Ever since Napster, the world has become conditioned to want free music. Even though Napster is nowhere near the household name it used to be, there are new platforms that have taken its place, such as Youtube, Spotify, and Pandora. These websites do pay artists some royalties, but admittedly not very much.
It can be hard for artists to get fans to buy their music. (Don’t worry, it is possible to make a career as a musician though! Check out this new book by Ari Herstand about making a living in the New Music Business.)
So…let’s turn the tables! Musicians, let’s get equipped with some free resources. There are many great tools out there, ready for you to use. Here are seven of them that you might not know about:
1. Audacity
Don’t have the bucks to buy Pro Tools, Logic, or Ableton? Audacity is a great alternative for audio recording and editing. It doesn’t have the MIDI capabilities of DAW’s, but it sure is free and has robust audio editing features. It works on Macs and PCs, and it is a great tool for anyone looking to manipulate audio.
2. Cymatics foley samples and DAW presets
Cymatics has incredible vaults of free samples that they just give away! These are extraordinarily high quality sounds that normally would cost hundreds. I’m shocked that they give it away like this, to be honest. They also have DAW presets for Logic and Ableton, that are top notch.
3. Neil Patel’s Blog
This dude is absolutely brilliant. Widely regarded as the #1 marketer in the world, Neil Patel is constantly giving away invaluable advice and insights about how to maximize web visibility through social media and blogging. His marketing strategies can apply to virtually any field, including promoting your music.
4. MuseScore
Would you like to professionally notate and engrave your music, but don’t have the cash on hand for Finale or Sibelius? Check out MuseScore. MuseScore is an open source platform, similar to Audacity, available for both Mac and PC, and will allow you easily create fantastic looking scores.
Are you writing more music this year? Read our blog post about being a creative musician in 2017.
5. Corridor
Of course, we’re going to give ourselves a little shoutout here. We’ve built the best way to learn chords, chord progressions, melodies, rhythms, notation, ear training, and keyboard skills, and it’s free. We might be crazy for doing it, but we want you to be the best musician and artist you can be!
6. MailChimp
Few things are more impactful and important for a musician’s career than being able to easily connect with your fans. Through MailChimp, you can customize emails from the ground up (no coding skills required), easily build a subscriber list, quickly send out emails to your fans, and is completely free up to 2,000 subscribers.
7. Sound Exchange
A lot of people know about ASCAP and BMI, but Sound Exchange is a company specifically for collecting royalties from online streaming sources, such as Spotify and Pandora. It’s easy to register your songs, and it sure is fun to have a check show up in your mailbox from time to time.
What are some of your favorite free resources for musicians? Share them in the comments below!
