How to make MONEY in AUDIO! 

The first 1000 people to use the link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: skl.sh/whiteseastudio04211

I learned a lot of new things about audio engineering from your channel. I'm a music composer for TV & media. In 2009, I helped a friend with his student animation film. And then a couple of his friends' films. That was my first portfolio. It was hard getting clients in the first year. Luckily, I had a sustained income. I made unofficial karaoke tracks for a guy that creates karaoke videos. I hated it. But that's how I paid my bills for two years. Now I'm working full-time in a well-known creative agency/production house.

A livestream on this topic would be great - it's super reassuring to hear some of the points you mentioned about starting small and being easy to work with. I feel like due to the modern competition, the industry landscape is gradually changing from old jaded grumpy engineers, to younger, fresh talent that are far more agreeable to work with. Great video.

We contacted a bunch of mixers when planning for the new album. Tips here are great, especially “we want to hear your work, not who you worked for”. The main issue we found was mixers not getting back with us in a timing fashion. It shouldn’t take you four business days to take 30 seconds to respond to an email. The studio we went with is very good about communication. They are also busy and it might take a day to get a reply which is fine. PLEASE don’t email a client back a month after they reach out with “so I understand you want me to mix an album, I’ve worked with these people”.

Je bent echt een van mijn favoriete audio engineers, puur omdat je eerlijk en transparant bent/overkomt.

Love your honesty and being true to your self saying 10 years ago I would fucked up those sessions. Respect I know a lot that will take the job even though they aren’t qualified

Skillshare, Ridge Waller, maybe Raid Shadow Legend next?

Wait, you guys are getting paid?!?! Thanks for these words of advice, much appreciated. A livestream would be awesome!

The advice you gave about offline networking, works similarly online. I am a music producer and session guitarist, and get most of my work nowadays from online, by reaching out to people, building relationships, and most often than not, they end up working with you. And having a (big) social media presence is key to this, because it adds 'clout' and credibility to you as a mixer/producer/whatever. Anyway, love your channel man. Goed werk! Groeten van een Nederlander uit Londen :)

I appreciate the honesty in this video. Nice one

I started out just recording my own band and then doing solo albums for friends and even then it took me almost two years to charge my own band for the time i was spending....also don't start out thinking you need all the gear right NOW...start small learn work arounds to get you over a problem THEN upgrade rinse and repeat and over time you'll build a setup that you're 100% comfortable with...your clients will appreciate that

I was actually thinking about this topic for some time now. I produce , mix, and master my own music as a hobby for about a year now, working with nothing but free plugins, cheap instruments, and consumer grade headphones on a desktop PC in the living room of my parents house. It's a good thing this video came out just so that I get an idea of what this industry looks like and how it may treat me should I enter it as a professional. Thank you for the video! Really brings things into perspective. Love from the Philippines! 🇵🇭

Yeah I feel like 5:00 is what hit me hard. I haven't done anything audio related in a while due to no clients at all or really getting much response back when sending my portfolio around so I feel like I don't get back the response I hoped to get. I did get a few podcast mixing gigs when I did meet people face to face, so I am somewhat feeling that the face to face path is way better than sending emails left and right.

Definitely interested in the livestream idea, that would be really really cool.

Love your honesty here. It's hard to find that nowadays. You got those people making videos of "how to" and in "30 days make this", blah blah blah. Thank you for your honesty and truthfulness ✌️

Sweet. So right! I like the idea of staying local and becoming a big help and a nice guy to work with. The internet is over saturated for sure.

Audio engineering is something that was always an affinity to me. Unfortunately I started way too late However, I make income from teaching music and previously performing and was able to recently build a studio which allowed me to compose and record. I would really like to work with other people and help to build them up and in the process earn some income but this will be hard work. REAL talk man. Thanks for your sincerity and your informative channel.

Love this, I find watching these type of videos really inspiring, I recommend your budgeting video to people too, thank you for sharing more than just fantastic Audio gear. Seemingly boring Admin tasks are like cables, uninteresting but totally essential to make things work!

Wytse is a great mastering engineer too. Great person to work with and charges fair prices. I highly recommend him to work with as a mastering engineer as well. He is patient and has a wealth of audio engineer tips to make your mix sound better before any mastering is done. Highly recommended.

Agreed about the offline thing 200% The human interaction, and doing it locally can help huge especially if there's demand in your city

Dude, what great tips! I'm a full time engineer like yourself and everything you said was SPOT on! Great video brother!! :D

This really cannot had come in a better moment of my life. Thank you, you are the man!

Good advice. This is also true if you are going to be an independent music producer.

Dude major truth on the niceness. I've seen inexperienced people that are just pleasant to work with exceed qualified "professionals" based off of this entirely

Thank you very much for your insight, i'm just opening my studio and i really find this info very useful! Respect, from Romania!

