How To Make Money as a Pianist? Detailed Guide

Are you passionate about playing the piano? Have you been playing the piano since quite some time and wondering how to make money from your piano playing skills? Well, this article will be an eye opener for you then.

There are multiple ways to make money as a Pianist. Converting your passion into a side-hustle, full time profession or a source of recurring passive income is a dream for many. With respect to Piano, as a pianist you can earn multiple sources of income if you plan and execute the steps in the right direction.

In the next section, we are going to discuss in general – how musicians make money from their skills and what are the passive and active sources of income opportunities in music, which anyone can go for being at anyplace in the world.

Table of Contents

How Do Musicians Make Income From Their Skills?

There are indeed many ways for musicians to make money from their skills. With proper discipline, patience and management, musicians can make good money and generate long-term wealth from their income streams for generations to come. Here are some of the coolest ways musicians make money out of their skills:

Royalty Income from Compositions and Vocals.

Full-time instructor, teacher or professor in a reputed university or college / music school
Creating online courses and publishing them to students digitally.
Selling their work on websites looking for paid music streaming or publishing

Publishing music books, e-books on Amazon Publishing or other websites of digital publishing platforms.
Creating an engaging blog with music, videos and written content for readers.
Affiliate marketing of digital and physical music products such as musical instruments on Amazon, Click-Bank etc.

Income from shows, brand endorsements.
Being a music influencer on social media such as Facebook, twitter and Instagram.
Working as a freelancer for music editing, production and vocal sequencing on popular websites such as Fiverr, Freelancers or Upwork.

What Are The Passive Income Opportunities in Music?

As musicians / pianists, we must understand that active income in music would help you to sustain for a living only till the time you are actively working for music. So, for future security and safety, we have to plan our eggs in the proper baskets and nests so that the money flow keeps on coming without much dependency on our presence or involvement into making music and entertaining audiences.

So, in this section, we shall discuss about the Passive Income opportunities for a musician to engage with. Here are the major active and passive income sources for a musician to consider in his/her career:

Passive Income Opportunities:

Converting Music into a Full-time Business with Academy / School.

Writing and Publishing Books with Amazon and E-books.
Creating a Digital Course for students in the field on music – on Vocals, instruments or music production.
Affiliate marketing on musical instruments, books and selling own merchandize on sites like Amazon, Shopify.

Creating a Music Blog and Selling Original Content.
Creating a YouTube Channel and promoting music content.
Selling Royalty free Tracks, Vocals or Compositions in websites.

Creating NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) from original music content produced by you.
Getting exclusive media royalty rights for a film or movie music

Step By Step Guide on How to make money as a Pianist

If you are a skilled pianist with good experience of piano performances and have a good teaching experience, then sky is the limit for you. Here are the steps that will help you to make money consistently and also build multiple streams of income through your piano playing skills:

Before You Begin

Ensure you have the right knowledge with you on the piano. Be an expert in your field so that no one can challenge your work and teachings. If you are still learning, make sure to get the required knowledge from a good piano mentor before you start.

Step-1: Setup your 1^st Active stream of Income

Get your offline and online classes setup for the piano learning. At present, you should opt for online classes with a decent camera, mic setup. To get students for your online / offline classes, you can go for social media branding about your piano classes or opt for Google / Facebook ads for bigger engagement.

Step-2: Setup your Piano Music Academy / School

Once you have been to get students for your piano mentorship classes, it is time for you to start planning for a bigger venture about a piano music academy or school. You can plan for an online website for your services, hire few piano teachers who are good coaches. With proper social media branding and ads, you can get the required number of students online for your classes in less time.

Step-3: Publish a Digital Piano Course / App:

One more step ahead is to plan for a 50–60-hour Piano Course in digital format and publishing it to an LMS Platform such as teachable, Udemy, Coursera etc. Once your academy gets traction and traffic, your students would visit your course in the desired platform and eventually many of them would purchase for course for real learning.

Step-4: Write A Piano Notation Book

Another lucrative and highly bankable passive source of income is publishing a piano notation book with most rare and unique collection of tunes and songs. With proper marketing and high-quality content, your notation book can turn into a bestseller someday and make you a millionaire with consistent efforts.

Step-5: Compose Piano Based Soundtracks And Jingles

Piano tracks and compositions can be used to make new soundtracks for movies and short films or singles. Brand specific music and jingles can also be composed using the piano. This is an active way to earn money using your piano skills.

Step-6: Create a Piano Blog with appealing and unique content and E-Books:

One of the most promising forms of making money online is creating your own piano blog. Helping fellow-readers and musicians to solve their queries, get knowledge on music helps your blog to grow faster and reach more people. Thus, with affiliate marketing and backlinks to your sites, your piano site can be a money minting machine on the long run.

To Know More About How to Start a Blog On Piano or Any Other Musical Instruments, Please read our article on how to start a music blog in 2023 and monetize it.

Key Challenges Faced By Pianists To Make Money

Earning money being a pianist is a good aspiration of every piano player. However, a persistent source of income using the above ways comes with a price to pay. Here-in, we would discuss the challenges and risks that every pianist might face on their path to making money from their skills:

Pianists must upgrade their playing skills and fingering techniques regularly to face the competition of piano influencers in the music industry.
Connecting with composers, song writers and concert-organizers for shows and recording can be a challenging affair sometimes. Due to the effects of COVID-19 pandemic, the music industry has been seeing a steep decline in shows and concerts.

Getting students for your piano school / classes can be a hectic affair, if the marketing and branding is not done correctly. Perfect pricing, good quality teaching and unique presentation are the key attributes for a good piano coach to attract students.
There are many piano and keyboard musicians who are competing with you to get their share of money from the music market. Hence, the only way to excel and to be successful is hard work, persistent efforts and continuous improvement in your piano playing style.

Make Money as a Pianist – Our 90 Day Success Plan

Musicdetailed.com has been helping musicians and piano players build super profitable income streams and start creating wealth through our 90-day success plan orientation course.

Here are the key takeaways from the 90-day Teachable Course:

Introduction and Road Map for Pianists to make money
8 unique ideas to make money as a pianist with real-life examples of pianists
- Teaching Piano Online
- Offline Piano Classroom teaching
- Writing books on Piano Lessons & self-publishing on Amazon
- Creating your Online Music school and hiring other pianists to manage your business
- Renting your Gigs for passive income in the right way
- Making Piano Jingles, ringtones and self-publishing on websites
- Providing piano services to free-lancing sites like Upwork and Fiverr
- Creating a high traffic, ready-to-monetize Piano Blog
The golden retirement planner for pianists

FIRE – Financial Independence Retire Early movement for musicians, how does it apply and how to achieve in 5 years of time
Getting students for your Piano Class in 30 days

The Plus features:

Live assignments

Full-life time access to course modules
Success stories of wealthy pianists
Customized / Tailored action plan for our students

1 Year Full-support on all queries and wealth creation Road Map

More details for the Course can be found on the Courses Link in our website. <call to action>

So, what are you waiting for!!! Just take our course and get yourself ahead in the money making journey as a pianist.

Conclusion

They say “Mindset is the key to success”. This saying is absolutely true. With proper mindset, a pianist with average or good piano performance skills can build multiple streams of active and passive incomes for his/her family. Therefore, we have seen some pianists are so rich due to their wealth creating mindset, while some prefer mediocre lifestyle without exploring the possibilities around them.

Now which life you want to choose is all in your hands? Be the master of your life, make money as a pianist and follow your passion like never before.

For more insightful articles on Piano, music keyboards, VST Plugins and much more, please visit our website www.musicdetailed.com