Turn Your Next Music Release Into $275 — With no Merchandise

You dropped the song, made the cover art, posted the reel—still no money. And now you’re thinking, ‘Maybe I need merch?’ Wrong. You don’t need t-shirts. You don’t need hoodies. You need a smarter way to sell your music. I’m about to show you how to make $275 off your next release—with no merch, no label, and no big fanbase.

If you’ve been concerned in the past that you just can’t succeed with selling music itself, I want to put those misconceptions to rest. You can do this. You just need the right person to explain it to you.

On this episode, I'm going to help two types of people. For those who are beginners, you will get a warp to level 4 of the game really quick. For more experienced people, you'll get the chance to beat Bowser and rescue Princess Peach, meaning you'll finally crack the code on the essence of what it takes to sell music. The rest of the secrets are in another castle on the Music Money Makers Community.

My goal is to help you understand that Status and sentimental desire Is the key to unlock music sales. And I’m going to show you a quick system that will make it simple for you to achieve that result.

I've been in the game for 20 years — it took me 19 years to figure out most of the stuff that I'm teaching you all on my YouTube now. The reason for that being is, I had to become a fan instead of a creator to really see the secrets to the game. I've consulted about 1,000 artists and given many of them successful strategies. However, I didn't start to get those breakthrough understandings until I really dug into who I was in my teenage years and started actually paying for music again outside of Spotify. Currently, I’m not paying for music because I have to pay to consume music; I’m paying for a different reason. I never played the music I purchased, except for maybe once. I purchased the music to support the artist, but at the same time, unbeknownst to me, I purchased it for bragging rights. So let's get into it, because what I'm going to uncover will show you that many artists are only selling to one percent of their base, leveraging their product, and giving me exactly what I was asking for: sentimental bragging rights.

Target the Desire (Status and Sentimental Emotion)

Most artists think that fans will be purchasing physical music because they just want to support you and they love you, but that's not the case. The reason why they're purchasing this music is because they want to show it off to people — that they purchased something from an artist who has enough pull in culture to classify themselves as cool — and they get to fulfill the desire of sentimental value. Which means your music meant so much to the fan that they had to buy it to represent a core fabric or era in their life.

The real reason why you think people won't buy music is because you don't think that people want bragging rights, you don't think that people want status, and you don't think that your music actually means something to people.

Recently, I was at a show for comedian Ali Saddiq, and I'm a fan of his. I'm not a super fan — you might say I'm a supporter. But I'm going on a fan binge with artists that I want to see, and I'm going to see how their purchase experiences are. When I was at his show, I wanted to purchase his merch to support him, but I also was doing it yet again for bragging rights because I knew that nobody would have what I have if they didn't go on tour, if they weren't there to experience it, if they weren't living life in the flesh.

I want you to embed this type of behavior into your mind, and I want you to uncover it within yourself to figure out what you have purchased for bragging rights and how you felt about certain things that you purchased for sentimental value. If you do that, this will help you transform your mind from one that thinks that music won't sell anymore because Spotify exists to a mindset that understands that these are the type of people that pay, and they exist within your fanbase.

If you don't believe that physical music is selling, then you'll be wrong, because according to an article from Billboard Pro, Alliance Entertainment, the biggest independent physical music distributor, stated in their 2025 first quarter earnings that higher-margin, consumer-direct fulfillment sales accounted for 35% of gross sales, which was up from 33% in the prior year period. I'm very familiar with Alliance Entertainment, especially since my friends who own a record store purchase from them quite often. So when this number shows that it's growing upwards, it lets me know that physical music is gaining momentum. By the way, consumer-direct fulfillment is not record stores that is, individual people buying.

And I know you're thinking, "But who's really gonna buy music from me if I've got less than 50,000 monthly listeners on Spotify?" I wanna remind you that people are not buying music to actively use it to listen — they're buying it to show it off. So, how do we make it worth more than the 40 or 50 bucks it's gonna cost for them to pay for it?

Leverage the product (Build value around it)

Many artists and their team members will look at leveraging and say, "Well, we'll just add a bunch of bonuses around it and it should work, right?" Not exactly.

Leveraging is all about taking your minimal input, which is the music, and maximizing its output, which is the value that your consumer or your fan will get from it.

Value is the thing that the fans hold near and dear to their hearts, so if you understand the desire — we just talked about the bragging rights and the sentimental meaning of your music — then you'll know that we're leveraging those feelings.

You don't know what you don't know, but I'll tell you the reason why you're mistaken about what leverage really is for your music — it's because you just don't know, and so you're doing what you see. However, if you keep throwing a bunch of items around your music product, thinking that people will buy it, they won't. You'll just get caught up in the horrible logistics of supplying extra products with your core product, which is the music itself. We don't want to do that — we want to satisfy those desires by leveraging our music and increasing its output to match those desires.

Every Fortune 500 company, from McDonald's to Starbucks to Walmart, has mastered this process. Independent sellers like Russell Brunson brought this into our world as well. I learned from all of these people and these companies just by analyzing my purchasing behavior.

