stay on plan and attract the right people to your business.

6. Writing the plan using a  mind map

Just like creating a song, you will never really finish your business plan; you just have to stop and be okay with what you have. A business plan should evolve in sync with your business.

As a creative type, this is probably more than what you signed up for, but I assure you that it is a well worthwhile venture. Begin by creating an outline using the parameters I mentioned early. Some business plans are far more granular than what I have offered here, but use this information as a guide to establish the basic elements.

Artists, start your plan by creating a mind map. A mind map is a diagram that visually outlines information. Draw a circle in the center of a piece of paper and write the main idea or concept in the middle. Use lines to connect smaller circles with related ideas or subtopics. Once you’ve jotted down your thoughts, use the mind map to create an outline.

7. Pulling it all together

Once you have the first draft of your business plan, put it down and walk away for a few days. After a short mental vacation, review your plan and make corrections where necessary. Make sure it is properly formatted and free of errors.

Keep in mind that your music business plan is a living document that will serve as the roadmap for your career, but it should be fluid enough to adjust to changes in the market. Visit my website http://musicbusi nessguruacademy.com/businessplantemplate and download my free Word doc Music Business Plan template.

8. Distributing your music business plan (the final draft)

Once the final draft of your business plan is ready, distribute it across your organization and discuss it. Does the plan provide the reader with the key goals of your business? If so, your business plan can be used to help you launch a crowdfunding campaign, find an investor or take on business partners.

SAHPREEM A. KING is a Multiplatinum music producer, DJ, music industry journalist and author of several music industry books, including Dude, I Can Help You! 18 Mistakes Artists Make and How To Fix Them . King has used the knowledge he acquired as an artist, producer and educator to create an online music business course that he will offer from his website http://musicbusinessguruacademy.com in early 2014. He can be contacted at [email protected] .

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Music Business Plan: A Guide for Music Industry Professionals

Augur CPA helps entrepreneurial creatives gain clarity around their business finances.

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A music business plan is crucial for any music industry professional looking to launch or grow their business. It provides a snapshot of the current state of the business and lays out a clear growth plan for the next five years. This is essential for understanding where the business is at and setting achievable goals for the future.

Check out our article below to learn more about creating an awesome music business plan and get a template.

What is a Music Business Plan?

A music business plan is a comprehensive and detailed document that outlines the goals, strategies, and financial projections for a music-related business. Whether it's a record label, music production company, artist management firm, or any other music-related venture, a business plan provides a roadmap for success. It helps to attract investors, secure loans, and guide overall operations.

From market analysis and competitive research to marketing and distribution strategies, a music business plan covers every aspect of the business to ensure clarity, direction, and long-term viability. It is an essential tool for anyone looking to establish or grow a music-related business in the highly competitive and dynamic music industry.

Why is it important to have a music business plan?

A music business plan is crucial for an artist's success in the industry for several key reasons.

It serves as a blueprint for the artist's career, outlining their goals, strategies, and financial projections. This document helps attract investors by showcasing the artist's vision, potential for return on investment, and realistic plans for reaching their target audience.

A well-crafted business plan guides decision-making by providing a clear direction and framework for the artist's activities and investments. Furthermore, it defines the artist's brand, including its image, style, and target market, which is essential for standing out in the competitive music industry.

In summary, a music business plan is instrumental in attracting investors, guiding decision-making, and defining an artist's brand, making it essential for achieving success in the music industry. Therefore, having a solid and comprehensive business plan is crucial for any aspiring musician or band looking to establish a successful and sustainable career.

How to Fill Out Your Lean Music Business Plan

In this guide, we will walk you through the steps of filling out your lean music business plan, from identifying your target audience to mapping out your marketing and sales strategies. 

We'll be referencing sections of the US Small Business Administration's ( SBA ) lean business plan template . Despite its generality, it works as a music business plan template. 

Aspects of this guide relate to the traditional business plan, which we will discuss later in the article. 

Business identity

A business identity helps your business specify exactly what you offer. Both the single-page lean plan and the traditional plan place importance on your identity. Let's say, for example, you're a business-owning musician who provides audio for creatives in the media industry. Here's how your identity might look:

Our business identity revolves around providing high-quality music and sound effects for TV programs, film industries, commercials production companies, video game developers, corporations, and event organizers. 

Through the lean template, try to identify your business in under one paragraph. Then, using the traditional template (see below), expand on that identity. Things like your mission statement, which we visit later, are an aspect of this.

The problem you're trying to solve

All businesses are problem solvers. Record labels help musicians with distribution, while music teachers help provide the next generation of musicians with a strong foundation. 

Naturally, you might wonder how this applies to musicians. Just saying "entertainment" feels a bit weak. There are bands, like Rage Against the Machine, who make music to push a movement. But if you're not part of that crowd, what do you put?

So, think about why you got into music-making in the first place. Any professional musician should think about who their music appeals to and what they want people to feel when hearing their music. You can then say your music solves that problem in a cheesy reminder that you think about more than what shows up on your financial statements. 

If you don't want to get too corny, think about who your music will most appeal to. Then, you can say what your target audience is. Think of something like this:

Creating music for young men and women that will entertain them and inspire them to explore challenging topics.

This problem-solving might feel generic, but you'll know your fans and why you make music. So, stay focused on that.

Solution your business presents

Once you consider the problem your business solves, you need to state how you solve that problem. Again, this is much easier for music industry professionals who work in support roles. Music distributors solve the problem by having direct connections with other distributors, while music marketers help bands reach out to fans via multiple social media platforms. 

As someone who makes music, your solution is the creation of music. So, ask yourself how the creation of your music solves this problem. Here's an example based on our situation above:

Our band writes music that delves into mental health struggles based on personal experiences and how we overcame them.

You might think that doing this as a musician feels silly, but think of it as a reminder. One of the reasons famous musicians like David Bowie and Tom Morello were so successful is focusing on how their music helps people. 

Competition 

Competitive market data varies depending on the territory you plan to target. For musicians and bands, this might involve bands in the local area and those in future touring locations. For musicians, the competition can also be a list of potential collaborators.

For everyone else not making music, other record labels and music production companies are just competition. Whether you can collaborate with them or not, you'll want to differentiate yourself from all the other options out there. Being another "me too" music business will make it easier to forget you. 

Using the lean small business plan, you'll want to stick this to two or three sentences. Be very general, knowing you can also expand using the traditional business plan. Here's an example of a made-up Tennesse company: My Music Production & Management: 

The competitive landscape for music production companies in Tennessee includes My Music Production & Management, Genre Music, and Retro Recording & Productions. My Music Production & Management offers a wide range of services, including music production, artist management, and music distribution. 

Revenue streams

Revenue streams come from various sources. A business plan reminds you of those sources so you can stay focused. As a musician, your income can come from many sources. Below is an example you can use under the lean business plan:

As a musician, my income comes from paid gigs, teaching music lessons, instrument repair services, and recording sessions. To ensure financial stability and growth, I plan to diversify my income by capitalizing on these different opportunities.

Your revenue streams will differ as a record label or other kind of music business. Like musicians, your revenue streams can vary. However, as a young business, you may specialize in specific areas. You might work on creating merch or distributing digital releases. 

Marketing activities

Marketing activities focus on how you plan on reaching out to different sources. For many new music businesses, this involves outreach through social media platforms. Here's an example of what you might include in your business plans:

Our marketing activities will primarily focus on building a strong online presence through social media and regional publications. We plan to utilize platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok to engage with our audience and share regular updates about our music and upcoming events. Additionally, we will work on developing a press kit to distribute to regional publications and media outlets to garner publicity and reach a wider audience.

Bands can create electronic press kits (EPKs) that are prebuilt for members of the media. This makes it easy for journalists and members of the media to share content about you, such as a new album release. You can also consider how much you might pay for advertising. Digital marketing activities like those above are the first choice, as this activity uses advanced targeting tools based on what people search for and their demographics.

Marketing traditionally focuses on the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotions. The first two Ps delve into your product line, which you'll learn about later. Promotions indicate the type of marketing you choose, and Place usually refers to the platforms your target audience uses. 

The lean business plan gives you a simple overview of your likely expenses, which can be detailed in your longer business plan. Part of these expenses include music taxes. Read our guide on music taxes for more details.

Expenses vary depending on the type of music business you run. You could pay to rent a studio for recording sessions, purchase recording equipment, access manufacturers, or pay for other expenses. These expenses can result in tax deductions .

Here's an example of what your expenses section might look like:

To get my music business up and running, I need to budget for several key expenses. Studio time would be required for recording and producing music, averaging around $50-$100 per hour. I'd also need to allocate funds for engineering talent, which could cost between $50-$200 per hour, depending on experience. Transportation costs for getting to and from recording studios or performance venues should be factored in, estimating around $200-$500 per month.

Legal fees for business formation are also deductible. When listing your expenses and considering deductions, ask yourself what your type of company would normally deduct. Reach out to Augur CPA if you'd like a comprehensive review.

The key roles section provides a list of high-ranking authorities in the business and explains the responsibilities and functions those roles bring to the business. Here's an example of what that might look like in your business plan:

1. Chief Executive Officer (CEO): Responsible for overall strategic direction and leadership of the organization, making key decisions and representing the company to the public and stakeholders.

2. Human Resources Department: This department is responsible for recruiting, training, and managing employees, as well as ensuring legal compliance and promoting a positive work environment.

3. Marketing Department: Responsible for promoting the organization's products or services, conducting market research, and developing marketing strategies to attract and retain customers.

4. Finance Department: This department is responsible for managing the organization's financial resources, including budgeting, accounting, and financial reporting.

5. Operations Department: This department is responsible for overseeing the organization's day-to-day activities, optimizing processes, and ensuring efficient production and service delivery.

As a new business, you might not need all of this detail in your roles. A new business owner wears many hats, handling all of this themselves.

As your business grows and you fill roles like those above, you'll want to create an operating agreement . Operating agreements dictate the roles, holding groups responsible for their actions. This can dictate things like voting rules, which are vital when making high-risk business decisions that require more input.

Your milestones tell readers, yourself, and business partners of the important milestones you've already taken or plan to take. Your lean business plan is a single sentence telling people what you generally plan to do. Larger business plans might look something like this:

Milestone 1: Lease Finalization

- Task: Negotiate and finalize the lease agreement for the studio space

- Deadline: by May 15th

Milestone 2: Personnel Contracts

- Task: Draft, review, and finalize contracts for hired personnel

- Deadline: by May 20th

Milestone 3: Studio Build-out and Equipment Purchase

- Task: Begin construction and build-out of the studio space, purchase necessary equipment

- Deadline: Construction to be completed by June 30th

Milestone 4: Networking and Marketing Plan Implementation

- Task: Develop and implement a networking and marketing plan to attract clients

- Deadline: Marketing plan to be in place by June 1st

Each milestone outlines specific tasks and deadlines to ensure a smooth and successful opening of a recording studio. A musician or distribution company should take a similar approach, focusing on initiatives that help them grow their business.

Filling Out Longer, Traditional Business Plans

The SBA's traditional business plan, which you can find here , is a multi-page document. It's an expanded version of the lean business plan, which you can provide upon request. When applying for business loans or bringing on business partners, this plan can help communicate your vision.

Traditional business plans might use a bit more jargon, like executive summaries and mission statements. Below, you'll learn a bit more about some of the more complex aspects of writing your detailed business plan.