This was a great vid, and I'm an artist who mixes a bit as opposed to a full time engineer, but I thought a lot of what you said was universal and applied to all sorts of freelance work. Great vid Wytse, and yes a livestream would be good!

This all fits with my experience (more as musician than engineer). The people I know personally who have reached the point of working full-time recording/mixing all built up to it over many years of taking on small projects, getting a reputation for going 'above and beyond' even when the budget was small. You have to really love the process to do that. I also love your point on networking in-person. If I were starting from zero as an engineer, I'd go to a bunch of local shows and hope to find an interesting new band (whose music I liked) who would be excited about recording for free. Become a 'face' in your local scene and people will trust you more.

Thank you for sharing this priceless set of info and advice.

Thank you very much for your advice. I'd very much appreciate a live - stream on the topic.

man i follow this channel since 2020! excellent content, thank you for this.

What a great video ! You channel is superb and I really like your videos. My biggest problem is to find serious artists who needs a mixing engineer. The most time guys come to me but they don't want to work seriously. They didn't even ask for a production but they come to me and tell me they need a mixing engineer but than I never heard from them without making something. It's really strange if you ask me. That's just an example but I'm happy everytime when I get an artist who wants to work with me than.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge, experience and wisdom.

I find the easiest work to get is corporate sound design. Basically creating sound stingers and backing tracks for live events like product launches and sports games (car launches are easy money). Youll obviously need to be skilled at writing quick stingers and coming up with little sound effects, but its pretty easy if you have a decent vsti collection or synth. Just ring around. In an afternoon I can score a job just ringing the agents and event companies. Try the AV video guys too, they always need this kind of thing. I charge full corporate rates too, they dont care. In fact, the more you charge the more theyll presume youre good.

More of this, this is super interesting, because of the many paths to choose on the way to becoming "pro". If you can talk for hours, please do. :D

I love your videos and advice, you make us more clever! Thank you!

I am not a mix or mastering engineer but as you said this is also the same for other professions. Thank your for the insight

Thats exactly the stuff that we wanna know about because thats the stuff nobody talks about, at least in a honest way

My advice as a dance producer and marketeer: learn to sell yourself! Finding potential clients is nice, but you want them to buy. So follow a course about copywriting and marketing and improve this as well 👍 One tip already: don't tell what you have to offer, but sell what people wanna buy. It's often a dream or a goal people want to achieve. Emphasise how you can make a difference. And it is always nice when you can prove it with well-known names and interesting projects.

How to make money in AUDIO.. (a fews moments later) This video is sponsored by Skillshare XD

Thanx for this video! ;) A specially for this: "... is always a bit earlier, than you feel comfortable with." I'm exactly at this point. Maybe not exactly in audio engineering industry, but similar :) Have a nice day!

Really, really true. Agree with everything in this video. Solid advice WSS!

Would you mind push that stuck out channel on the left a little bit further in?

Dude, you are so cool 😎 Mean that. Love what you do here, really enjoy your vids. Thx for doing it 👍🏻

Great stuff as usual. Would love to hear more on this!

I've got a set of 3 no nosense music people that are my FAVs you are one of them... and the first and only for quite some time

Very useful. Thank you!

Well said, thanks for sharing. This video was very informative, I can relate totally to what you said 👍

My biggest problem right is convincing people to work with me or even to talk to them. I know I don't have a website (I'm broke so I can't even get a design for my logo and brand), but I do have some stuff as portfolio, work I'm proud of. But, there's 3 big barriers holding me back: 1) I can only work online and I don't know where's the best place to find musicians/engineers to work with. I usually go to Facebook groups and Discord servers about Music and Engineering. 2) My people skills are awful. From experience I know I'm a person other people like to work with, but the first impression is something I don't know how to improve. 3) People I've talked to thik the same as most people online do: They don't like others trying to sell them stuff. This makes it really hard for me to bring any words about bussiness into discussion, because once they hear those words they avoid me like a plague. There's also the "I wanna do everything on my own" factor, but I also like to give feedback and some info to help them for free. Even in those cases they don't want my help.

I Compose and mix as a Hobby. I like it and its challenging and of course Creative. Behause of That i Follow some RU-vid Channels. One channel is Yours. I like what you do, you make valuable content. Thank you for all you did and For all what may come. Whitesea Studio rules 😄 and of course Sandsturm from darude 😂

I'm studying at university to be an audio engineer and this video hits near home. It's very hard for me to talk about charging money because I just want to record :/ This Video helped a lot though thank you! Greetings from Vienna :)

Hi, I would love to see more on how you're implementing the Stream Deck in Reaper using the OSC protocol.

Great video,keep it up!🔶️▫️🟣

Great video! I would love to watch a livestream about this subject as well!

thanks for sharing your experience, it's important stuff for me!

