MC Lars: How An Indie Rap Artist Makes A Living [CHART]

MC Lars beleives in giving his music away free. "In 2006, I read a book by Berklee College of Music professor David Kusek (and Gerd Leonhard), The Future of Music," wrote Lars. "He described a "music as water" paradigm that has come to fruition in 2012 with cloud services… Since then, I've been an advocate of free downloading and streaming."

"What this means then is that in order for artists like me to survive, I must be creative with how I let people hear my music," he wrote in the Huffington Post.  "47% of my income comes from merchandise, 40% from ticket sales, and 13% comes from iTunes, Spotify or other paid music services through the internet. I used a crowdsourced funding site called Kickstarter to produce my last album, with added bonuses of drawings and personalized songs to the highest contributors."

"Being a musician no longer means simply being a songwriter and performer. One must also know a little bit about business, branding, t-shirt design, social networking, production, publicity, accounting and tour managing."

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