Executive summary

Executive summaries summarize the main points of a business plan. The summary points include the purpose of the business, the business name, the target market, your business location, and how your business solves its target audience's problem. Here's an example you can use for inspiration:

The Executive Summary of my music business plan showcases my artist bio, mission statement, and unique selling proposition. As a musician, I bring a unique blend of classical training and modern influences, with a strong foundation in jazz, pop, and R&B. My mission is to create music that transcends genres and connects with audiences on a deeper level, aspiring to inspire and uplift through my art.

My unique selling proposition lies in my ability to blend diverse musical styles and deliver powerful, emotionally resonant performances. I have achieved recognition in local music scenes, including winning the Best New Artist award at a prominent music festival. My aspirations include reaching a global audience and collaborating with industry-leading producers to create music that leaves a lasting impact. What sets me apart from others in the industry is my unwavering dedication to authenticity and artistry, always prioritizing substance over trends.

For bands and musicians, the executive summary is a great way to showcase your passion for music. Notice the "unique selling proposition," which indicates how you plan on differentiating yourself compared to other companies.

Other companies, like music publishing companies, might focus a little less on the creative aspects of their business. An executive summary can differ slightly between companies. However, if you're new, start with the template until you get comfortable writing these plans.

Company description and mission statement

Your company description, based on the traditional plan, includes the mission statement, members, legal structure, and location of the company. It might also include the executive summary.

Here's an example of the description for a made-up company: SoundWave Entertainment:

Our company, SoundWave Entertainment, is structured as a Limited Liability Company (LLC) and has been in business for ten years. We specialize in providing top-quality live music entertainment, event production, and artist management services. Our diverse range of offerings includes wedding bands, corporate event entertainment, and music festivals. Our customer demographics range from engaged couples looking for the perfect wedding band to event planners seeking unique and memorable entertainment experiences. In the past decade, we have experienced significant growth, expanding our roster of talented artists and achieving a strong presence in the events industry. Our primary business goal is to continue providing exceptional musical experiences and to further expand our reach in the entertainment industry.

The description is simple enough, but the mission statement is arguably the most important aspect of your business plan. It's a few sentences long but shares the overall mission of your company, dictating where it goes and how it makes decisions. Mission statements are emotionally driven and connected to the morals and heart of the company's stakeholders. Here's how it might look:

At SoundWave Entertainment, we are committed to delivering unforgettable musical experiences and fostering the growth of talented artists. We strive to exceed our client's expectations by curating exceptional live entertainment and providing a platform for artists to showcase their skills. Our goal is to leave a lasting impression through the power of music, creating moments that inspire and connect people.

Market conditions and research

The traditional business plan offers a bit more room for reviewing your market conditions and researching your competition. Doing your own research helps you understand the market. Sharing your research on a business plan provides proof of your knowledge of market conditions. Here's a short example of market conditions:

The current market conditions in the music industry are characterized by several industry trends, including the shift towards streaming services, the resurgence of vinyl records, and the increasing importance of live performances for artists' revenue. Consumer behavior has also changed significantly, with more music fans opting for subscription-based streaming services over traditional album or single purchases. Key competitors in the industry include major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, as well as record labels and live event promoters.

Additional sections of your business plan include a detailed description of your customers, how your company outperforms the competition, and regulations that might impact your company.

Regarding regulations in the music industry, it helps to have a general understanding of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DMCA ), fair use , and current communication laws. Knowledge of these laws or working with a music attorney can help you with this aspect of your business plan.

Service line and pricing structure

Your service line includes a complete list of your services and their costs. For musicians, this might include gigs, music lessons, and anything else you do to advance your career in music. It then breaks down the pricing of your services, including some potential for how that pricing can flex.

Services can vary heavily depending on your company and the services you offer. When you first start your business, you might specialize in a few areas. One milestone could be expanding to include additional features, like a record company offering email marketing services.

The service line section also includes your product lifecycle. For example, albums tend to make more money during their first year of release, and your lifecycle dictates how long you might make albums. If you go on a tour during the album, you might stop creating new albums or merchandise sales during this time. 

Service line information can also include information on intellectual property rights and how your band and albums will be copyrighted. You can also work to trademark your company (or band) logo.

Marketing, sales, and growth strategy

While your marketing research section details information about the market and industry, your marketing, sales, and growth section dictates how you plan on reaching target customers. The lean plan mentioned above briefly addresses this area.

The three areas you'll want to consider are your growth strategy, how you want to communicate with customers, and how you plan on selling your products.

Let's say you plan on creating your own Shopify e-commerce store for your business, which is a huge investment. This means your growth strategy, product sales, and customer communications will wrap around this tool. If you want to start simpler, mention how you plan on talking with fans and setting up merch tables at local shows.

Here, you'll see some examples of how you could write this section:

Our music business aims to market, sell, and grow by implementing a combination of online and offline strategies. Our marketing efforts will include targeted social media campaigns, SEO optimization for our website, and collaborations with music influencers and bloggers. We will also explore opportunities for live performances, partnerships with local venues, and utilizing traditional advertisement methods.

To drive sales, we will offer unique packages for our music services, including special promotions for first-time customers and loyalty rewards for returning clients. Our pricing strategy will be competitive while still maintaining the quality of our services.

In terms of customer retention, we will focus on delivering exceptional customer service and providing personalized experiences for our clients. Our unique selling proposition lies in our ability to offer customized music solutions tailored to different occasions and preferences.

Moving forward, our plans for growth and expansion include branching out to new markets and offering additional services such as music production and event management. We will also invest in building brand loyalty and expanding our customer base through strategic partnerships and collaborations within the music industry.

Why Should I Care About A Business Plan?

A business plan is a crucial tool for any musician or music industry professional looking to advance their career in the music industry. It serves as a roadmap for your career, helping you set goals, make strategic decisions, and stay on track for success.

One of the most significant benefits of having a business plan in the music industry is its ability to attract investors. A well-thought-out plan demonstrates to potential investors that you are serious about your music career and have a clear direction for success. It outlines your financial projections, marketing strategies, and potential for growth, making it more likely for investors to see the value in supporting your music endeavors.

Additionally, a business plan guides decision-making by providing a framework for evaluating opportunities and making informed choices. It forces you to consider all aspects of your music career, from marketing and promotion to touring and merchandising, ensuring that you have a comprehensive strategy in place.

Furthermore, a business plan helps define your brand identity and outline your unique selling points, target audience, and marketing message. This is crucial in the music industry, where standing out and connecting with fans is essential for success.

To learn more about how taxes can apply to a financial plan for your business, contact Augur CPA today .

This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, business, or tax advice. You should consult your own attorney, business advisor, or tax advisor regarding matters mentioned in this post. We take no responsibility for actions taken based on the information provided.

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Mobile App Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Mobile App Business Plan

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 5,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their app development company. On this page, we will first give you some background information with regards to the importance of business planning. We will then go through a mobile app business plan template step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

Download our Ultimate Mobile App Business Plan Template here >

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your mobile app as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategy for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan

Source of Funding for Mobile App Companies

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a mobile app are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans, angel investors and venture capitalists. With regards to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to confirm that your financials are reasonable. But they will want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business.

The second most common form of funding for a mobile app is angel investors . Angel investors are wealthy individuals who will write you a check. They will either take equity in return for their funding, or, like a bank, they will give you a loan.

Venture capitalists will also fund a mobile app and will take equity in return for their funding, VC funding generally comes after you’ve received initial proof of concept or traction with your app.

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How to write a business plan for a mobile app development company.

Your business plan should include 10 sections as follows:

Executive Summary

The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of app business you are operating and the status; for example, are you a startup, do you have a mobile app that you would like to grow, or do you already have several successful app businesses?

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan. For example, give a brief overview of the mobile app industry. Discuss the type of mobile app you are operating. Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers. Provide a snapshot of your marketing plan. Identify the key members of your team. And offer an overview of your financial plan.

Company Analysis

In your company analysis, you will detail the type of mobile app you are operating.

For example, you might operate one of the following types:

• Business app : this type of mobile app generally helps increase productivity and/or decrease costs.
• Entertainment app : this type of mobile app includes news, social networking, music, video, etc.
• Lifestyle app : this type of mobile app includes things like fitness, shopping, dating, etc.
• Education app : this type of app must have the primary objective of advancing a user’s knowledge and overall breadth in a particular subject.
• Utility app : this type of app includes things like scanners, trackers, health-related apps, cell service providers, etc.
• Travel app : this type of app aids in planning and booking trips.
• Other app : there are a limitless number of areas in which a successful app could be created

In addition to explaining the type of mobile app you operate, the Company Analysis section of your business plan needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to questions such as:

• When and why did you start the business?
• What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include sales goals you’ve reached, new store openings, etc.
• Your legal structure. Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the mobile app industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.

Secondly, market research can improve your strategy particularly if your research identifies market trends. For example, if there was a trend towards quiz apps, it would be helpful to ensure your plan incorporates gamification into your app.

The third reason for market research is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section:

• How big is the app industry (in dollars)?
• Is the market declining or increasing?
• Who are the key competitors in the market?
• Who are the key suppliers in the market?
• What trends are affecting the industry?
• What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
• What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential market for your mobile app? You can calculate this figure by multiplying the size of your target customer market by the amount they might spend per year on your app.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

The following are examples of customer segments: business operations managers, college students, sports enthusiasts, soccer moms, techies, teens, baby boomers, etc.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of mobile app you operate. Clearly, baby boomers would want different pricing and product options, and would respond to different marketing promotions than teens.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, include a discussion of the business types (if B2B), ages, genders, locations and income levels of the customers you seek to serve.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can understand and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.

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Competitive Analysis

Direct competitors are other app businesses in your niche.

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to achieve similar results to what your app offers.

With regards to direct competition, you want to detail the other app development companies with which you compete. Most likely, your direct competitors will be mobile app businesses offering the same type of service or activity that yours does.

For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:

• What types of customers do they serve?
• What products do they offer?
• What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
• What are they good at?
• What are their weaknesses?

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

• Will you provide superior features?
• Will you provide better customer service?
• Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For an app business, your marketing plan should include the following:

Product : in the product section, you should reiterate the type of mobile app that you documented in your Company Analysis. Then, detail the specific features of your app.

Price : Document how you will price your app and if there will be different pricing levels (e.g., free, entry, premium) and what those levels will be.

Place : Place refers to your distribution method. Document how customers can download your app (e.g., from your website, the Apple Store, Google Play, etc.).

Promotions : the final part of your mobile app marketing plan is the promotions section. Here you will document how you will drive customers to your app(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

• Social media advertising
• Advertising in magazines, newspapers and/or trade journals
• Reaching out to local bloggers and websites
• Pay per click advertising

Operations Plan

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your mobile app such as writing code, building upgrades, fixing bugs, providing customer service, etc.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect your 10,000th app install, or when you hope to reach $X in sales. It could also be when you expect to hire your Xth employee or launch a new location.

Management Team

To demonstrate your mobile app’s ability to succeed as a business, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.

Ideally you and/or your team members have direct experience in app development business. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act like mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in mobile apps and/or successfully running small businesses.

Financial Plan

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements.

Income Statement : an income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenues and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.

Balance Sheets : While balance sheets include much information, to simplify them to the key items you need to know about, balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. For instance, if you spend $100,000 on building out your mobile app, that will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a bank writes you a check for $100.000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

Cash Flow Statement : Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and make sure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt.

In developing your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a mobile app:

• Cost of equipment like computers, data warehousing, etc.
• Payroll or salaries paid to staff and independent contractors
• Business insurance
• Taxes and permits
• Legal expenses

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your store design blueprint or location lease.

Putting together a business plan for your mobile app is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will really understand the app business, your competition and your customers. You will have developed a marketing plan and will really understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful mobile app.

