With free downloads, pay-what-you-want CD marketing plans, and the high costs of touring, the major issue faced by independent musicians is how to remain financially viable, as well as pocket some extra cash. With little doubt, the best opportunity to scale your music is to find a licensing partner.

From a business perspective, scaling involves creating a process that is repeatable and can generate money with little or no additional effort, once the initial process is set up.

However, getting yourself hooked up with a licensing partner is by no means an easy task, and many hurdles must be overcome to get there.

First, you’ll need to have final cuts of your songs, and preferably a completed CD or two.

Second, you’ll need to create a second CD that includes only those songs that you think are most marketable for film, TV or games.  Right now gaming is an area that is growing, which means many opportunities for licensing new music.

Third, you’ll need to find a list of music publishers and contacts who will be interested in your music.  One way to do this is to get the names from people you know in the industry who have located and signed deals with licensing partners.  Such personal connections or introductions are the key to getting attention.

The final step will be repeating these steps and working hard until you find a licensing partner.

The potential benefits will be that someone else will be working to get your songs licensed out, and get money in.  Their percentage fee will be more than worth it.