Teaching music production is one of the fastest ways to build a music career

Hey there,

So many music producers want a music career but when asked, "how do you earn a living?" the dream comes crashing down to reality. Does this sound like you? It doesn't have to be this way.

When pressed to answer the question, you might answer with something along the lines of, "Well, I want to earn a living from my music!" The follow up question becomes even more of a bummer.

"How?"

The myth of earning a living from music sales alone

The music industry has changed dramatically since the 1990s, when record sales were at their peak and people actually bought music. 25 years on, it can be easy to feel like the music career ship has set sail without you, so why try to have a career at all?

In reality, it has always been difficult to have a music career built-on sales (or streams) alone. Even in the halcyon days of physical media, unless you were one of the biggest artists around, you would have earned most of your living touring. Record sales had to be supplemented by other means. Artists built their careers by having multiple income pillars.

This is true today: to have a music career in 2025, you have to have multiple income pillars.

The most ignored earning pillar

Whenever I talk to ambitious aspiring professional music producers or composers, they often have a plan for how they will make their living. It usually includes multiple income streams: streams, physical sales, merch, sync licensing, sample packs, etc. They have a plan.

However, their plan often leaves out what I find to be the most ignored earning pillar: teaching. There is incredible demand for music production educators today. A cursory look at Answer the Public shows that there are hundreds of searches every month on google for some variation of "learn music production."

When it comes to building a music career, it can take a lot of time to build-up certain income pillars, like a streaming audience. Taken in comparison, it takes far less time to build up a teaching practice.

Unless you're trying to teach at a college or university, you don't need a degree to teach music production lessons online or in your area. You simply need to know what you're doing and know how to explain it well enough to others.

Teaching is a launchpad

The reason I always encourage aspiring professional producers and composers to consider teaching music production is because it provides them with so much. Not only do you get the immense satisfaction of helping helping another person learn the craft you love so much, you also get other unexpected benefits as well.

A stable income

Teaching is stable because learning takes time. Students will work with you for months to years at a time. Having a consistent income pillar, no matter how large or small it is, in an industry famous for inconsistency is worthwhile.

More time spent on music

Teaching music production means that you'll spend more time on music, period. You'll spend lessons discussing production, you'll spend prep time working on examples or songs to demo. You'll spend time researching concepts techniques. You'll spend more time overall doing what you love.

You will get better much, much faster

Teaching music production is a wild skill multiplier. You learn really quickly where your shortcomings are and you figure out how to address them quickly. Why? Because somebody else is depending on you to do so.

It creates space to build up other areas of your career

Teaching music production and getting paid to do so means that you will spend less time at non-music jobs. Additionally, teaching music privately is usually paid at an hourly rate that is much higher than what you'd find at your average job. Even on the lower end of $50 per hour of private lesson, that's more than most retail jobs. If teaching one hour of music lessons pays what two hours would at other jobs, then it means that you have one additional hour you can devote to building your career.

Teaching gave me my career

I moved from central Illinois to Seattle in January of 2020. I had big plans for getting involved in the music community here that were waylaid almost instantly by the pandemic. It became more challenging to network and find gigs.

I started offering private music production lessons as a last ditch effort. I quickly had a number of students sign up (to my surprise) and that gave me the stability I needed to forge on. Since then, I've built up a number of income pillars - Ableton Live presets, Adsense revenue, lessons, course sales, and commissions. It would have been so much more difficult to reach this point without teaching.

Now, my teaching journey is changing. September will be the last month that I accept new Ableton Live coaching clients until 2026 at the earliest. The reason being that I am happy to announce that I'm joining the faculty at not one, but two, great institutions this fall.

First, I'll be joining the music faculty of Edmonds College here in the Seattle area. I'll be teaching a number of great music production courses. Additionally, I'm joining the faculty of the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, which is helmed by two-time Emmy winner Hummie Mann.

I'm looking forward to both of these opportunities but to make the most of them, I'll need to make space in my schedule. If you'd like to book an Ableton Live coaching package with me, I'd encourage you to do so ASAP as I'll be closing the book form soon.

Til next time,

ZW