Staying Motivated, Continuing to Create
Building Sustainable Content
I’ve never experienced from my own music but I could imagine how a financially successful musician might describe business with their success as “just being sustainable.”
Let’s face it - every business finds it hard to be sustainable - let alone profitable. For us recording and performing music artists, our product is content; and, like most artists, we spend an ungodly amount of money and time building up our performance/studio assets, repertoire, network and audience to help enable content purchasing. It’s a lot of weekend-warrior work.
After completing my 2021 taxes this morning I had a dual feeling of relief and irrelevancy. I was happy that I could write-off a lot of my expenses but I’m not too happy with my sustainability. In January 2022 I earned a whopping $0.01 from song royalties with 75% of that penny coming from somewhere overseas and 25% from right here in the good ol’ USA (or Canada). Something really needs to change here.
The good news is I did have a good rhythm of gigs beginning in August 2021 during the off-set of pandemic acceptance and venues opening up for shows. At the end of my live music sprint in December 2021, I was able to add more color with my live music performance with lighting and refined my live sound. I also did some music networking with some local players. It was awesome to be included as a singer for People Power Band in Palo Alto. Another thing I’m exploring is selling some music in the decentralized Metaverse (I admit that world still really confuses me but it’s a subject that shouldn’t be ignored)
2022 is all about that process of creating sustainable content with a hopeful release of a live album in November and continue publishing prose content. I think all good things take time and things aren’t going to grow and develop without putting your time into your product. That’s part of the reason why I started this Substack eNewsletter; to connect with people who enjoy my music, connect with other musicians and maybe have the ability to ask for subscriptions in the future for paywall access to special content.
I’m offering a free year of paid content to all of my new free email subscribers in 2022. Thanks for reading and for your support. Jump on in and enjoy the ride.