Mobile App Business Plan FAQs

What is the easiest way to complete my mobile app business plan.

Growthink's Ultimate Mobile App Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily complete your Mobile App Business Plan.

Where Can I Download a Free Mobile App Business Plan PDF?

You can download our mobile app business plan PDF template here . This is a template you can use in PDF format to create a business plan for an app.

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Since 1999, Growthink has developed business plans for thousands of companies who have gone on to achieve tremendous success.   Click here to see how Growthink’s professional business planning advisors can create your business plan for you.

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

How to Write a Business Plan for Musicians

Want a copy of ours?

Pre-Written music business plan template available! This 25-page music business plan is fully written and includes example verbiage from a musician. Use it as a template to write your own.

Creative entrepreneurs have a responsibility to themselves (and their families where applicable) to make good financial decisions for their present and their future. Whether you’re full-time, part-time, or aspiring; being financially savvy is both good for business and good for your overall morale. However, for musicians, it’s way too easy to get distracted with making music and art while neglecting other important parts of being in business like taxes , legal considerations, insurance, and finances. If you’re hoping to build a strong financial foundation for your music business, starting with a Music Business Plan is highly recommended.

Anytime an aspiring business person applies for a business loan, banks usually ask for a business plan. That’s because they want to see if you have a solid plan for making money and staying in business so they can get their money back and get a return on their investment. Likewise, if you’re hoping to achieve any amount of financial success as a musician, it’s important to start with a plan so you can make your money and get a return on your time investment.

A business plan is basically a blueprint for success. It outlines who you are, what you are, what you’re selling, who you’re selling it to, what your challenges are, how you plan to overcome them, and finally, how you plan on earning money to cover your expenses and produce a profit. Putting together a business plan for your music business forces you to ask and answer these tough questions and pave a path to success.

Your business plan should include the following sections:

Executive Summary

The executive summary is a quick synopsis of your business. It provides the who, what, and where. It’s sort of like a cover letter that you would include with a resume. It’s useful if you’re giving your business plan to someone such as a potential partner, investor, etc. It includes…

• Your stage name and location (where you’re based)
• Types of music related services and products you’ll offer (think live entertainment, sound engineering, sync licensing, songwriting, merchandise, etc.)
• Mission and vision statement briefly explaining your reasons for being a musician. If you need help putting together a mission statement for your music, check out our post, The Musician’s Guide to Creating a Meaningful Mission Statement
• The purpose of your plan (optional if you’d like to share this with others for the purposes of raising capital, support, or asking for help.)

Watch Me Walk You Through Writing Your Music Business Plan…

Customize this template and make it your own. Includes all sections that are already pre-written for a musician or band. Just plug in your information and go.

Business Description

This is an overarching description of your business and its structure. It should include…

• How your business is structured legally. Is it a corporation, a sole proprietorship, or an LLC?
• How long you’ve been in business (or why you’re doing music if you’re just starting out), a brief summary of what types of business you will engage in, and what consumer needs you plan to meet.
• A brief description of your services and/or products and who your customers/clients are.
• An overview of any growth highlights you’ve achieved since you started such as expanding your fanbase, adding team members and their achievements, or increasing earnings.
• Business goals and how you’re going to make a profit from your business endeavors.

Do you have a business plan for your music business? I just updated my plan and this next year is going to be fire!!! pic.twitter.com/J31yG04455 — The Crafty Musician (@IndieArtistsDIY) December 10, 2021

Service or Product Offerings

In this section, you’ll describe in detail what you’re offering including the various types of services you offer (live entertainment, lessons, session work, etc) as well as any products you sell such as merchandise, books, etc.

• List a description of each of your services along with its benefits.
• List a description of each of your products or product types.
• Share how you’ll stand out among fellow artists and how you’ll niche yourself, especially in your local area if you’re planning on making a splash locally.
• Any service or product expansion initiatives that you are planning in the future such as starting a band, doing larger shows at larger venues, touring expansions, etc.

Market Analysis

The Market Analysis provides a snapshot of your fanbase and how you’ll reach them. The standout portion of this section is the research you’ll do into your potential base of fans. Learning all you can in this area will help you make effective marketing and promotions decisions that save you time and money. Most importantly, it will help you build a solid following with loyal followers.

• A description of your fans or ideal fans.

Pro Tip: If you haven’t done any research or identified who your ideal fans are, check out How to Identify and Reach Your Ideal Fans here .

• A summary of music industry trends related to how you do business.
• How do people find new music?
• What types of music-related products are people buying right now ie. live entertainment, music merch, digital music, etc.
• A detailed description of similar acts in your area and how you’ll stand out.

Your Business Model

This section provides details regarding how you will make your money. It describes the nuts and bolts of your operation such as how you market your music in order to acquire new fans and how you get your fans/listeners to spend money with you. This section should include…

• An explanation of how you’ll promote your music to current fans and potential fans and how you gain exposure with your music.
• Information about your price points as it relates to each of your service offerings, products and merchandise items.
• Information about how you plan to distribute your music and make it available for people to purchase.
• A summary of your supply chain if applicable. This includes how you plan on producing your music, what professionals or studios you plan on working with, if you have a supply chain for creating your merchandise (check out my article about an easy way to create tons of merch items without having to stock an inventory here )
• An explanation of how you’ll market your services and products

The last bullet point on this list (how you’ll market your services and products) is the factor that will determine your financial growth. Each of these considerations is equally important. However, if you don’t address how you’ll market your services and products in order to earn an income, it will be very difficult to meet your financial goals. You have to be intentional about how you’ll earn your money and be willing to make these offers to your listeners, followers, and fans. In other words, simply putting your music “out there” is not enough. If you want to earn a significant income from your music endeavors, you have to start thinking like a business. This means actively engaging in sales and marketing efforts. These include…

• Hosting sales events for new merchandise items
• Promoting a special entertainment service like a singing telegram or a custom song
• Promoting your guitar lessons on your mailing list, website, and blog
• Encouraging your fans to buy your new album
• Encouraging your fans to host a house concert
• A campaign to get listeners to pre-order your upcoming release

Pro Tip: Check out our 30 Day New Release Promotions Bundle for an easy, plug-and-play way to market your upcoming release. It includes a pre-written press release, email, and pitch letter templates in addition to pre-written social media content for 30 days and more. It provides everything you need to market your upcoming release. Learn more about our 30 Day New Release Promotions Bundle here .

These are just a few examples to illustrate what actual sales and marketing initiatives look like. There are tons more ways to promote your products and services. Start paying attention to some of your favorite small businesses and how they promote their products and services. It might give you some ideas!

Organization and Management Team

This section lists who your main players are. In this section, you’ll list who facilitates the operations of your business starting with yourself at the top and then moving down the hierarchy.

• Who is the owner? Who is making high-level decisions for your business?
• Is there a management team?
• Is there a booking agent?
• Is there a PR person or team?
• Administrative professionals?
• List job responsibilities of each position.
• If you don’t have anyone currently functioning in these positions, that’s totally fine. You could choose to describe how these functions will be executed instead. For example, when you need a PR person, you’ll hire someone on a case-by-case basis. You could also use this opportunity to do a brief search for potential PR providers and list them in this section.
• You could also list potential mentors and music career coaches here as well.

Financial Outlook

This is the final section of your business plan. It describes the financial health of your music business. In this section, you’ll illustrate how your business is doing financially by providing historical financial data (if you’ve been doing business for a while) and/or financial projections for the future. When illustrating financial projections make sure it is realistic! This section includes…

• Income statements, Profit and Loss Statements , and cash flow data from the past three to five years.
• A snapshot of projected revenue and expenses for the next five years.
• A description of new potential business opportunities and how you plan to increase revenue in the future. Check out our article 18 Ways Musicians are Actually Making Money for ideas.

This section is very useful if you’re trying to apply for a business loan, business credit card, acquire investors, or show your business financials for other purposes such as taxes, insurance, rental/mortgage applications, or financial programs. It’s also great to see how you’ve done in the past and what you have to look forward to in the future.

Get the Music Business Plan Template for Musicians.

Free for members! Login or become a member below! Memberships start at just $5/month. Cancel anytime! Once you log in, you’ll see a link to the template in the exclusive members-only section below.

Preparing a business plan for your music business helps you build a solid blueprint to achieve success as a musician. It helps you create a map that will get you from starting with nothing to building your financial empire.

More Resources…

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Share your comments

Hi Anitra, great blog! I came across this article by watching your YT series on the same topic and wondered if by becoming a member, I could not only access the very helpful business plan template, but would it also include the August, Lately insert for contextual purposes? Or is the latter only accessible via your biweekly YT episodes?

Thanks Uasuf. The Music Business Plan Template that is available for members is pre-loaded will all of the August, Lately content. As of right now, the template only has the sections that have been covered in the YT series thus far. Let me know if you have any other questions and thanks for reading/watching!

I’m a member but it won’t let me access the music business plan template.

Hi Mars. I sent you a welcome email with all the information you need to access it along with all of your other perks. Did you get it?

I just had to be more patient! I’m good. You’re the best, thank you so much!

Ok great! Let me know if you have any questions or need help with anything!

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Music Business Plan

Free Business Plan Template

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How to Write a Music Business Plan?

Writing a music business plan is a crucial step toward the success of your business. Here are the key steps to consider when writing a business plan:

1. Executive Summary

An executive summary is the first section planned to offer an overview of the entire business plan. However, it is written after the entire business plan is ready and summarizes each section of your plan.

Here are a few key components to include in your executive summary:

Introduce your business:

• This section may include the name of your music business, its location, when it was founded, the type of music business (E.g., record labels, music publishers, live music industry), etc.

Market opportunity:

Product and services:.

• For instance, you may include music recordings and albums as services.

Marketing & sales strategies:

Financial highlights:, call to action:.

Ensure your executive summary is clear, concise, easy to understand, and jargon-free.

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2. Business Overview

The business overview section of your business plan offers detailed information about your company. The details you add will depend on how important they are to your business. Yet, business name, location, business history, and future goals are some of the foundational elements you must consider adding to this section:

Business description:

• Record labels
• Music publishers
• Live music industry
• Music streaming services
• Describe the legal structure of your music company, whether it is a sole proprietorship, LLC, partnership, or others.
• Explain where your business is located and why you selected the place.

Mission statement:

Business history:.

• Additionally, If you have received any awards or recognition for excellent work, describe them.

Future goal:

This section should provide a thorough understanding of your business, its history, and its plans. Keep this section engaging, precise, and to the point.

3. Market Analysis

The market analysis section of your business plan should offer a thorough understanding of the industry with the target market, competitors, and growth opportunities. You should include the following components in this section.

Target market:

• For instance, music lovers, music directors, movies, younger audiences, etc can be the ideal market for the music business.

Market size and growth potential:

Competitive analysis:, market trends:.

• For instance, the demand for rap and pop music is increasing; explain how you plan on dealing with this potential growth opportunity.

Regulatory environment:

Here are a few tips for writing the market analysis section of your music production business plan:

• Conduct market research, industry reports, and surveys to gather data.
• Provide specific and detailed information whenever possible.
• Illustrate your points with charts and graphs.
• Write your business plan keeping your target audience in mind.

4. Products And Services

The product and services section should describe the specific services and products that will be offered to customers. To write this section should include the following:

Describe your music services:

Mention the music services your business will offer. This list may include services like,

• Music stores
• Music licensing services
• Music promotion services
• Music education services

Describe each service:

In short, this section of your music plan must be informative, precise, and client-focused. By providing a clear and compelling description of your offerings, you can help potential investors and readers understand the value of your business.

