Any Tips on Starting a Music Production Business in the US?

Thanks Gareth, very informative!

While being a student, can you work legally as a freelancer and write for music production libraries? Or u can do it only on OPT visa after u graduate?

Yes, you just have to get authorization from your university (and a letter from your employer). It’s very straightforward. The office of international affairs at all US universities will take care of this for you.

Technically you can only work for 20 hours a week I think, on a student visa….but who is keeping track of these things

Just make sure you have authorization. You do NOT want to get in trouble with the IRS or DHS or ICE .

I’d suggest just work as self-employed no need to setup a actual tax paying company ntil you earn a certain amount from the business.

1) Just start selling your work on here and maybe sign up for some of those freelance sites like odesk and elance etc

2) Build a website, hire a professional SEO dude to get your site the visits it needs and maybe do some small advertising on here to your site where they can contact you directly and buy custom-made projects…

3) Eventually TV and advertising agencies will come knocking and you’ll be earning $1,000’s per project…

3 Tips 4 Success

ukwebsolution said
I’d suggest just work as self-employed no need to setup a actual tax paying company ntil you earn a certain amount from the business.

1) Just start selling your work on here and maybe sign up for some of those freelance sites like odesk and elance etc

2) Build a website, hire a professional SEO dude to get your site the visits it needs and maybe do some small advertising on here to your site where they can contact you directly and buy custom-made projects…

3) Eventually TV and advertising agencies will come knocking and you’ll be earning $1,000’s per project…

3 Tips 4 Success

Thanks for the tips! Getting myself together a web site is another thing I need to move on (been extremely lazy about that one, but it’s far overdue). Because my day job involves writing a lot of code it’s about the last thing I want to do when I get home, so hiring out a search engine optimization guy (or just someone to do the whole thing) sounds kind of nice, if expensive.

—Joel

jhunger said

ukwebsolution said
I’d suggest just work as self-employed no need to setup a actual tax paying company ntil you earn a certain amount from the business.

1) Just start selling your work on here and maybe sign up for some of those freelance sites like odesk and elance etc

2) Build a website, hire a professional SEO dude to get your site the visits it needs and maybe do some small advertising on here to your site where they can contact you directly and buy custom-made projects…

3) Eventually TV and advertising agencies will come knocking and you’ll be earning $1,000’s per project…

3 Tips 4 Success

Thanks for the tips! Getting myself together a web site is another thing I need to move on (been extremely lazy about that one, but it’s far overdue). Because my day job involves writing a lot of code it’s about the last thing I want to do when I get home, so hiring out a search engine optimization guy (or just someone to do the whole thing) sounds kind of nice, if expensive.

—Joel

Not expensive in the slightest, i hired my dude for $5 an hour u just give him a theme from here and he’ll be done in 10 hours then let them do bout 5- 8 hours of seo, backlinking etc then your site should be attracting about 1,000 visits a week after the first 2 months + the visits from here you’ll get

garethcoker said
Yes, you just have to get authorization from your university (and a letter from your employer). It’s very straightforward. The office of international affairs at all US universities will take care of this for you.

Technically you can only work for 20 hours a week I think, on a student visa….but who is keeping track of these things

Just make sure you have authorization. You do NOT want to get in trouble with the IRS or DHS or ICE .

Hi Gareth,

This thread is pretty old but the information you gave me is very important to me.

I’m starting my studies this Fall and I’ve already talked with university’s international department and they claim that they cannot allow me using those 20 hours a week for my freelance projects cause this is not an “on campus job”. There is some “CRT” permission but they give it for internships only. So what permission/authorization exactly should I apply for in order to be able to work with my freelance clients from the 1st semester as you did?

I would appreciate your help very much!

Lamusique