My good buddy Kevin and I had an email exchange the other day about music and money. Specifically, it was about how much he felt his band should charge for their CD versus what another member thought. One wanted to charge $10 and the other felt more like charging something far less or even giving them away. There was talk of Trent Reznor and his new approach with NIN and how that might not be applicable to independent musicians with a following in the tens rather than tens of thousands. As I wrote down my take, a distinct difference in approaches to musical work and compensation began to emerge.
Conservatory training for composers is full of enlightment inducing thought bombs. Some of them are placed by brilliant teachers and they tick away for years before going off at just the right time. This wisdom is sad in a sense because the one who receives it will most likely appreciate on the same day that he needed it to avoid a catastrophe that unfolded one minute or less before the bomb went off. Thus do we learn the things we already know.
All of that is to say that when studying composition the overriding theme in most of the great composers of the canon is that they worked very hard with little appreciation and came to acclaim after death. And not on the same day that the obituary was published. It was usually 60 to 100 years later. It’s not a pleasant lesson for someone who is 18 and just now taking on the seemingly austere mantle of composer, but it’s one that does serve.
That lesson taught me about the importance of the day job. It taught me that creative work doesn’t lead to money 99 times out of 100. Somehow this piece of knowledge that etched itself into me brought with it a profound joy for any time someone listened to my work and made even the most dismissive of comments. At least I owned that moment in that mind. And if I don’t get paid for my creative work it doesn’t really matter. I know in my heart that I make music out of a compulsion, not out of some misguided sense of industry. It’s something that is motivated purely from within.
I think that it would be very nice to cultivate an audience of perhaps 100 people who really enjoy and appreciate my work. It would give me the confidence that every artist needs and the feedback that is essential to any creative work. I’m sure there are ways to create some kind of profit from such a group, but again money isn’t my intent. The intent is to be heard. And the more time I spend thinking about it, the more central intent is to my work.
Kevin is an incredibly talented man. To my mind, whatever decision he makes will be right. We’re living in a time where creative people can’t really lose. Anyone can have an audience with a little work and some word of mouth. Not everyone can make a living at it, but it doesn’t seem that the number of people who can has gone down.
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