More thoughts on giving my music away

December 4, 2007

Even before Radiohead did their thing, I thought about doing a donation-based digital distribution of my music.

I still may do it.

On one hand, I thought that the act of making music available for name-your-price deal would devalue my music.

I’m not so sure about it now. For example, on MySpace, many people have responded very enthusiastically to my music. Not just “you rock” or “you’re cool” or stuff like that. Reading them, you can tell they really listened and liked them. Liked them a lot.

And I’m filled with such a gratitude, that I feel like giving that person all my music. Every one of them. That’s because my music is important, at least to me. So by giving my music, I’m giving someone something very important. And people would know that and respect that. So I am not devaluing my music — I am giving it precisely because it has a value. And people appreciate it because it has a value.

But I do realize that my logic here is flawed. There is no money exchanging hands here. Valued or not, I’m giving my product away, the method I need to use to support my own music. Both my fans and I will not benefit from my giving away my music — unless, of course, my fans pour down their generosity on me and donate to the cause of my making music.

It’s just such a clumsy struggle to me. I want my music to be heard and enjoyed by as many people as possible. And I want to spend days and nights making more music. Or should I say, I want to spend a full-time job’s worth of time doing what I love, doing something that the world appreciates. Those tho conditions don’t necessitate that I make money from my music. I just need to make money from something that doesn’t take a lot of time, or just have money somewhere accruing enough interest, to support me and my family.

This seems like a trivial, insignificant possibility, but thinking about it this way opens up a lot of different options. I could be daytrading or doing real estate investments. Or start a business that sells later for millions of dollars. Or find generous investors and sponsors. All of which is theoretically possible — but still, trying to secure such a source of income requires a lot of commitment and time developing/finding that. If that’s the case, I’m better off developing my music business — so that at least I’m spending my energy and resources on my music, instead of some make-money-quick scheme.

Radiohead’s success not withstanding, I am not convinced that the same business model will apply successfully to an indie start-up act. Not yet, anyway. So, to this day I haven’t opened up my music for a donation-based release. I’m sorry, friends — you mean the world to me and I want to share with you what’s important to me. But I also need to justify financially what I’m putting into my music. I hope you understand.

I keep looking for ideas and options, though. Some day, I’ll figure out this puzzle of sharing my music with the world and fund comfortable living for me and my family.

I have hope.

Filed under: Ari, Aries9, Music, Reflections | Comments (0)