So here's the best way to leverage your album and increase its price. The street value of a vinyl record is anywhere from 40 to 50 bucks. Next, we're going to sign it, which will nearly double the price. Then we're going to frame it, which will double it again. Then we're going to do something limited. Remember that video of mine called "Legally Print $1,000 in Seven Days" on YouTube as an artist? We're going to make 10 versions of this, or however many songs are on the album — we'll only make that limited number. We're going to hand-write the lyrics from each one of those records, and each one of those handwritten lyrics will be combined with each of the 10 records. Each record will get a different song. The hit songs will be priced higher or can be looked at as added collector's value. At this point, the street value is way over $275. I'd say it's pretty much valued at about $500 bucks if you're an independent artist without a huge following — and believe me, you can sell at this price point even if you have less than 100,000 followers and monthly listeners on Spotify. I've seen it done several times. And if they don't, the price just goes up as you get bigger.

Sidenote: if you want to learn how to increase the price to $1000 and beyond, watch my master class in my community “Building a $1000 Album”

The key is to make it a limited-edition run, but when you do this, tell me about it and tell me how much money you made.

Believe me, it doesn't make sense to you as an artist because you can't see someone spending that much money. But when you turn around and spend that much money on your favorite artist, you'll see just how easy it is to get caught up in a whirlwind of spending. For example, with Ali Saddiq, I purchased a $50 ticket to the show ($70 with Ticketmaster fees), then I paid $30 for his book and $35 for his T-shirt. All in all, I spent $135 for the night. So don't tell me that it's impossible — because it isn't.

Now I know —even though I’ve already told you — you’re thinking that your fan base is not big enough. You just need to cultivate a small base first. You don’t have to be famous. You don’t have to be a superstar, but people will pay for these types of bragging rights once you become a person of the culture you represent.

Alright, so we've covered desire and leveraging, but this next part is where most artists and their teams lose conversions, so stay with me. And side note: if you need a strong business foundation to run your record label with funding, grab my 60-day record label system, complete with my funding partners to fund some of this merch you're going to create.

Convert 1% of the base.

According to Tuesday's video, "Why Building a Fanbase Won't Get You Paid—This Will," you know that we aren't selling to everybody. Also, according to our limited run of 10 framed, signed, lyric sheet-based packaged records, we're only going to do 10. If you think that you're going to target this to everybody in your fanbase, everyone will be advertised to, but you really only need to expect the top 1% of your base to purchase.

Once you understand that, the next place you'll probably get stuck is in the selling process itself. You will need to tell the story behind the creation of this particular product to actually get people to buy. That is your clue — once you do that, it's game on.

Of course, this story has to be told via content or via your email list, but the point is for those artists who think that story telling content will not get the job done, I want you to rewind this video after it's done and listen to how many stories I've told you in this video. At this point, I've already told you five stories.

Once you begin your process of story selling, you will not only sell these vinyls that are framed, signed, and have handwritten limited-edition lyric sheets, but you will find that your streams will begin to increase, and other merch products that you have will begin to fly off the shelf.

Before I started telling stories to convert my audience, my conversion rates were average. Now they're beginning to rise, so when I release my new product (hint hint, it's on the way), it's going to fly off the shelves. And in fact, I'm so confident about it that I will reference this video in the future to say "I told you so."

Ads won't be able to save you here, and playlists won't help either. We're talking about a bare minimum of 10 songs at $275 each — that's $2,750. At $500 a pop, we're looking at $5,000 with a profit margin of 60%. So who's laughing now?

Here’s what you can do!

I want you to figure out a creative way that you can sell physical music to a small group of your fanbase and get a maximum amount of output from the album that will not only pay for your vinyl run but at the same time eclipse the amount of money you make from your streams in a single quarter or a single year. I want you to think of all the ways you can leverage your music.

The goal is to truly understand how many desires you can fulfill with your music, and when you learn how to do that, the game will totally change for you. You will soon realize that you don't need a huge fan base like you thought you needed — you just need to know how to sell. The real question isn't "should you do this?" — it's "how much longer can you afford NOT to?"

Now, if you need help with devising a strategy, join our group strategy calls every Monday night at 7 PM EST inside of the Music Money Makers community. Click below to join!

Is a 60% Profit margin worth it?

The truth is, targeting the status and sentimental desires, plus leveraging your music and converting 1% of the base, is all you need to do — don't overcomplicate the situation. You can do this. I've pretty much laid out the process for you. It doesn't take much time, and even though it will take some funds, it's not nearly as much as you think. However, this is all basic human behavior and items that already sell for a high price on the collectors' markets. You don't need perfect conditions. You just need to start with what you've got — and watch how far that can take you.

What’s it going to cost to keep doing it your way

So what is it costing you to keep doing things your current way? Not just in terms of money, but in missed opportunities and unrealized potential. Think about:

1. Lost Revenue: Missing out on $2,750–$5,000+ per limited release run that your core fans would happily pay for

2. Missed Connection: Failing to give your superfans the exclusive physical products they crave, weakening your artist-fan relationship

3. Growth Limitation: Choosing to stay small in streaming when you could be building a premium brand with collector's items

At the End of the Day

If you were struggling with getting more revenue from a smaller or mid-sized fanbase, then this method of targeting your fans' status and sentimental desires will allow you to draw money from the base and satisfy your fans at the same time, so you can become the self-sufficient artist you always wanted to be.

Music Money Makers: if you make music, you should always make money. Log on to musicmoneymakeover.com, grab the 60-Day Record Label System complete with funding, join the Music Money Makers Community, grab the free stuff, and watch this next video right here! Peace!