If You Have Songs Recorded, Guess What... You Also Have Instrumentals!!!

"Yeah, obviously" You thought.

Well then let me show you a few things you can do with them to generate extra income on the side!

"Say whaa? How?!?"  You ask

Think about it... the hard work is already done when you recorded your song. Now, all you have to do is mute the vocals, and you have an entirely separate product that you can sell to numerous platforms looking for instrumental content.

"whoa... I never thought about that. So what should I do with them??"

Well homie, I'm glad you asked!
now with digital distribution, there’s virtually no reason NOT to release them.

"Damn, that sounds like a lotta work man. Say, do you have any examples of an artist really doing this???"

Consider RJD2, who made millions in sync and is most widely known for writing the theme song to the hit AMC series, “Mad Men”. If you look on Spotify, you’ll notice that the majority of his albums have accompanying instrumental releases. These tracks have earned him MILLIONS of additional streams that would have never materialized had he not bothered to release them.

In addition, making your instrumentals publicly available online makes them discoverable for anyone working in sync. In post-production, video editors commonly temp in songs they like and check YouTube for an instrumental version they can rip and play around with. If it’s not available, they might just assume it doesn’t exist and move on. If they can easily find and download your instrumental mix and it works up to picture, however, you could very well end up landing yourself a sync without even trying! You might even want to consider releasing them through Bandcamp as “pay-what-you-want”, so a high-resolution version can be downloaded for free while allowing fans to still pay whatever they’re comfortable with.

"No way! duuude..."

Another cool application for your instrumentals is to release them through Tracklib, which makes them available for sampling by other artists. As a co-owner of a sampled work, you’ll be entitled to a permanent revenue share including royalties and sync fees. It’s like collaborating with a whole world of artists without even meeting them!
Keep in mind…Rushing to open up old mix sessions to create instrumentals when you have a time-sensitive sync opportunity is a complete nightmare. You may no longer have the same gear or plugins that you had running on the initial session, and remastering to perfectly match the original mix can be extremely tedious.
However, bouncing instrumentals while you’re mixing your record is fairly simple and will only benefit you in the future. Even if you don’t end up releasing them, it’s a good idea to just have them on hand.