5. Sales And Marketing Strategies

Writing the sales and marketing strategies section means a list of strategies you will use to attract and retain your clients. Here are some key elements to include in your sales & marketing plan:

Unique selling proposition (USP):

• For example, exclusive content, high-quality production, niche market focus, etc, could be some of the great USPs for a professional music company.

Pricing strategy:

Marketing strategies:, sales strategies:, customer retention:.

Overall, this section of your music studio business plan should focus on customer acquisition and retention.

Have a specific, realistic, and data-driven approach while planning sales and marketing strategies for your music business, and be prepared to adapt or make strategic changes in your strategies based on feedback and results.

6. Operations Plan

The operations plan section of your business plan should outline the processes and procedures involved in your business operations, such as staffing requirements and operational processes. Here are a few components to add to your operations plan:

Staffing & training:

Operational process:, equipment & instrument:.

• Explain how these technologies help you maintain quality standards and improve the efficiency of your business operations.

Adding these components to your operations plan will help you lay out your business operations, which will eventually help you manage your business effectively.

7. Management Team

The management team section provides an overview of your music business’s management team. This section should provide a detailed description of each manager’s experience and qualifications, as well as their responsibilities and roles.

Founder/CEO:

Key managers:.

• It should include, key executives(e.g. COO, CMO.), senior management, and other department managers (e.g. operations manager, music director.) involved in the music business operations, including their education, professional background, and any relevant experience in the industry.

Organizational structure:

Compensation plan:, advisors/consultants:.

• So, if you have any advisors or consultants, include them with their names and brief information consisting of roles and years of experience.

This section should describe the key personnel for your music business services, highlighting how you have the perfect team to succeed.

8. Financial Plan

Your financial plan section should provide a summary of your business’s financial projections for the first few years. Here are some key elements to include in your financial plan:

Profit & loss statement:

Cash flow statement:, balance sheet:, break-even point:.

• This exercise will help you understand how much revenue you need to generate to sustain or be profitable.

Financing needs:

Be realistic with your financial projections, and make sure you offer relevant information and evidence to support your estimates.

9. Appendix

The appendix section of your plan should include any additional information supporting your business plan’s main content, such as market research, legal documentation, financial statements, and other relevant information.

• Add a table of contents for the appendix section to help readers easily find specific information or sections.
• In addition to your financial statements, provide additional financial documents like tax returns, a list of assets within the business, credit history, and more. These statements must be the latest and offer financial projections for at least the first three or five years of business operations.
• Provide data derived from market research, including stats about the music industry, user demographics, and industry trends.
• Include any legal documents such as permits, licenses, and contracts.
• Include any additional documentation related to your business plan, such as product brochures, marketing materials, operational procedures, etc.

Use clear headings and labels for each section of the appendix so that readers can easily find the necessary information.

Remember, the appendix section of your music business plan should only include relevant and important information supporting your plan’s main content.

The Quickest Way to turn a Business Idea into a Business Plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

This sample music business plan will provide an idea for writing a successful music plan, including all the essential components of your business.

After this, if you still need clarification about writing an investment-ready business plan to impress your audience, download our music business plan pdf .

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Frequently asked questions, why do you need a music business plan.

A business plan is an essential tool for anyone looking to start or run a successful music business. It helps to get clarity in your business, secures funding, and identifies potential challenges while starting and growing your business.

Overall, a well-written plan can help you make informed decisions, which can contribute to the long-term success of your music company.

How to get funding for your music business?

There are several ways to get funding for your music business, but self-funding is one of the most efficient and speedy funding options. Other options for funding are:

Small Business Administration (SBA) loan

Crowdfunding, angel investors.

Apart from all these options, there are small business grants available, check for the same in your location and you can apply for it.

Where to find business plan writers for your music business?

There are many business plan writers available, but no one knows your business and ideas better than you, so we recommend you write your music business plan and outline your vision as you have in your mind.

What is the easiest way to write your music business plan?

A lot of research is necessary for writing a business plan, but you can write your plan most efficiently with the help of any music business plan example and edit it as per your need. You can also quickly finish your plan in just a few hours or less with the help of our business plan software.

About the Author

Vinay Kevadiya

Vinay Kevadiya is the founder and CEO of Upmetrics, the #1 business planning software. His ultimate goal with Upmetrics is to revolutionize how entrepreneurs create, manage, and execute their business plans. He enjoys sharing his insights on business planning and other relevant topics through his articles and blog posts. Read more

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Business Plan Template for Music Producers

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Crafting a business plan as a music producer is like composing a hit song - it takes careful planning, a solid structure, and a clear vision. That's where ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Music Producers comes in handy!

With this template, you can:

• Outline your unique value proposition and target audience to stand out in the industry
• Set strategic goals and milestones to track your progress and stay on top of your game
• Develop a comprehensive financial plan to attract investors and secure funding
• Manage your operations, marketing strategies, and team collaborations all in one place

Don't miss a beat when it comes to your music production career. Start using ClickUp's Business Plan Template today and take your music to the next level!

Business Plan Template for Music Producers Benefits

A business plan template for music producers can provide a wide range of benefits, including:

• Streamlining the process of creating a comprehensive business plan
• Helping music producers effectively communicate their vision, mission, and unique selling points to potential investors and partners
• Ensuring a well-structured and organized plan that covers all key aspects of the music production business, such as marketing strategies, target audience analysis, and revenue streams
• Assisting with financial planning and forecasting, including budgeting, cash flow projections, and revenue projections
• Enabling music producers to set realistic goals, track progress, and make informed decisions for sustainable growth in the competitive music industry

Main Elements of Music Producers Business Plan Template

ClickUp’s Business Plan Template for Music Producers is designed to help independent music producers and production companies effectively outline their strategies, goals, and financial projections. Here are the main elements of this template:

• Custom Statuses: Easily track the progress of each section of your business plan with statuses like Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do.
• Custom Fields: Utilize custom fields such as Reference, Approved, and Section to add specific details and organize your business plan effectively.
• Custom Views: Access five different views, including Topics, Status, Timeline, Business Plan, and the Getting Started Guide, to gain a comprehensive overview of your business plan and track its progress.
• Collaboration Tools: Collaborate with team members, assign tasks, and set due dates to ensure everyone is aligned, making it easier to achieve business goals.
• Integration: Seamlessly integrate with other tools and platforms such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and Slack to streamline your workflow and enhance productivity.

How To Use Business Plan Template for Music Producers

If you're a music producer looking to create a solid business plan, follow these steps using the Business Plan Template:

1. Define your vision

Start by clearly defining your vision for your music production business. What are your goals, values, and the unique selling points of your brand? This will help you establish a strong foundation for your business plan.

Use Docs in ClickUp to brainstorm and outline your vision for your music production business.

2. Research your target audience

To create a successful business plan, you need to understand your target audience. Who are your ideal clients? What kind of music do they produce? What are their needs and pain points? Conduct thorough research to gain insights into your target market.

Utilize the Table view in ClickUp to organize and analyze your research data on your target audience.

3. Develop a marketing strategy

Your business plan should include a comprehensive marketing strategy to promote your music production services. Identify the best channels to reach your target audience, such as social media platforms, music industry events, or online forums. Determine the key messages and tactics that will attract clients to your business.

Create tasks in ClickUp to outline your marketing strategy and assign responsibilities to team members.

4. Outline your financial plan

A solid financial plan is essential for any business. Determine your startup costs, projected revenue, and expenses. Consider factors such as equipment, studio rent, marketing expenses, and any additional costs specific to the music production industry. This will help you track your financial progress and make informed decisions.

Use the Gantt chart in ClickUp to create a timeline for your financial plan and set milestones for achieving financial goals.

5. Set measurable goals and milestones

Lastly, set specific, measurable goals and milestones that align with your vision and financial plan. These goals can include the number of clients you want to acquire, revenue targets, or expanding your network within the music industry. Break down these goals into smaller milestones to track your progress effectively.

Utilize the Goals feature in ClickUp to set and track your business goals, and the Workload view to assign tasks and manage team resources.

By following these steps and utilizing ClickUp's features, you can create a comprehensive and effective business plan for your music production business.

Get Started with ClickUp’s Business Plan Template for Music Producers

Music producers and production companies can use the Business Plan Template for Music Producers in ClickUp to effectively plan and manage their operations, attract investors, and secure funding.

First, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to create a comprehensive business plan:

• Use the Topics View to organize your business plan into different sections such as Executive Summary, Marketing Strategy, Financial Projections, etc.
• The Status View will help you track the progress of each section of your business plan, with statuses like Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do.
• The Timeline View will give you a visual representation of the deadlines and milestones for each section of your business plan.
• The Business Plan View provides a comprehensive overview of your entire business plan, allowing you to easily navigate and review all the sections.
• The Getting Started Guide View will guide you through the process of filling out each section of the business plan template, providing helpful tips and instructions.

Additionally, you can customize your business plan template by adding the following custom fields:

• Reference: Use this field to link supporting documents, research, or external resources relevant to each section of your business plan.
• Approved: Use this field to indicate whether each section has been approved by the necessary stakeholders.
• Section: Use this field to categorize each section of your business plan, making it easier to filter and search for specific sections.
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How To Write a Winning Music Production Business Plan + Template

Creating a business plan is essential for any business, but it can be especially helpful for music production businesses that want to improve their strategy and/or raise funding.

A well-crafted business plan not only outlines the vision for your company, but also documents a step-by-step roadmap of how you are going to accomplish it. In order to create an effective business plan, you must first understand the components that are essential to its success.

This article provides an overview of the key elements that every music production business owner should include in their business plan.

Download the Ultimate Business Plan Template

What is a Music Production Business Plan?

A music production business plan is a formal written document that describes your company’s business strategy and its feasibility. It documents the reasons you will be successful, your areas of competitive advantage, and it includes information about your team members. Your business plan is a key document that will convince investors and lenders (if needed) that you are positioned to become a successful venture.

Why Write a Music Production Business Plan?

A music production business plan is required for banks and investors. The document is a clear and concise guide of your business idea and the steps you will take to make it profitable.

Entrepreneurs can also use this as a roadmap when starting their new company or venture, especially if they are inexperienced in starting a business.

Writing an Effective Music Production Business Plan

The following are the key components of a successful music production business plan:

Executive Summary

The executive summary of a music production business plan is a one to two page overview of your entire business plan. It should summarize the main points, which will be presented in full in the rest of your business plan.

• Start with a one-line description of your music production company
• Provide a short summary of the key points in each section of your business plan, which includes information about your company’s management team, industry analysis, competitive analysis, and financial forecast among others.

Company Description

This section should include a brief history of your company. Include a short description of how your company started, and provide a timeline of milestones your company has achieved.

If you are just starting your music production business, you may not have a long company history. Instead, you can include information about your professional experience in this industry and how and why you conceived your new venture. If you have worked for a similar company before or have been involved in an entrepreneurial venture before starting your music production firm, mention this.

You will also include information about your chosen music production business model and how, if applicable, it is different from other companies in your industry.

Industry Analysis

The industry or market analysis is an important component of a music production business plan. Conduct thorough market research to determine industry trends and document the size of your market. 

Questions to answer include:

• What part of the music production industry are you targeting?
• How big is the market?
• What trends are happening in the industry right now (and if applicable, how do these trends support the success of your company)?

You should also include sources for the information you provide, such as published research reports and expert opinions.

