Is Money Important to Songwriters?

Of course money is important to songwriters. We have bills just like everybody else. Guitars cost money. Recording costs money. Mixing, mastering, websites, promotion, videos, distribution—it all adds up.

But there’s a big difference between money being important and money being the reason you write songs.

If money is the only reason you became a songwriter, you picked one hell of a difficult way to make a living.

Most songwriters will never get rich from their songs. Many talented writers spend years writing without ever having a major hit. Some spend more producing and promoting their music than they will ever make back.

And yet they keep writing.

Why?

Because for a real songwriter, there is something besides money involved.

A songwriter hears a line while driving down the road and has to remember it. He wakes up at two in the morning with a chorus running through his head. She sees somebody sitting alone in a bar and suddenly there’s a story. Something happens in life—love, death, anger, regret, stupidity, hope—and the songwriter wants to turn it into three or four minutes of music.

There isn’t always a business plan attached to that.

Money can buy better equipment. It can hire great musicians. It can pay for a professional studio, promotion, advertising and a better-looking video.

But money can’t buy the one thing a songwriter needs most:

Something worth saying.

Some of the greatest songs ever written started with nothing more than a person, an instrument and an idea.

That doesn’t mean songwriters should be ashamed of wanting to make money. If people are listening to your work, buying it, streaming it or coming to your shows, you deserve to be paid. Songwriting is work, and good songwriting can take years to learn.

The danger comes when money becomes the judge of whether a song was worth writing.

A song doesn’t become worthless because it didn’t make a million dollars.

Maybe 100 people heard it and one person thought, Damn, that’s exactly how I feel.

That’s something.

Maybe the song never reaches the radio but becomes one of the best things you’ve ever written.

That’s something too.

And maybe someday one of those songs actually does make some money.

Wonderful.

Cash the check.

Then sit back down and write another one.

Because sooner or later every songwriter has to answer the same question:

If nobody paid me for this tomorrow, would I still write songs?

If the answer is yes, you’re probably in it for the right reason.

Money matters.

But the song has to matter more.