How much does a music producer ACTUALLY make? | Music producer salary 2022
“What’s the average music producer salary in 2022?”
“How much does a music producer ACTUALLY make?”
These are extremely common questions if you’re a beginner to music production. Making money in the music industry is notoriously difficult, so it’s reasonable to wonder if all your hard work will eventually pay off…
Beginning a career as a music producer can be highly demanding, yet incredibly rewarding. You’ll spend your time creating music, surrounding yourself with other artists and like-minded people, and chasing your passion every single day.
However, it’s not all fun and games. It may be many years before you start making serious money, and in the first couple years you might make next to nothing.
So let’s take a look at the average music producer salary in 2022, and what your journey might look like to get there.
Looking for music producer job opportunities? Click here for more info.
Music Producer Salary 2022 | How Much Do Music Producers ACTUALLY Earn?
Payscale.com states the average music producer salary is $50,967.
But what does this actually mean? The above figure is simply an average amount based on every music producer out there. Your salary as a music producer will fluctuate wildly year-on-year, and will heavily depend on experience, connections and location. For example, producers working with major label artists will make significantly more than this.
Maybe a better way to think about it is how much a music producer makes per song. If you are producing for an artist signed to a major label like Sony or Universal, music producers can receive an advance anywhere between $10,000 to $100,000+ per song. On top of this, producers often receive royalties of between 2% – 4% for each track, which can be very lucrative if a track becomes a hit.
If you’re working with independent artists, the per-track advances are nowhere near these figures. Producers often charge between $200 – $2000 for one song (often with no royalties). This can include vocal recording, comping and producing, mixing and overall structuring of the track.
Music Producer Salary 2022 : Experience
Your experience as a music producer is probably the biggest contributing factor to how much you’ll be earning.
If you’re just starting out, it’s highly unlikely any studio / artist will want to pay large amounts of money to work with you. It sounds harsh but it’s the truth.
Just like any career path, you need some skin in the game first.
In your early years as a music producer you should be offering to work with artists for minimal profit (and sometimes even for free!) Then when you’ve built up a portfolio of artists you’ve worked with, your income will naturally begin to increase.
Also, building up experience in the studio makes you a better producer. Becoming an incredible music producer takes time, dedication to your craft and a lot of patience. This experience will vastly improve the quality and consistency of your produced tracks, making artists more likely to want to work with you.
Building connections
Another hugely important factor to your music producer salary is your ability to network.
The stronger your connections in the music industry, the more likely you are to land big artist placements. Obviously talent comes first, but simply knowing the right people could bring up huge career opportunities.
Music Producer Salary 2022 : Location
Another important factor to consider here is your location.
The highest average salary for music producers per city is, no surprise, Los Angeles. Payscale.com shows music producers in LA earn an average of 19% more than an average producer. Atlanta, Georgia and San Francisco are also way above average for music producer salaries in 2022.
Working in a city like LA or Atlanta gives you way more opportunities to work with high-profile artists, which increases your potential earnings.
How to get started…
If becoming a music producer is something you’re seriously interested in, the best thing to do invest as much time as possible into creating music.
In my opinion, you don’t need expensive music production courses to get good at producing. All the info you need can be found online for free, you just have to put the work in.
Here are some of our FREE guides / tutorials to music production / beat making:
• If you’re wondering which DAW is best you for, click here.
• Click here for our general guides / tips to music production.
• If you’re interested in beatmaking, here is our full guide to making beats in FL Studio, or making beats in Ableton.
• Here is our browser for the best FREE products (sample packs, plugins, DAWs) on the market.