Customer Analysis

This section should include a list of your target audience(s) with demographic and psychographic profiles (e.g., age, gender, income level, profession, job titles, interests). You will need to provide a profile of each customer segment separately, including their needs and wants.

For example, the clients of a music production business may include:

• Recording studios
• Independent record labels

You can include information about how your customers make the decision to buy from you as well as what keeps them buying from you.

Develop a strategy for targeting those customers who are most likely to buy from you, as well as those that might be influenced to buy your products or music production services with the right marketing.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive analysis helps you determine how your product or service will be different from competitors, and what your unique selling proposition (USP) might be that will set you apart in this industry.

For each competitor, list their strengths and weaknesses. Next, determine your areas of competitive differentiation and/or advantage; that is, in what ways are you different from and ideally better than your competitors.

Below are sample competitive advantages your music production business may have:

• Proven industry experience
• Unique production process
• Strong customer loyalty
• Extensive music library
• Personalized service

Marketing Plan

This part of the business plan is where you determine and document your marketing plan. . Your plan should be clearly laid out, including the following 4 Ps.

• Product/Service : Detail your product/service offerings here. Document their features and benefits.
• Price : Document your pricing strategy here. In addition to stating the prices for your products/services, mention how your pricing compares to your competition.
• Place : Where will your customers find you? What channels of distribution (e.g., partnerships) will you use to reach them if applicable?
• Promotion : How will you reach your target customers? For example, you may use social media, write blog posts, create an email marketing campaign, use pay-per-click advertising, launch a direct mail campaign. Or, you may promote your music production business via a public relations campaign.

Operations Plan

This part of your music production business plan should include the following information:

• How will you deliver your product/service to customers? For example, will you do it in person or over the phone only?
• What infrastructure, equipment, and resources are needed to operate successfully? How can you meet those requirements within budget constraints?

The operations plan is where you also need to include your company’s business policies. You will want to establish policies related to everything from customer service to pricing, to the overall brand image you are trying to present.

Finally, and most importantly, in your Operations Plan, you will lay out the milestones your company hopes to achieve within the next five years. Create a chart that shows the key milestone(s) you hope to achieve each quarter for the next four quarters, and then each year for the following four years. Examples of milestones for a music production business include reaching $X in sales. Other examples include adding new production equipment, opening a second location, or hiring new personnel.

Management Team

List your team members here including their names and titles, as well as their expertise and experience relevant to your specific music production industry. Include brief biography sketches for each team member.

Particularly if you are seeking funding, the goal of this section is to convince investors and lenders that your team has the expertise and experience to execute on your plan. If you are missing key team members, document the roles and responsibilities you plan to hire for in the future.

Financial Plan

Here you will include a summary of your complete and detailed financial plan (your full financial projections go in the Appendix). 

This includes the following three financial statements:

Income Statement

Your income statement should include:

• Revenue : how much revenue you generate.
• Cost of Goods Sold : These are your direct costs associated with generating revenue. This includes labor costs, as well as the cost of any equipment and supplies used to deliver the product/service offering.
• Net Income (or loss) : Once expenses and revenue are totaled and deducted from each other, this is the net income or loss.

Sample Income Statement for a Startup Music Production Firm

Balance sheet.

Include a balance sheet that shows your assets, liabilities, and equity. Your balance sheet should include:

• Assets : All of the things you own (including cash).
• Liabilities : This is what you owe against your company’s assets, such as accounts payable or loans.
• Equity : The worth of your business after all liabilities and assets are totaled and deducted from each other.

Sample Balance Sheet for a Startup Music Production Firm

Cash flow statement.

Include a cash flow statement showing how much cash comes in, how much cash goes out and a net cash flow for each year. The cash flow statement should include:

• Cash Flow From Operations
• Cash Flow From Investments
• Cash Flow From Financing

Below is a sample of a projected cash flow statement for a startup music production business.

Sample Cash Flow Statement for a Startup Music Production Firm

You will also want to include an appendix section which will include:

• Your complete financial projections
• A complete list of your company’s business policies and procedures related to the rest of the business plan (marketing, operations, etc.)
• Any other documentation which supports what you included in the body of your business plan.

Writing a good business plan gives you the advantage of being fully prepared to launch and/or grow your music production company. It not only outlines your business vision but also provides a step-by-step process of how you are going to accomplish it.

Remember to keep your business plan updated as your company grows and changes. Review it at least once a year to make sure it is still relevant and accurate.  

Finish Your Music Production Business Plan in 1 Day!

Apple Music

Hear sound all around..

• Over 100 million songs and 30,000 playlists, always ad‑free.
• Experience Spatial Audio for sound that surrounds you. 1
• Sing along to real-time lyrics with Apple Music Sing.
• Listen across all your devices, online or off.
• Explore the world’s largest classical music catalog.

Buy an Apple device

6 months free.

Get 6 months of Apple Music free with the purchase of eligible audio devices. ◊

Free 1-month trial

New subscribers get 1 month of Apple Music free, then pay $10.99  per month.

Apple One

Bundle Apple Music with up to 5 other great services for 1 low monthly price. Learn more

Listen and discover. In perfect harmony.

Immerse yourself in lossless and spatial audio..

Hear sound all around you in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. 1 And unlock amazing tonal definition with lossless audio.

Discover Spatial Audio

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Even more to favorite.

Select your favorite songs, albums, playlists, and artists to add them to your library — and improve your personalized recommendations. 3 And you’ll automatically be notified when artists you’ve added release new music.

Tune in to top shows on live radio.

Catch your favorite shows live on Apple Music — or explore select shows on demand in Apple Podcasts.

Listen live for free 4

Browse playlists for your every mood.

Tap into our editors’ picks with thousands of curated playlists.

Sing along with Apple Music Sing. 5

New lyrics features make it more fun to hit every beat. Sing top songs with adjustable vocals, and take sing-along sessions to a whole new level with Apple Music Sing on your TV.

Take your tunes for a drive with CarPlay.

Hit the road with Apple Music — it’s easy to connect. Let everyone in the car add to what’s playing with SharePlay, or ask Siri to play your favorites.

Discover the perfect song with Listen Now.

The Listen Now tab is your place for personalized picks and playlists that update weekly. And it’s all based on the music you’re already listening to.

Mix it up and collaborate on playlists.

Create playlists together so you can share and discover more music. Everyone you invite can add, remove, reorder, and react to songs. 6

Get the best seat in the house with Apple Music Live.

Watch our ongoing concert series featuring exclusive performances recorded in real time. Only on Apple Music.

Explore Apple Music Live

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Apple Music Classical

The app designed for classical.

Included with your apple music subscription at no additional cost. 7.

Get unlimited access to the world’s largest classical music catalog, featuring the highest audio quality of up to 192kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless. 8 With a search built specifically for classical music, you can easily find works, composers, artists, or recordings. And learn while you listen with composer biographies and insightful descriptions. All ad‑free.

Listen to Apple Music on all your favorite devices.

Apple Watch

Apple TV

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Update to the latest iTunes

Even more places to get Apple Music.

Set up your device

Choose the plan that’s right for you.

No commitment. cancel anytime..

Apple Music is available in iTunes, and for iOS and Android devices.

Student 9 / Individual

100 million songs and more than 30,000 expert-curated playlists

Request any track, album, playlist, or station simply by asking Siri or with Type to Siri

Free trial with no commitment 11

Stream ad-free music

Original shows, concerts, and exclusives — and live and on‑demand radio stations hosted by artists

Available on Apple devices

The Apple Music Classical app — featuring the largest classical catalog in the world

Available on other supported devices

Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos

Full catalog in lossless audio

Apple Music Sing, with beat‑by-beat lyrics and adjustable vocals 5

Download 100,000 songs to your library, access your entire library from any device, and listen online or off

See what your friends are listening to

Unlimited access for up to six people

Personal music library for each family member

Personalized recommendations for each family member

Get 6 months of Apple   Music free with eligible devices. ◊

Bundle up to 6 Apple   services. And enjoy more for less.

• Try it free 2

Apple Music Student Plan comes with Apple TV+ for free. 12

• Try it free
• Learn more about Apple TV+

Questions? Answers.

What is apple music is it the same as itunes.

Apple Music is a streaming service that allows you to listen to over 100 million songs. Its features include the ability to download your favorite tracks and play them offline, lyrics in real time, listening across all your favorite devices, new music personalized just for you, curated playlists from our editors, and much more. All this in addition to exclusive and original content.

Your iTunes library is still yours. You can access your entire collection from Apple Music or from iTunes for macOS or Windows.

How can I listen to Apple Music?

Apple Music is already on your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV 4K, Mac, and HomePod speakers — and you can listen with CarPlay or online at music.apple.com . Apple Music is also available on Windows and Android devices, Sonos speakers, Amazon Echo, Google Nest, smart TVs, and more.

What does Apple Music cost?

That all depends on which offer you choose. (1) Students can choose the Apple Music Student Plan at $5.99 per month. (2) An individual monthly subscription is just $10.99 per month after your free trial. (3) The Apple Music Family Plan, which allows you to share your account with up to five people and gives each member a personal account, is just $16.99 per month. (4) The Apple Music Individual Plan and the Apple Music Family Plan are also included in Apple One , which bundles up to five other Apple services into a single monthly subscription. Apple One plans start at $19.95 per month.

Apple Music Classical is included with Apple Music Student, Individual, and Family Plans.

Is there an Apple Music student subscription?

Students get the same Apple Music features and benefits as individual members. Once your student status with your college or university is verified, you get student membership pricing for up to four years, as long as you remain a student. After four years, your membership will continue at the individual member price.

Does Siri work with all plans?

Yes. With a Siri-enabled device and any Apple Music plan, you can enjoy all the features of Apple Music and Siri. All plans also support Type to Siri .

What is Dolby Atmos music and how can I listen to it?

Dolby Atmos is an audio technology that creates an immersive listening experience in which sound comes from all around you.

Apple Music subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music on iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV 4K can listen to thousands of Dolby Atmos music tracks using any headphones. When you listen with compatible Apple or Beats headphones or most Bluetooth headphones, Dolby Atmos music plays back automatically when available for a song. For other headphones, go to Settings > Music > Audio and set Dolby Atmos to Always On. You can also hear Dolby Atmos music using the built‑in speakers on a compatible iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or iMac, or by connecting your Apple TV 4K to one of the following: HomePod speakers set up as the default speakers, a Dolby Atmos–compatible sound bar, a Dolby Atmos–enabled AV receiver, or a television that supports Dolby Atmos audio. For the full list of compatible devices, please see support.apple.com/en-us/HT212182 .

What is lossless audio and how can I listen to it?

Lossless audio compression reduces the original file size of a song while preserving all of the data perfectly. Apple Music is making its entire catalog of more than 100 million songs available in lossless audio at different resolutions. In Apple Music, “Lossless” refers to lossless audio up to 48kHz, and “Hi-Res Lossless” refers to lossless audio from 48kHz to 192kHz. Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless files are very large and use much more bandwidth and storage space than standard AAC files.

You can listen to lossless audio using the latest Apple Music app on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV 4K. Turn on lossless audio in Settings > Music > Audio Quality. You can choose between Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless for cellular or Wi-Fi connections. Note that Hi-Res Lossless requires external equipment such as a USB digital to analog converter.

For a full list of compatible devices, please see support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183 .

Can I share with my family?

Yes. With an Apple Music Family Plan, up to six people in the family can enjoy all the features and the full catalog of Apple Music. To get started, just set up Family Sharing on your iOS or iPadOS device, Android phone, or Mac and invite family members to join.

Are there commercials?

Apple Music has zero ads.

