Hey there!

If you've spent any time searching "how much can I make from stock music," you've probably seen two very different answers.

Version one: "I made $10,000 last month licensing music from my bedroom — here's how you can too!"

Version two: "Stock music is saturated and pays pennies. Don't bother."

Both of these are wrong. And I think the noise between them is one of the main reasons talented producers either get scammed by unrealistic expectations or give up on something that could genuinely work for them.

I've been licensing music since 2015. I've published my actual earnings reports on this site for years. So I wrote up the honest version — what composers at different stages actually earn, what drives the difference, and what timeline is realistic.

​→ Read: How Much Do Stock Music Composers Make? (Real Numbers)​

A few things from the article worth highlighting:

The Year 1 number will disappoint you — and that's fine. A realistic Year 1 outcome for someone uploading 2–4 tracks a month is $50–$300 total. Not per month. Total. The composers who quit at this point aren't failing — they're just leaving right before the compounding kicks in.

The single biggest income driver isn't talent or gear. It's catalog size and time. More tracks means more chances to match a buyer's search. A steady cadence of 2–4 tracks per month over three years beats uploading 100 tracks in one burst and stopping — by a lot. And it takes time to get paid. Sometimes over a year from the song purchase!

Most composers are leaving money on the table with PRO royalties. If your music ends up on a TV show or in an ad, your performing rights organization (ASCAP, BMI) pays you performance royalties that have nothing to do with stock platform sales. One solid TV placement can out-earn a full year of catalog income. This is a completely separate income stream most beginners don't even know exists.

Metadata matters more than most people think. Stock music search is keyword-driven. A great track with poor metadata won't sell. Spending an extra 10 minutes per upload on tagging consistently outperforms rushing through it.

The full article has the income breakdown by year, a platform-by-platform comparison (Pond5 vs. AudioJungle vs. Audiosparx), and a link to the earnings calculator if you want to model out your own trajectory.

​Read the full breakdown here →​

🎵 Get started now: get unlimited access to my music licensing, mixing, mastering and Reason courses!

For those of you who want to go beyond the article and actually build a system around this — I'm currently offering highly discounted access to my Stock Music Selling System and Double Your Licensing, as well as all my other courses.

It covers exactly what the article describes: which platforms to use, how to structure your uploads, the metadata formula I use, and how to set your catalog up so it earns while you're not working on it. This is the closest thing I have to a step-by-step starter guide for music licensing.

​Join here.​

— Evan StockMusicMusician.com

P.S. The full Stock Music Selling System — plus every other course I've made — is available right now inside the All Access Pass. If you'd rather not wait for the free access, that's the fastest way in.