My analytics say that a lot of my site visitors are in their 20’s. I just turned 55, so to you “young folks,” I’m an old man. It used to be that people retired at 55. If only. My plan is to retire from full time web development when I hit 62.
Most old farts my age will tell you about the “golden age of music” when bands could go into the studio and record epic albums that cost crazy money to make, and how those days are gone forever and no one buys music and things are very bleak. I’m not most old farts, though if you dig around this website you might find a post where I said some of that same bullshit 5 years ago.
Here’s the thing: it was never, ever, ever easy to make a living as an independent musical artist. It still isn’t. Don’t get me started on this whole “Don’t have a backup plan” bullshit. But it used to be that giving millions of people access to your music meant you had to score a big record contract. Now it doesn’t. In many ways, this is the best time to be alive if you love making music.
For people who want to “make it,” you don’t need to move to NY or LA or Nashville if your stuff is good enough. You can build an audience online, and once you get big enough, record companies will come to you. And then you can decide whether you need them. You don’t need to go “all in” in the sense of moving and not having any other job. You do need to go “all in” on your art, and if you are a musical artist, that means you learn bass, maybe some keyboards, you learn Logic Pro or Reaper or whatever, you learn how to market online, you learn a ton of stuff that has nothing to do with writing melodies or lyrics. And you continue to make your songs better and better until they’re better than anything on the radio. Lots of people think their stuff is better than what’s on the radio. Usually it isn’t.
And here’s the thing: if your goal is to make the best art you can, you’ve already won. You can make your best art for the rest of your life, and you can put it online, and start a YouTube channel and/or a website, and all that other stuff. It’s crazy how amazing this time period is. By old school rules, I have my own magazine, my own record company, my own albums, and my own TV station. AND I’M DOING THIS STUFF PART TIME!!!
Can you embrace all the new tools? Can you learn whatever you need to learn? Are you doing this because you want to make awesome music and put it out? The gatekeepers are GONE! Go DO it! Keep getting better and better. It’s a very rewarding lifetime passion. Maybe you get super successful and you get to do it full time. Maybe you do it part time for the love of it. But I would suggest that doing music for the love of doing music is a really great philosophy. Don’t tie your art to some bullshit material matrix. Make YOUR art. Express yourself. If it’s fantastic, you’ll get fans. If it’s not, you can still do it, and keep working on it. Someone who works with wood is never “done.” Oh, I’ve built a really great chair, now I’m done. Nope. Do it because you love to do it. I mean, don’t we all love to do it?
When I got music licensed by Walgreens and Kroger and some other places, no one cared that I was 45 years old. They didn’t care about whatever my “image” was. Someone heard a couple of songs of mine they really liked, and they got picked up. No one cared how much I weighed or whether I dressed cool.
Some genres ARE about image and all that stuff. You can chase that dragon if you want. Just understand that once you hit 30 and certain genres don’t want to have anything to do with your sorry old ass, there are other genres that don’t give a shit about that stuff. Do you love making music, or do you just want to be a star?
Ok, rant over. What a wonderful, wonderful era we live in! When I’m blogging here, or making videos on the YouTube channel, or putting out new music, I’m creating and putting my creations out there for people to be entertained by, or at least that’s the theory. Do I wish I could do it full time? No, because I am a worrier. I love job security and knowing that my family is taken care of, and I have all of that and more. I don’t have the fame or the money, but I’ve got literally everything else I could want. Am I happy? Oh yes. VERY happy!
Make some wonderful art! And email me so I can check out your stuff – I LOVE to hear other people’s stuff!