Am I eligible for a six-month Apple Music free offer? How do I redeem it?

New subscribers can get six months of Apple Music free with an eligible audio device. Make sure your iPhone or iPad is running the latest version of iOS or iPadOS. Then you can activate your Apple Music trial after you pair your audio device to your iPhone or iPad. You’ll have three months to redeem the offer after the first activation of the eligible device. ◊

What is Apple Music Classical?

Apple Music Classical is a companion app for Apple Music subscribers. Included with Apple Music plans for Individual, Family, and Student subscribers as well as Apple One, at no additional cost, Apple Music Classical is a dedicated classical music service designed by and for all types of classical music listeners. Classical music experts will delight in the largest collection of its kind, excellent search capability, and the high-quality audio that classical music deserves. If you’re new to the genre, you can discover classical music through curated playlists, intuitive browsing, and detailed descriptions of works.

Why a separate app for classical music?

Classical music is different from contemporary genres. Works have multiple movements and tracks; famous pieces have hundreds of recordings with different orchestras, conductors, and soloists. Apple Music Classical is tailored to the needs of classical music lovers — with a unique approach to search, browse, library, and recommendation features. Listeners can also dive deeper with background information about artists, composers, and works.

How do I get Apple Music Classical and where can I listen to it?

You can download the Apple Music Classical app from the App Store or Google Play. It’s available for iPhone and iPad with iOS or iPadOS 15.4 or later, and for Android smartphones with Android 6 (Marshmallow) or later.

You’ll also need Apple Music installed on the same device — it’s usually preinstalled on iPhone and iPad.

Apple Music Classical is included with all Apple Music plans at no extra charge — there’s no separate subscription. If you’re not yet an Apple Music subscriber, it’s easy to sign up from Apple Music or Apple Music Classical.

Apple Music Classical has a shared library with Apple Music, which means that the classical tracks, albums, and playlists added in either app are instantly available in the other. You can listen on all your devices and in the car with CarPlay — online or offline.

Is classical music still available in Apple Music?

Yes, both apps offer the largest classical catalog in the world. However, Apple Music Classical includes multiple additional features, such as classical browse, a search engine designed for classical music, handpicked recommendations, composer and artist bios, and descriptions of the works.

Does Apple Music Classical also offer other genres?

No, Apple Music Classical is classical only, but it does include lots of film and other crossover genres with classical music. Apple Music Classical users can also listen to more than 100 million songs on Apple Music through their subscription.

Working with Apple Music.

Apple Music supports artists with tools to create, release, promote, and measure music across a global stage. Get fans excited for your latest release with beautiful, customizable social assets. Celebrate big moments for plays, Shazams, and playlist adds with Milestones. Discover all the ways to showcase content on Apple Music — including MusicKit, RSS feeds, widgets, brand guidelines, badge art, and more.

• Apple Music for Artists
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'Apple Music for Business' to bring licensed music playback to retail stores

What you need to know

• Apple has announced its brand new service, Apple Music for Business.
• It's run by PlayNetwork.
• It will allow users to get licensed music to be played in retail locations and will feature human-curated playlists and custom recommendations matched to store brands.

Apple has announced the launch of its new Apple Music for Business plans, in partnership with PlayNetwork.

According to WSJ via 9to5Mac, the service will allow businesses to sign up for licensed music that they can play in retail stores.

It will feature human-curated playlists, much like regular Apple Music, but it will also come with custom recommendations matched to individual store brands. There's a dedicated Apple Music for Business app with a user-friendly interface, which gives employees instant access to playlists. Users can control music so as to choose which playlists will appear in each setting or locale, and there are scheduling controls to set specific times and dates for when playlists are played. According to the website:

Partners receive dedicated support designed to get more customers to listen to and share your music—all while earning your brand additional revenue. It's a total end-to-end customer engagement and retention experience.

Businesses will receive marking toolkits that allow them to advertise to customers exactly what music is playing and where they can find it (Apple Music), If customers see this info and sign up for an Apple Music trial, the business will get a referral fee with no cap on earnings. According to WSJ, Harrods and Levi Strauss and Co. have been quietly piloting the service. The website states that the service is now available to enterprise brands.

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Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design. Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9

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Music Business Plans Sample

DEC.29, 2020

Music Business plan for starting your own building firm

Do you want to start a music business? Well, that’s a really alluring and one of the most profitable businesses.

To run a music business, you need to hire the services of music artists, musicians, record producers, and composers on a temporary or permanent basis. The business can include creating songs, music sheets, stock music, and theme music. And can also be extended to cover events, ceremonies, and concerts.

The business is exciting, however, due to the large competition in the market, one has to put very much effort in the beginning to earn recognition. Like any other business, the first step would be to create a business plan for music industry. The professional business planning should cover all aspects of the business like workforce, work area, expenses, services, sales strategy, etc.

To give you an idea of how your business plan should look like, we are giving here the business plan of a music business startup, Hymns & Beats.

Executive Summary

2.1 the business.

Hymns & Beats will be a licensed music business based in Atlanta. The business will comprise artists and musicians who will work to create new music pieces. The business will utilize the talent of various singers to release stock music, record labels, and theme music for corporates, events, TV shows, movies, and game developers.

2.2 Management of Music Business

A music company needs efficient management in all the areas such as reaching out to singers, making arrangements for concerts, making sure that the edit effects are perfect, etc. Realizing that she would not be able to supervise everything on her own, Amelia decided to hire a manager to help her.

If you are looking for how to start a music business you should study different music business plans. While exploring business plans on how to set up a music business, try to also explore the ways others use to manage multiple tasks of a business at the same time.

2.3 Customers of Music Business

Our primary customers will be the television shows and film industries who will seek our services for creating tunes, theme music, and songs. Besides, corporate, institutes, companies, game developers, and event organizers will also be our customers.

2.4 Business Target

Our target is to become one of the most renowned music businesses. We aim at releasing at least 10 albums within six months of the launch. We also aim at achieving a rating above 4.7 within a year of the launch. Our profit goals to be achieved within the three years of our launch are summarized here:

Company Summary

3.1 company owner.

Amelia Stiles will be the owner of Hymns & Beats. Amelia got her degree in Bachelor of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Ohio.

During her schooling, she composed two music pieces that earned her national level fame.

3.2 Why the music business is being started

Amelia wanted to become a playback singer. She learned and practice music all her life and still couldn’t succeed in getting more than a few singing projects. Owing to her optimistic nature, she decided to find new ways to invest her passion for music. She decided not to sing but just compose the music pieces.

Realizing her creativity and skills in the music composing area, she decided to start her own music business. Now Amelia hires music artists and glorifies people’s lives with exceptional tunes and melodic voices.

3.3 How the music business will be started

Since there are many already established music industries in Atlanta, you should study different examples of music business plans. Exploring as many examples of music business plans as you can, will enable you to come up with unique ideas. Analyzing various music business plan samples will allow you to identify the areas where demand is high despite the large competition.

Hymns & Beats will be started in one of Amelia’s properties in Atlanta. Amelia will hire a home renovating professional to turn her property into a structure for the music business. Meanwhile, she will hire a professional business plan writer to make a comprehensive plan for her business.

Then Amelia will purchase the required musical instruments and other equipment like speakers, cables, amplifiers and microphone stands, etc. After which the startup will start its hiring phase. Staff like audio engineers, musicians, and DJs will be employed after strict testing and interviewing. Meanwhile, the company will ensure to establish a strong web and social media presence to get introduced to the target audience.

The costs for startup are as follows:

The startup requirements are as follows:

Before making a music business plans template, you should be very clear about the services you are going to provide your customers. In this sample plan, we are listing the services of Hymns & Beats. However, to get a broader idea of services that can be provided in this domain, you should study many other music industry business plans too.

1.Creating Production Music

Our primary service will be to produce music pieces that can be used in television, movies, and other media platforms after getting licensed to the buyers. Those music pieces will cover nearly all music genres such as classical, electronic dance, folk, and disco, etc.

This service will also include producing specific music pieces according to the client’s requirements.

2.Record Labels

We will also release albums and songs made with the collaboration of our team with top-class singers and songwriters.

3.Theme Music For TV Shows, Movies, Trailers & Video Games, Commercials

Our third primary service will be to create instrumental and theme music to be used in the background of movies, trailers, video games, commercials, and reality shows, etc.

4.Corporate Background Music

We will also create professional music themes to be used by companies and corporates in their presentations.

5.Hosting Concerts, Music Festivals & Parties

This will be one of our major services. We will host music nights, concerts, events, and parties. We will also offer the service of presenting music and songs in ceremonies according to the nature of the gathering.

Marketing Analysis of Music Business

The most important component of starting a music studio business plan is marketing analysis. It includes a detailed study of your target market to understand the areas where competition is high or to identify the domains where the demand for your services can be more.

Thus, before you start a music business you should study the dynamics of the marketplace where you will be offering your services. In this music business plan concept pdf we are listing market analysis and market segmentation done by Hymns & Beats for their business. If you are looking for how to write a music business proposal or how to create an efficient marketing plan, you can take help from here.

5.1 Marketing Trends

According to IBISWorld, the average growth that has been reported in the music industry in the last five years is 5.5%. Moreover, Statista reports that the annual revenue generated by the U.S. music industry was recorded to be $21.5 billion in 2019 alone. Simply put, the music industries have always been in demand. To succeed, you just need to be proactive in reaching target customers and creative enough to meet their expectations.

5.2 Marketing Segmentation

The detailed marketing segmentation of our target audience is as follows:

5.2.1 TV Programs & Film Industries: Our primary customers will be the television shows and programs that need different background music for different segments and for transitions of one segment to another.

Besides, film producers will require our services to create music pieces for trailers and songs. We also expect this group to avail of our services of producing background and themed instrumental music.

5.2.2 Commercials (TV ads) Production Companies: The second group of our target customers will comprise of commercials producing companies. We expect to get projects from this category from the very beginning as video ad creators usually don’t need music producers with past experience.

5.2.3 Video Game Developers, Corporates & Event Organizers: The third category of our target customers consists of video game developers who need music to be played in the background. This category also includes corporates who need professional background music for their presentations.

Apart from them, we also expect to be called by events and party organizers for playing music, singing songs, and setting up musical nights. We also look forward to being invited to cultural ceremonies for displaying the skills and talent we have.

5.3 Business Target

Our business targets are:

• To achieve the net profit margin of $9.1k per month by the end of the first year
• To release at least 10 albums hitting a ranking of above 4.8 by the end of the first six months
• To host at least 10 concerts within six months of the launch
• To achieve an average ranking above 4.75 within a year of the launch.
• To balance the initial cost of the startup with earned profits by the end of the second year

5.4 Product Pricing

Since we are not selling any discrete products therefore we can’t define a strict product pricing strategy. Our prices will vary with the required mastery, the difficulty level of the track and music, etc.

However, in the beginning, we will offer massive discounts on our services of hosting musical events and ceremonies and also in our theme music creation service.

Marketing Strategy

Like marketing analysis, sales strategy for business is also an important component of a music business marketing plan. Sales strategy enables you to attract your potential customers, and compete with your already-established competitors.

From this music business proposal sample, you can learn the competitive aspects and advertisement strategy of Hymns & Beats.

6.1 Competitive Analysis

Although we have tough competition, we have entered the market with several competitive aspects. Firstly, we have an excellent team that will help us develop unique music pieces. Secondly, we are collaborating with top singers and songwriters to come up with exclusive albums.

Moreover, we will be offering background music production services for video games and trailers online. So that will enable us to reach a wider audience.

