There are more ways to get paid than just by writing and releasing songs. Here are five synth side hustles to help you earn a little extra cash.
Synth Side Hustles
Synthesizers are expensive. Whether you’re a full-time musician or just a hobbyist, working with synths requires a considerable financial commitment. Wouldn’t it be great if you could make your hobby profitable? Not everything has to be monetized, of course. There’s something to be said for playing synthesizers for the sheer joy of it. However, there’s also nothing wrong with getting a little return on your investment.
I assume you already know about music composition, making songs and beats and mixing and all that. These are all viable revenue streams. Today, however, I want to focus on some less-talked-about ways to earn money, five side hustles that you can do alongside whatever else it is you do to make money. From presets to sample packs to (God forbid) music tech journalism, there’s something here for everyone.
Synth Side Hustle: Make Synth Presets
Every week, our own Rob Puricelli highlights the latest sounds and presets available for synthesizers, both hard and soft. The most recent installment includes patches for the Korg Nautilus and Kronos, Arturia PolyBrute 12 and even Ableton Live 12. Someone has to make these patches, right? Whether they be after-market third-party packs or the ones that come preloaded in your synth, presets are big business. You can make them too.
Think about it. You’re probably already making patches – or at least saving your tweaks. It’s just a short jump from this to selling them. If you’re the kind of person who ends up spending more time on sound design than actual composition, this is something you should really consider as a synth side hustle.
The most common way to sell patches and presets is through your own digital storefront. Set up a marketplace on Gumroad, Sellfy or even Bandcamp, hire a graphic designer to make some pack covers, and promote your patches on all the usual social media sites.
Another option is a work-for-hire site like Fiverr or Upwork. You can sell packs and even offer custom sets for musicians. Back in the day, this job was called programmer. Now it’s a synth side hustle.
Synth Side Hustle: Make Sample Packs and Sample-Based Instruments
Samples are big business. More and more people (including even some big-name producers) are using of samples in their music. Someone needs to make the samples though. And that’s where you come in.
As we’re talking about synth side hustles today I won’t get into making beats, which is a whole thing unto itself. Instead, think about the kinds of sample packs you could make with the synthesizers that you own. Vintage synths are ripe for the digital plucking, as are modern synths like a Korg Minilogue or Arturia MiniFreak running custom patches. Expensive, aspirational synths like the Oberheim OB-X8 are perfect for sampling given their exclusivity. And then there’s modular. Talk about the possibility for unique samples.
There are two main approaches to selling samples. Either set up your own online store or sell/license your packs to a streaming service like Splice or a third-party marketplace such as ADSR. As we already talked about creating your own online store (in presets, above) let’s look instead at getting noticed by a sample provider.
To get picked up by a company you’ll need to get noticed. You can do this by setting up a Soundcloud account to host your samples and then contacting the outfit. Splice, for example, has a special contact form for this. Another option is to get on freelance sites like Fiverr and Upwork and wait for the big boys to come to you.
Lastly, if you have some coding skills (or you know someone who does that you can partner with), you can always make your own sample-based instruments. Native Instruments’ Kontakt is a popular format. Note that if you want it to run on the free Kontakt Player (and thus get more reach) NI requires a one-time $1000 encoding fee. Serial numbers also cost money. Then there’s Decent Sampler, a freeware Kontakt alternative. Check out this site for information on how to make your own Decent Sampler pack.
Synth Side Hustle: Be a Synthfluencer
Have something to say about synthesizers? Want to stream your ambient jams to the world? Maybe you dig synth history and would enjoy putting together documentaries on the subject. If this sounds like you, you can be a synthfluencer, an influencer who specializes in synthesizers. It’s a popular synth side hustle these days.
Whether you’re on YouTube, TikTok or Twitch, there’s money to be made as a synthfluencer (although it’s not always easy to do, as BoBeats explains in the above video). If you can get enough people to watch, you’ll get paid by the hosting company. Beyond that, there are opportunities for commercial sponsorships. And, once your audience gets big enough, there may be interest from viewers in supporting what you do via Patreon.
Additionally, once you have an audience, you can use your popularity to push other things you may be involved in. This includes not only the music you release but also other synth side hustles, such as presets and sample packs.
Synth Side Hustle: Teach Synthesis and Music Production
You weren’t born knowing how to program a synthesizer. You probably got some help from someone, either a mentor or perhaps through an online course. If doing this sounds appealing, your synth side hustle could be teacher. It might feel good to pay it forward and pass on your synthesizer knowledge to the next generation.
There are a number of ways to teach synthesizer programming and performance. There’s in-person, of course, but also one-on-one lessons through applications like Zoom. If you’d rather develop a curriculum, you could always create a course and either upload it to YouTube or become involved with an online educational site like Udemy or Point Blank Music.
Teaching isn’t for everyone but if you enjoy helping people and think you can explain difficult topics like FM synthesis simply, it could be the synth side hustle for you.
Synth Side Hustle: Music Tech Journalism
Some people prefer to write rather than speak. If getting your thoughts about synthesizers down by typing on a keyboard rather than speaking into a camera appeals to you, your synth side hustle could be music tech journalist.
My music tech journalism career actually started as a side hustle. I was teaching full-time (English as a second language, not music production) and writing a blog on synths in my free time. After pitching a few story ideas to editors at some of the sites I visited regularly, I was surprised to have my ideas accepted.
Music tech journalism is not the best-paying job in the world. If you want to write and make money, get into writing about finance. Better yet, skip the writing part and dive head-first into just finance. However, if writing about synths like the UDO Audio Super 6 or Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave sounds like your idea of fun, you should definitely go for it. You may soon find that writing has become your synth side hustle.
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