26-year-old brings in $33,000 a year from 2-minute side hustle that cost next to nothing to start

If you’ve ever listened to a YouTube video of “lo-fi beats to study or relax to,” you might have interacted with Michael Turner’s music.

Turner, 26, is a full-time musician who makes pop music under the name PLVTINUM. A year and a half ago, he started spending some of his weekends producing music in what he calls the passive listening space — and quickly found “lo-fi” music production to be a “very easy” side hustle.

If you’ve ever listened to a YouTube video of “lo-fi beats to study or relax to,” you might have interacted with Michael Turner’s music.

Turner, 26, is a full-time musician who makes pop music under the name PLVTINUM. A year and a half ago, he started spending some of his weekends producing music in what he calls the passive listening space — and quickly found “lo-fi” music production to be a “very easy” side hustle.

It’s lucrative, too. Under the name Bonsai Beats — a band mostly comprised of Turner and guitarist Mike Bono — he’s earned an extra $33,139 over the past year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Lo-fi stands for “low fidelity,” which essentially means it lacks the high production value you’d find in most professional music.

It’s meant to be listened to in the background as you cook, work, study or even sleep.

When he and Bono collaborate on lo-fi tracks, they set a timer — just two minutes for writing, producing and naming each song. Together, they’ve made almost $60,000 over the past year from 85 tracks, which only took a total of roughly three hours to create.

At age 18, Turner posted a YouTube video of himself singing and playing an original song, and it racked up more than a million views. “That was my first exposure to what internet virality can do, and I became addicted from then on out,” he says.

Bonsai Beats has roughly 12,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

Ref: 26-year-old brings in $33,000 a year from 2-minute side hustle that cost next to nothing to start (cnbc)