The Side Hustle He Saw on YouTube Earned Him a Multi-Year Deal With Sony and Income Streams Generating Tens of Thousands Ethan "Haze" Hayes, 22, picked up the hobby in college — then turned it into a full-time career.
By Amanda Breen Edited by Jessica Thomas
Key Takeaways
- Hayes' musical side hustle earned him a Grammy nomination by the time he was a sophomore in college.
- His work brings in multiple income streams, including earnings from the multi-year deal he landed with Sony last year.
- He could have dropped out of college to pursue his career but decided to complete his degree in entrepreneurship.
Ethan "Haze" Hayes, 22, started making beats in the summer of 2019, right before his freshman year at Bryant University.
Hayes had a musical background — he'd played the piano from a young age — and picked up the hobby for fun after watching people create their own beats on YouTube.
But Hayes' newfound past-time would become a lucrative side hustle, then a full-blown music career, while he was still a college student.
Hayes was nominated for a Grammy for his beats on Nas' single "40-Side" during his sophomore year, and by the time he was a junior, he'd landed a multi-year deal with Sony Music. Today, he has six Platinum and nine Gold certifications to his credit and regularly collaborates with artists like Lil Baby and NBA YoungBoy.
Courtesy of Ethan Hayes
Entrepreneur connected with Hayes to learn how he balanced running his side hustle with being a full-time student, what his earnings from artist collaborations look like and why he decided to finish his degree in entrepreneurship before moving to LA to pursue his music career.
"I knew that music was my passion and something I wanted to prioritize."
Hayes says it was "difficult" to find the balance between school and his music career, particularly as the side hustle became a priority.
"During my freshman year at Bryant University, I was extremely busy with school and my schedule as a Division 1 athlete on the Bryant track and field team," Hayes recalls, "so I mainly worked on music at nights and during leisure time, taking the place of when I would play video games or other things like that."
Related: His Roblox Side Hustle Turned Into a Multimillion-Dollar Company
But when Covid struck in March 2020, Hayes found himself with "more free time than [he] knew what to do with" — and he spent it working on his music, building his brand, networking on social media and learning more about the industry.
"By the time I returned to school in the fall of 2020, I was making a couple thousand dollars monthly off of beat sales on YouTube and the internet," Hayes recalls, "and I had landed my first couple of placements with major artists. I knew that music was my passion and something I wanted to prioritize my time for, so I made the decision to quit the track team and focus on music."
"A publishing deal like the one I signed basically consists of the publishing company giving the producer a large up-front recoupable advance."
When Hayes produces a song for an artist and they decide to release it onto a streaming platform like Spotify or Apple Music, they complete a producer agreement, which defines the terms for using Hayes's instrumental composition for their song.
"The three main ways that I get paid, as defined in this producer agreement, are an advance payment — at this point in my career $2,000-$10,000 — based on the artist's popularity and budget, and two different types of royalty percentages, publishing and master royalties, which vary in percentage based on how many people contributed to the finished song," Hayes explains. "These royalties are paid out by different organizations quarterly."
Related: A Taylor Swift-Inspired Side Hustle Is Making People Thousands
Hayes signed the multi-year co-publishing deal with Sony Music in June 2022 after "months of negotiations" and "leveraging offers against each other."
"A publishing deal like the one I signed basically consists of the publishing company giving the producer a large up-front recoupable advance, usually in the six-figure range, and in return giving the publisher the rights to collect a portion of the producer's publishing royalties," Hayes says, noting the benefit of having the label's "full resources and connections" behind him as his career progresses.
"I'm very excited to have the freedom to travel and make music with people all over the world."
Hayes had a difficult decision to make the summer before his senior year of college: Should he drop out of school to move to LA and work on his music full-time or complete his degree in entrepreneurship?
Ultimately, he decided on the latter. "I believed that while it obviously would accelerate my career greatly to drop out, it wouldn't necessarily slow me down at all career-wise to finish my education," Hayes explains. "I also was very aware of the three-year investment I had already put into school, and it felt like a waste to drop out when I was at the finish line."
Next month, Hayes will road trip cross-country from Boston to Los Angeles, where he'll live with friends for the next few years and work on his music full-time.
"I'm very excited to have the freedom to travel and make music with people all over the world, as well as expanding my horizons from the rap music that I have made so far in my career into other genres, such as pop, R&B and Latin, as well as making music for movies, television and video games," Hayes says. "Above all else, I am excited for the great unknown of life and the adventures to come."
Related: 44 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Extra Money in 2023 | Entrepreneur
