Being a professional musician, sound designer or mixing engineer is very hard. It takes sometimes decades to get to the professional level. This does not guarantee a stable income as it is a very competitive space.

Therefore, in the this article I would like to explore how musicians and sound engineers can find additional sources of relatively passive income by leveraging their passion and work.

Your are proficient with analog synths, you can program in Max/MSP you mastered some complex software modular sythesizers like Reaktor? You’re sitting on a potential goldmine! You may have forgotten that it took you sagnificant amount of time to learn those instruments and there are people who own synths but struggle with masteting them! You can create a website using ecommerce software where you sell your patches as micro products and the music you already make can be a way to promote your products.

Pic 1 – Reaktor 6 by Native Instruments

While there is a huge number of virtual instruments, sample libraries or even AI tools to generate music, if you are an active musican you may have some followers and fans that love and appreciate your music. Maybe some of the aspiring fellow artist would love to use some of your specific articulations in their projects. Recording samples and offferiong than as mico products is not vey hard.

Pic 2 – recording a clip for my album

If creating samples of patches is not your thing, you can also try levaring your knowledge. I used to learn a few instruments and mixing techniques. I found out that majority of professional musicians or engineers are terrible teachers. If you have some great learning tips why not turning them into a course?

In one the last webinar I had pleasure to interview the founder of Sarafi Pedals, Noam Levinberg who has been a mixing and mastering for 20 years before starting his own company. He shared the story how he built successful tape emulation plugins based on the issue he identified in existing products while working on mixes. Perhaps during your career as a musican and engineer you have also dreamt of a specific instrument or tool? Maybe you are not the only person who needs it and you have just identified a market need?

Pic 3 – Passion driven audio products with Noam Levinberg

There is a domain called product management.  It’s a set of methods and tools that can help you organize, develop, and market your creative assets. By treating your ideas as products, you can focus on understanding your audience, refining your offerings, and creating a clear path to monetization. It does not mean you have to be a sell-out. It is about turning your passion into profit and making a decent living without abandoning music.  Product Management teaches how to conducting user research, prototyping, or marketing  to enables it. 

If you would like to learn about product management in the audio industry, we organise a variety of workshops. You can find them in our calendar here

Thank you for your attention and good luck!