Making $1000 a month with LoFi Music?
The Idea
A few months ago I came across a video from Harris Heller on LoFi and how he was making $25k a month creating music and it blew my mind (The video has since been removed).
After doing the math and understanding a bit more about Harris, I realised he had a community of 75k viewers on youtube and had a community behind him. I realised that making the same amount of money as him was going to be difficult, however, generating some passive income could well be achieved.
The first step, was to understand how to make music. Harris had invested about $10,000 to create music. Being a musician myself but having limited time, I decided to create one first album and then re-invest the earnings into someone create music for myself. Of course, the scale was going to be smaller but the idea was there.
On top of that, the first album would cost me 0$ and hopefully already generate some gains.
Creating Music
The first thing I had to do was creating the music. It turns out making lo-fi music is surprisingly simple.
I decided to start with garage band, it was free and I had it on my macbook, I decided to get myself some samples, and started chopping them.
Given Lo-Fi music is based on hip-hop. I used a couple of snappy snares, thuddy kicks and hissing hi-hats as well as a couple of odd percussions. I added a couple of instruments and here I was.
It took me 2 hours and my first song was ready. I repeated the process 17 more time. Why 17, you ask ? Well I thought I had about 45 minutes of music and that sounded enough for a first album
Creating the Album Cover
Next step was to create a brand ! When I listen to Lo-Fi, I am usually chillin’ hence Chillz, now, I was also planning to stream the music online, on youtube at first hence, I went for “StreamChillz”, as simple as that.
What is the most chilled animal, I knew ? A Frog, have you ever seen them sunbathing ? There you go. I then created a twitter account, a youtube account and many other accounts. I also decided to call my band Kenska, I liked the sound of it!
Given, I had now an album I also needed a cover. I am not fantastic at drawing but I tried to mimic other LoFi album’s styles
Getting onto Spotify and Apple Music
I then decided to get my music onto Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming platforms. Todo so, I used Distrokid
It is extremely simple, you upload your music to distrokid, you select where you want the music to be uploaded, you pay a fee and a couple of days later your music gets uploaded to all streaming platforms.
The last step of the journey
Once uploaded, all I had to do was wait!
At the time I am writing this article, the different albums I released have around 500 listeners on Spotify, about 300 daily listeners on Apple Music and the same on Audiomack and the number of youtube subscribers has continuously been growing.
The first month I generated only $40, after 3 months, I had only generated $180 , after 6 months, things picked up, and the combined generation was now around $300 per months and now after about 1 year, I am now generating $997 per month.
If you want to start developing your own LoFi music, I would suggest to start with a single album and create a community around your brand and group. Try to be creative.
If you want to learn more about how to generate passive income subscribe.
Streamchillz is an artist that create copyright free LoFi music, all of it can be used for streaming, studying, or gaming. Enjoy.