Mixing songs for people is no good I just mix my own music. Clients always want a 1000 revisions

*Always good advice coming from you, thanks :-)*

Setting the cost. That use to be my number 1 issue. Now its finding more clients, do I want a secondary building, tax documents. Definitely not a field to simply LEAP into without foreknowledge

Streaky on „Snake Oil“-Mode as well🤌🏼☺️

he said "Controversial"!! :-D

PLEASE MAKE PART 2

Live audio is more lucrative. Studio is only for close friends that are musicians, singers and rappers. I will never open up a public recording studio again. Did it from 2008-2013.

As a young man I was the member of a stringquartet. It happened often when we were hired for a venue, that we were asked, why we charged so much money, because "music is fun, so you have fun and want money?"

Defo up for a live stream 😃👏🏼💯

So it is a bad idea to buy, for example, iZotope Ozone stuff and "cheat" with it - I won't learn much and quality won't be the best I can make, right?

PART 2 pls 🙏🏻

Yes yes yes! For livestream!

Lastimosamente, donde vivo, a las personas les importa mucho mas con quien has trabajado que la calidad de tu trabajo, y claro hasta cierto punto la calidad de lo haces importa, pero el nombre de quienes estan involucrados en el trabajo, importan demasiado..... pero bueno no hay que rendirse, buen video y buena sugerencia en cuanto a las redes sociales.

Thanks man. Decent points.

Hey Wytse, I totally agree with you! And, nothing could be going be faster than the music "herself". Do you know this french sentence? " ... qualité plutôt que quantité..." It's depends the context to means " I prefer quality rather than offer quantity "... Slowness is beautifullest to create in time for clients than being so faster in disaster! in other wise... or way, could you say " guys & girls " rather than "guys" for both of us ? ! We are "girls" and "guys" here. ;-) a wink

nice video and live stream about it is really good idea

"dude I worked with drake! well no the project was an absolute hell and the track turned out garbage, but it's dra-hello? hello?" - you on the phone with a potential client

How do you deal with clients that keep wanting more or changing their mind about things even though you’ve already spent the hours based on a fee? In the industry I’m working in which is building/structural engineering consulting we sometimes get clients that have a vague description of what they want but I spent more time on a project then I get hours for from my boss. Often we would have get back to the client and ask for more, as the fees are quite competitive and cut-throught in the industry. Does that also happen in audio engineering? I can imagine some artists beeing like that, wanting more work done or having things altered to a mix where the amount of time spent on it sacrifices time allotted to other clients. In my case some clients submit badly formed DWG drawings (some architects use really shitty cad programs not made by Autodesk) that I have tidy up before they unusable for me, or they have a very unclear project definition and keep changing it yet expecting it to have it finished yesterday. Some clients think you can work magic.....

No oil.

Why would I want an S-class when I can ride in a spaceship like the one you're currently sitting in.

Anybody know where we can find a Discog page for White Sea Studio? or any other page that shows the projects worked on?

Livestream would be great!

LIvestream would be great ! :)

We as a society will have to have a deep talk about Artificial Intelligence, because in audio this will be as in many other industries, a terrible notice i guess.

I think the stream could be very interesting for many ppl.It does sound easier as it is but ... just do it 😁💪

I'm thinking of doing this am I am thinking that i need to be able to run it as a hobby for a few years before it becomes anything I can have a full time thing... which might be actual longer than 3 years... I'm think 5 years. I have another more sure thing that will give me lots of time to do this... so fingers crossed (does crossing them make is diffrence?.... uummm no, still no sound... help! lol)

Please help me! 😭 I've been producing/mixing for about 13 years+ now and all I got paid for is a few beats on my beatstars page! I'd really love to take it to another level and music is pretty much the only thing I genuinely enjoy. I just have absolutely no idea how to get to the point of getting paid for it (besides a 19.99 lease every once in a while, lol)

I can't hear my fingers, what do I do?

When are you doing the review of the D&D 8Cs?

networking offline is kinda... different the last few months

Making money these days just not easy. No matter what field you are in.

do you think i could maintain a semi profesional home studio while attending university? (im probably going to study archeology so it really isn't a hard career)

Yes you should 100% do that livestream :)

5:29 where is the video

People can pay you, people own houses and businesses, so 100 bucks may seem like a lot of money to a broke kid, but in the real world that's not a lot of money

FLOOR GANG!

Patreon early access here - no links to those videos applied yet? I want to watch the second one you mentioned! ;)

Where is this guy from anyone know?

You got this

You look like Steave Duda 😀

🐐

"I will link it over here: [points]" - Mixing on the Console 1. Is that right?

livestream could b cool

Did u watch mussician on a mission? He said exactly the same

On a side note, what was that "driving an ass class" you were talking about? 10:57

i thought you didn't mix bad music - only sand storm? 😆