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Looper's Delight
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Ha! I feel you man. That's the way I felt in my last band. We spent a couple grand recording a CD, and then I could hardly give them away! I blamed it on the college "I'm too smart to care about anything" mentality that saturates so much of this town. I lost a lot of money on that deal. Now I'm in a 2-piece thing with a buddy of mine and we have a little recording setup in his spare bedroom, so we aren't paying studio-time fees. And we're using MySpace (myspace.com/opuspi if anyone's interested) and the like for crazy amounts of promotion (with much more success, I might add), but life has gotten busy to the place where it's been nearly impossible to finish recording anything we can sell! So we've yet to make a dime. My theory, though, is that because of MySpace and other tools like it on the web, it's now possible to actually get to the place where you make a living from your music without necessarily having to sign your soul over to Satan... er, ummm... Nashville. It's going to take a ton of hard work, creativity, risk, and time that I just don't have at the moment (my wife's due with our first baby--a girl--in a month), but that's our goal nonetheless. The funny thing is that we haven't even recorded enough music for a CD, and we're gigging way less than I did in my former band, but we've got a ton more people listening. And, with the help of e-mail, MySpace, AIM, etc., we're actually meeting and connecting with our listeners on a personal level. To me, that's much more valuable. --Josh > No, I wasn't joking. In fact, I was overestimating (I do make some money > from jazz gigs, but I've had exactly ONE sale of my recent Sandbox CD, >and > that was at a show. The CD sale put us over the top - that plus ticket > sales > minus the space rental gave us a $5 profit for the evening). But I don't > put > much (hardly any, really) energy into promotion. I gave up the concept of > making any real money from music many years ago, except in my dreams (I >am > thinking about seriously trying to break into music library placements > through TAXI, but it is really hard to find the time to follow the >program > I > have in mind). > > Honestly, though, what really burns me is that I can't generally get even > get close friends and family (or loopers on this list, for that matter) >to > even *listen* to my stuff for *free*. I give a CD to a friend and don't > hear > anything about it. 2 or 3 weeks later, I call and ask what they thought > and > find out they haven't listened. > > Hey, I know I don't suck *that* bad (in fact, I think I have some fairly > unique musical things to say, and from time to time I get some small > confirmations of this). But the world is absolutely innundated with new > pieces on myspace and the like, and I think everyone is exhausted by it. > The > saying used to be "everyone's a critic." Now it's "everyone's an artist." > I > don't promote anything, because I can't even see the point in trying. > > Sorry for the downer, but I do find the situation quite depressing. > > I know there are people here (Krispen and Ted come to mind immediately, > but > there are no doubt quite a few others) who are much more assiduous and > persistent than I am. I truly hope that they have much more encouraging > stories to tell. > > Best wishes, > Warren Sirota > www.warrensirota.com > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill [mailto:rs@moinlabs.de] >> Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 7:47 AM >> To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com >> Subject: AW: MySpace Controversy >> >> >> > I can't see getting worked up over the possibility of them >> > somehow cutting into the profits from my $22 of annual CD sales.... >> >> Just to get this into perspective for me: you were joking >> with these $22, right? What is the actual profit you make per >> year? Anybody else wants to share his experiences? (private >> mail, if you don't want these figures to appear in public for >> some reason...) >> >> Rainer >> > >