6.2 Sales Strategy

• We will establish a strong web and social media presence through SEO optimization
• We will advertise our services through Google Local Services ads, local newspapers, and magazines
• We will arrange a themed musical night for the young people on the day of launch for an entry ticket of just $3
• We will offer a 20% discount on our theme music production services for the first three months of the launch
• We will offer a 50% discount on our offering of playback wedding music by our singers and musicians

6.3 Sales Forecast

6.4 Sales Monthly

6.5 Sales Yearly

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Personnel plan

Your business is just a collective representation of your staff and managers. So before proceeding to other steps, you should create your personnel plan in a template for writing a music business plan.

Here we are only listing the permanent staff of the company. The singers and songwriters whose services will be hired temporarily for record albums are not mentioned in this list.

7.1 Company Staff

• 1 General Manager to manage the overall operations
• 1 Cashier to maintain financial records
• 2 DJs to assume musical responsibilities in concerts and events
• 4 Musicians to play musical instruments
• 1 Audio Engineer to regulate music effects
• 2 Software/ IT Experts to ensure web and social media presence
• 1 Sales Executive to promote the company’s sales
• 2 General Assistants for routine works
• 1 Receptionist

7.2 Average Salary of Employees

Financial plan.

Making a music business plan is a little tricky as you have to devise a plan to manage your permanent as well as temporary resources. For example, while creating a financial plan for the music business, you have to consider fluctuations in the price of services. The albums that need to be sung or written by high paid singers and songwriters will require you to reserve a bigger than usual budget.

It is recommended to seek professional help in creating the financial plan for your business. To give you an example of how it would look like, we are providing here the sample financial plan of Hymns & Beats.

8.1 Important Assumptions

8.2 brake-even analysis.

8.3 Projected Profit and Loss

8.3.1 profit monthly.

8.3.2 Profit Yearly

8.3.3 Gross Margin Monthly

8.3.4 Gross Margin Yearly

8.4 Projected Cash Flow

8.5 Projected Balance Sheet

8.6 business ratios.

Download Music Business Plans Sample in pdf

OGS capital professional writers specialized also in themes such as bowling alley business plan , business plan for bouncy castle , nightclub business plans , starting paintball business , business plan for hotel and resort , roller skating rink business plan and many other business plans.

OGSCapital’s team has assisted thousands of entrepreneurs with top-rate business plan development, consultancy and analysis. They’ve helped thousands of SME owners secure more than $1.5 billion in funding, and they can do the same for you.

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Music Retail Business Plan

Start your own music retail business plan

Executive Summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. It describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">

Mojo Music will be a CD store that specializes in used CDs and DVD rentals as well as blank CD/DVD recording media.  Our target customers are the 23,000 students of State University and 40,000 non-student residents of the university area.

Mojo Music will be located one half block from the university campus on Taylor Street which is the major retail/commercial section of the university area.  The student foot traffic on Taylor is heavy.  The university bookstore is on Taylor Street, as well as numerous coffee houses, restaurants, and shops that cater to the student population.

Though the location is perfect for our target customers, it is more important to understand what our customers want from a CD store.

Twenty five years ago, it was popular among young adults to create mix cassette tapes of their favorite music for personal use and as gifts for friends. Today, with the wide distribution of CD recording equipment, Internet technology, and new recording formats like MP3, young adults now have the ability to create personalized presentations of their favorite music.  The market for used CDs has exploded as a consequence of young listeners’ ability to create quality duplication from CDs. With the average price for a new CD at $16-$18, young adults would rather buy a used CD for a little over half that price ($8-$11).  It is even more attractive if they can get in-store purchasing credit by selling their own CDs to the store.

Mojo Music will offer popular new releases and used CDs.  We will have a attractive CD buying program that will reward customers for spending money in the store. In addition to new CDs in the store, a customer will be able to order any CD that is currently issued.  We will have that CD in the store within three days.

Affordable blank CD/DVD recording media is another important key in bringing our target customers into the store. Young adults between 17-25 years of age are the largest group purchasing CD and DVD recorders.  There is no store that sells recording media within a 10 mile radius of the university.

Similarly, there is no video/DVD rental store next to campus.  The closest rental store is four miles off campus. Due to the drop in price for DVD players, many students own DVD/CD players, so the preferred format for movies is DVD.  This is not true for the larger community with still prefers video cassette. 

Mojo Music will sell blank recording media and rent movies in DVD format.

1.1 Objectives

• To become the first place our target customers will go to sell and buy CDs.
• To create a strong DVD rental business.
• To increase blank media sales by 20% each year.

1.2 Mission

Mojo Music’s mission is to offer our target customers:

• The best quality popular used CDs at affordable prices.
• The most popular new CDs at the lowest prices.
• The best recording media at affordable prices.
• A large selection of DVD rentals.

1.3 Keys to Success

The Keys to Success for Mojo Music are the following:

• Keep the money paid for used CDs in the store.
• Offer a quality selection of used CDs.
• Offer popular new CDs at a discounted price.
• Offer popular DVDs for rental.
• Offer recording media at a discounted price.

Company Summary company overview ) is an overview of the most important points about your company—your history, management team, location, mission statement and legal structure.">

Mojo Music offers popular new CDs, used CDs, DVD rentals, and CD/DVD recording media.  The target customers for the store are the 23,000 students of the State University.  The store is located one half block from the major entrance to the university.  The student group represents a unique music buying and DVD rental group that is not being served by the area’s existing CD stores or video rental outlets.

2.1 Start-up Summary

The start-up cost of Mojo Music will consist primarily of inventory and display equipment. Karl Payne will invest $50,000.  In addition to securing a $100,000 SBA loan, Karl has also obtained an investment of $100,000 from a silent partner.

2.2 Company Ownership

The store owner is Karl Payne who has worked in CD stores for over ten years.  Most recently, he was the store manager for CD Warehouse for seven years supervising a staff 10.

Mojo Music offers popular new CDs, used CDs, DVD rentals, and CD/DVD recording media.  The primary focus will be to satisfy the music/DVD needs of the target customers.

• New CDs : CDs that are popular with our target group.
• Used CDs : CDs that are in good condition and that have a reasonable chance of being purchased.
• DVD rentals : Movies that are popular with our target customers.
• CD/DVD recording media : Provide the best quality for the best price.

Market Analysis Summary how to do a market analysis for your business plan.">

It is estimated that the university student community spends over $75 million with local businesses each year.  Approximately 50% of these sales are for entertainment including music and movies.   The university’s commercial/retail area borders the east side of the campus and it is the main entrance onto campus.  Each day, thousands of students shop and eat on Taylor Street before, after, and between classes.

Currently, if a student wanted to purchase a used CD, he/she would have to take a ten minute drive to reach the only used CD store in town.  Similarly, he/she would also have to drive to reach the closest video rental store to the campus community.

Mojo Music offers the student the ability to buy a CD or rent a DVD during the day while on campus.

4.1 Market Segmentation

Mojo Music will focus on three significant customer groups:

• Used CD buyer/seller :  The shelf life for music is very short with young adults.  What was popular three months ago can quickly become boring.  The music industry is aware of this trend and is constantly releasing the next great hit to satisfy this hunger for the new.  But what does the buyer do with old CDs that are no longer being rotating into the CD player? Mojo Music will be uniquely designed to attract and retain this important customer group.
• CD/DVD recording media buyer : This customer group is very significant. They have already embraced the technology that gives them the freedom to create their own CDs and DVDs.  The purchase/sell turnaround on a CD/DVD is very quick with this group. They will be a great source for used popular CDs and DVDs.  Mojo Music will set up an in-house credit system that will bring this customer group into the store.
• DVD renters : As stated before, the student population represents a unique group of DVD users.  Many manufacturers now make cheap CD/DVD players that are targeted at young adults.  So DVD rentals are much higher with this customer group than the population as a whole.  Mojo Music’s location is perfect to capture the walk-in business for DVD rentals.

4.2 Target Market Segment Strategy

The advancement of CD recording equipment, Internet technology, and new recording formats like MP3, has turned young adults into a new type of music and movie consumer.  This trend has already depressed CD sales nationwide and many CD stores have gone out of business in last five years.

To be successful, a store must respond to the market opportunity the target consumer is providing. Though the game has changed, there is still tremendous opportunity if a CD store can read the market needs and trends correctly.

The student population that Mojo Music is targeting is very comfortable with the newest technology and has easy access to CD/DVD recording equipment. This creates a new expectation in the consumer’s mind concerning what is an affordable price for music.  Most college-aged adults have reported in numerous industry polls that the price of new CDs should be lower.  This search for a lower price led to the explosion of MP3 on the Internet. Consequently, CD recording media has increased in sales.

Quality used CDs fill the niche that this concern creates by offering a lower price for popular music.

Another area where the college-age consumers is leading the market is in the use of DVDs.  At most video rental shops, DVDs are small subsection of available rentals. Currently, these shops primarily serve consumers who prefer video cassettes. Though this trend is changing, DVD owners find the selection limited.

Strategy and Implementation Summary

Mojo Music will be heavily promoting the store.  We will use the student daily paper to advertise a $2 off per CD coupon.  In addition, we will have a drawing for five CD/DVD players each week.  We will continue the drawings for the first eight weeks of the store’s operation.

5.1 Competitive Edge

Mojo Music’s competitive edge is:

• Location : Mojo Music is on Taylor Street, one half block from the entrance to the university.  The student foot traffic on Taylor Street is very strong. The closest used CD store to the university area is a ten minute drive.
• Quality used CDs : With the average price for a new CD at $16-$18, young adults would rather buy a used CD for a little over half that price ($8-$11).  It is even more attractive if they can get in-store purchasing credit by selling their own CDs to the store.
• CD/DVD recording media : Young adults between 17-25 years of age are the largest group purchasing CD and DVD recorders.  There is no store that sells recording media within a 10 mile radius of the university.  
• DVD rentals : The closest rental store is four miles off campus. Due to the drop in price for DVD players, many students own DVD/CD players, so their reasonable format for movies are DVD. 

5.2 Sales Strategy

The key to Mojo Music’s sales strategy is to get the sellers of used CDs to spend their money in the store. To accomplish this goal, we will offer the seller two options for their CDs: cash and in-store credit. In-store credit will be 20% more than cash.  This can be used to buy CDs or CD/DVD recording media.  In-store credit can also be used to rent DVDs.

5.2.1 Sales Forecast

The following is the sales forecast for three years.

Management Summary management summary will include information about who's on your team and why they're the right people for the job, as well as your future hiring plans.">

Karl Payne is the owner/manager of Mojo Music.  Karl has worked for over 15 years in record/CD stores. As a student at State University, Karl worked at The Record Factory, a successful downtown record store, in the late 80’s. After graduating in 1989 with a BA in english, Karl went on to managed two record/CD stores; the Palace (89-93) and the CD Warehouse.  Karl is a excellent staff supervisor and will do very well in managing the staff of Mojo Music.

6.1 Personnel Plan

Mojo Music will have the following staff members:

• Assistant manager.
• Four customer assistants.

Financial Plan investor-ready personnel plan .">

The following is the financial plan for Mojo Music.

7.1 Break-even Analysis

The monthly sales break-even point is approximately 6,200 units.

7.2 Projected Profit and Loss

The following table and charts are the projected profit and loss for three years.

7.3 Projected Cash Flow

The following is the projected cash flow for three years.

7.4 Projected Balance Sheet

The following is the projected balance sheet for three years.

7.5 Business Ratios

Business ratios for the years of this plan are shown below.  Industry profile ratios based on the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code 5735, Record and Prerecorded Tape Stores, are shown for comparison.

Tax Season Savings

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• 0 to 1,000 TikTok followers
• 1,000 to 10,000 TikTok followers
• 10,000 to 100,000 TikTok followers
• 100,000 or more TikTok followers

How many followers you need on TikTok to get paid as a content creator

• TikTok has spawned a new generation of creators, and many are looking to cash in.
• Creators turn to TikTok's built-in monetization tools, brand deals, and song promos to make money.
• Users with as few as a hundred followers can still earn on the app by joining marketing contests.

TikTok ushered in a new wave of social-media stars .

Many of these creators experience fleeting moments of fame that never turn into long-term careers. But some, like Charli D'Amelio or Addison "Rae" Easterling, have built lasting, lucrative business empires from the platform. 

For creators who are starting to gain traction on TikTok, the question often is: Can I make money from this app?

The good news is that even having a small audience on TikTok can open the door to some earnings. 

TikTok users with any size following can start getting paid right away by joining sponsored video challenges on third-party platforms like Pearpop or Preffy, for example. Those platforms ask users to make videos that feature a particular brand or song, rewarding them with payouts if their posts generate "likes" and views. TikTok also offers its own version of challenges that it calls "branded missions," though creators must have at least 1,000 followers to participate.

Outside of branded missions, TikTok offers a variety of other in-app monetization features for creators, though most have minimum follower-count or video-view requirements that limit which users can make money.

The company's Creator Rewards Program, which pays users who post videos longer than one minute, is only available to users that have at least 10,000 followers, for example.

Read a detailed breakdown of how to make money from TikTok's Creator Rewards Program

Here are the many ways a TikTok user can get paid and how many followers you need to qualify:

How to make money with 0 to 1,000 TikTok followers

Marketing challenges: Participating in brand challenges on third-party platforms like Pearpop is a simple way for creators with small followings to get paid. Most marketing contests are open to all users, regardless of audience size.

These contests pay creators for making videos that feature a product, song, or brand message. Earnings aren't guaranteed but are instead doled out based on video performance. Getting more "likes" or views can mean bigger payouts. If a creator's video happens to land on TikTok's "For You" page, they could earn a couple hundred dollars from a single post.

"The initial way influencer marketing would work would be you would go and pay a few people with big followings, but it would be like throwing a few big logs onto a nonexistent fire," Pearpop's cofounder Cole Mason previously told Business Insider . "With challenges, there's a way to actually start the fire."

TikTok's Effect Creator Rewards program: TikTok offers a specific payment program for creators who make custom augmented-reality effects for its platform. The requirements to participate in the program are not based on followers, but rather on how many videos a creator's AR effect appears in. To start earning, a creator's effect must show up in at least 100,000 videos. AR creators can earn up to $50,000 in a month if one of their effects goes viral. AR creators can also earn money by making custom effects for brands.

How to make money with 1,000 to 10,000 TikTok followers

Creators with over 1,000 followers who are 18 years or older can join TikTok's own version of marketing challenges, dubbed "branded missions." As nano influencers, they can also join self-serve influencer-marketing platforms designed to connect brands with creators that have under 10,000 fans.

Other options for this cohort of creators include:

Music marketing campaigns : One common way for TikTok creators to make money is by promoting songs in videos. Music marketers and record labels pay TikTok creators to include tracks in posts in an effort to make a song take off on the app. Some marketers are even hiring music producers to create sped up, slowed down, or remixed versions of tracks to boost their popularity on TikTok. There are no minimum follower-count requirements to join song campaigns, and music marketers are increasingly turning to micro influencers over big stars to promote tracks . Users with fewer than 1,000 followers aren't going to be as attractive to marketing agencies, but can still join song promotional contests on platforms like Preffy. A TikTok spokesperson told BI in December that the company was testing its own music-marketing service for creators called Work With Artists.

Livestreaming: Going live on TikTok can be another path for creators with just over 1,000 followers to make money. Some creators with fewer than 1,000 followers may also be able to start livestreams as the company has different requirements by location, a spokesperson told BI. In all instances, a creator must be at least 18 years old to use the feature. 

TikToker Jakey Boehm earned $34,000 in a single month from TikTok Live by receiving virtual "gifts" from followers, according to screenshots of his earnings dashboard viewed by BI.

ASMR creator Lucy Davis similarly used TikTok Live to make money on TikTok.

TikTok also offers a subscription tool for livestream creators where their followers can pay to gain access to subscriber-only features like badges and chats. A creator must be 18 years or older and have a minimum of 1,000 followers to make money from live subscriptions.  

TikTok Shop affiliate program: TikTok users can also make money by creating shoppable videos as part of the company's Shop affiliate program . By tagging products in videos or livestreams, users can earn a commission based on the number of sales they help drive. 

Follower requirements for the Shop affiliate program differ by country. In the US, creators must have at least 5,000 followers, per TikTok's website. In the UK, creators need to have 1,000 followers and at least 50 video views in the past 28 days, according to the company's website.

How to make money with 10,000 to 100,000 TikTok followers

TikTok Creator Rewards Program: Once a creator who is at least 18 years old hits 10,000 followers and has a minimum of 100,000 views in the previous 30 days, they can join the company's creator rewards program. 

To start earning in the program, an influencer's video must be at least one minute long, a length requirement that TikTok previously tested in a Creativity Beta program . 

The company has other criteria that determine how much a creator will earn. It assigns a "search value" to videos to determine if they are related to popular search topics on the app. TikTok also factors in a video's originality, watch time, and how much it's shared, liked, or commented on, to determine a creator's payout.

Before rolling out its creator rewards program, TikTok offered a dedicated creator fund that didn't have video length requirements. The company sunset the program in December 2023 in all countries except Italy and Spain.

TikTok's creator marketplace: TikTok offers its own match-making tool for influencers and brands, dubbed the Creator Marketplace. Eligibility requirements to join the marketplace are tied to age, followers, content, and engagement, according to the company's website. A BI review of the app in the US suggested that a creator needed at least 10,000 followers and 1,000 video views in the previous 30 days to participate.

TikTok creative challenges: Similar to its "branded missions" feature, TikTok offers a program called Creative Challenges, " where users can submit video ads to brands based on campaign briefs and receive payments tied to the performance of their video. Unlike branded missions, creative challenges are only available to TikTok creators who have at least 50,000 followers.

Series: In some regions, TikTok creators with at least 10,000 followers can post a collection of videos, dubbed a "series," behind a paywall, similar to how users of Patreon restrict some video or podcast access to paying subscribers. A series can feature up to 80 videos that are up to 20 minutes in length each.

Brand deals: TikTok creators with any size audience can score deals with brands, though having a minimum of 10,000 followers is a good starting point for getting larger paychecks. These micro influencers can score brand deals by working with influencer-marketing platforms or agencies that help creators with just a few thousand followers connect with marketers.

Jalyn Baiden, an Instagram and TikTok influencer with around 25,000 followers on TikTok, told BI she earned over $26,000 in less than a year from sponsorships , commissioned content for brands, and affiliate marketing.

Read more about how TikTok creators with under 100,000 followers make money from brand deals:

• Comedy creator Pooja Tripathi (about 58,000 followers) shares how much she makes from sponsored posts
• Salha Aziz (about 23,oo0 followers) charges brands around $160 for a single post
• Jalyn Baiden (about 25,000 followers) charges around $1,000 for a sponsored post

How to make money with 100,000 or more TikTok followers

Some monetization features on TikTok are reserved for users that have at least 100,000 followers. These include:

TikTok Pulse: TikTok offers an ad-revenue sharing program with some qualifying creators called Pulse . Only US-based creators with at least 100,000 followers qualify for the program. 

Tipping: To receive "tips" from fans on a creator's profile page, they must be at least 18 years old and have at least 100,000 followers.

Receiving virtual gifts on videos: While creators with just 1,000 followers can receive gifts on livestreams, a user must have at least 100,000 followers to receive a gift in the comments section of a standard TikTok video. 

Brand deals: Having at least 100,000 followers on TikTok can open the door to more lucrative sponsorship deals from brands. 

Alex Ojeda, a TikTok creator with millions of fans on the app, told BI in 2022 that his starting rate for a single TikTok sponsored post was $20,000 .

Here's how much TikTok creators with at least 100,000 followers have earned from brand deals:

• Water-park creator Alex Ojeda (about 8.5 million followers) shares his sponsored content rates
• TikTok family The McFarlands (about 4.3 million followers) on how much they earn from brands
• Dana Hasson (around 2 .9 million followers), a recipe and lifestyle creator, shares her earnings from sponsored content
• College football player Jon Seaton (1.8 million followers) shares his brand deal earnings over an 18-month period
• Deanna Giulietti (around 1.8 million followers) earned over $500,000 from brand deals across TikTok and Instagram in 2021
• Harry Raftus (about 1.3 million followers) shared his earnings for song promos and brand deals
• Basketball creators Brandon (about 1.4 million followers) and Jayden Beloti (1.3 million followers) share their monthly earnings from the Creator Fund and brand deals
• Fashion creator Carolina Freixa (around 763,000 followers) on how much she makes from brand campaigns
• Tejas Hullur (around 582,000 followers) said his rate for sponsored content starts at $3,000 
• Software engineer and creator Matt Upham (about 513,000 followers) shares his brand deal revenue
• Naomi Melanie Leanage (about 510,000 followers) shares her sponsored content rates and earnings
• Personal finance influencer Erin Confortini (around 294,000 followers) discusses her earnings from brand deals, UGC, and affiliates
• Symphony Clarke (about 206,000 followers), who makes videos about thrift shopping, shares her earnings for sponsored content

Watch: Tinder is 'obsessively' thinking about how to reach Gen Z, says CMO Melissa Hobley

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Entertainment

‘Cowboy Carter’ singers Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts and Brittney Spencer reunite at CMT Music Awards

The singers took to the CMT stage as presenters just a week after the release of Beyoncé's country album.

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Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts, and Brittney Spencer made a major splash together at the CMT Music Awards. The singers, all featured on Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” album, presented at the music awards ceremony on Sunday night.

As theGrio previously reported , the four singers are featured on Beyoncé’s latest album, “Cowboy Carter.” Singing on Queen Bey’s cover of the hit Beatles song “Blackbird,” they harmonize and join Beyoncé on the album’s second track. The track is a standout on the album and helped raise the profiles of the four Black female country singers.

Adell opened up to Billboard on the red carpet, sharing her excitement and pride about her addition to the record. “It feels incredible,” she told the outlet’s Tetris Kelly. “Congratulations to Bey, she’s worked so hard — especially just… Act I, now we’re Act II and I can’t wait for Act III. I’m just starting out and it feels pretty amazing to have one of my… not even one of my, my favorite artist on the planet know my name, put me on this album and now it’s  debuted at No. 1 . It’s very special.”

Roberts also opened up about joining Beyoncé for her country album, saying, “I’m just grateful that Beyoncé allowed us to be part of her dream and her project. This is phenomenal, I can’t even describe how excited and happy I am.”

The singers revealed that all four of the “Blackbiird” singers got tattoos to mark the collaboration. “We all did it in our own style kind of how we wanted to,” Adell told Billboard. “We just felt like this is a really big moment and something to commemorate the experience of being able to work together with someone that we all look up to very much.”

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With “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé becomes the first Black woman to have a No. 1 country album on Billboard charts, as we previously reported . In addition to Adell, Kennedy, Roberts and Spencer, “Cowboy Carter” features appearances from country music legends Linda Martell, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton and contemporary singers like Miley Cyrus and Post Malone.

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