I'm beginning to wonder why I need someone in my life. For 12 years I just rode along because it was there, but this year has been a roller coaster ride for me in a lot of ways.
After Sarah and I split, I was alone for all of about 4 weeks before another situation came along. Then when that was over, immediately I was in another. Now that's over.
I dunno, maybe I jumped in too quickly. I mean, nearly 12 years of cohabitation and commitment, and I was only by myself for 4 weeks after it ended before jumping into another situation! Sure, each of those situations helped me grow in some ways, but the true test will be whether or not I can handle being by myself completely. I crave attention from someone, but why is that? Is it fucked up issues caused by parental circumstances from my childhood? Is it that I was just used to having one situation for so long that now I don't know how to not have that kind of attention in my life? What is it?
I think maybe the answer will lie in isolation. I never really worked on picking up all the pieces, I just picked up the ones I needed to remain mobile and moved on. Maybe I need to just worry about myself, and not about putting anyone else into the picture yet.
Who knows.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Why I don't want to sign to a record label…..
Why I don't want to sign to a record label…..
I'm a business man. I own a recording studio, am in business school, and am working on artistic endeavors with two projects designed to make money off of music that I was involved in creating.
I used to be a "slave to the record industry", wanting nothing more than to be signed to a label and "make it big"! But the more I learn about the music business the more jaded I get at the thought of someone else controlling my art and making money off of me, while I get the scraps.
Napster changed the way we consume music forever. I'm not getting into a discussion about piracy here, I'd be flattered if my songs were being shared on a P2P system. But I bring up Napster because it shows the power of the internet. Music consumers decided they no longer wanted to pay $20 for a CD of 12 songs, opting instead to bypass the music industry and just take the music! Again, I'm not getting into whether or not P2P is a good thing or bad thing, but no one can argue that Napster didn't help change things forever.
Now the consumer is in control, and it's all thanks to the internet! The consumer could turn to myspace (before it turned to myspam) to find new music that wasn't being approved by the corporate music industry structure. They could turn to youtube to watch Julia Nunes strumming her ukelele and sing her quirky songs, or watch Pomplamoose's infectious covers and originals. They can now network with other musicians across the country to book shows without the label telling them who they can or can't play with or what to wear on stage. They can now sell their music directly to their fans without pandering to the labels for a measly $0.15 for each record sold. They can, and have, become famous in their own right without playing a single show!
So now that the internet has broken the old industry model of corporate control and given the power back to the musician, it's hard for me to fathom giving my art to someone else to make money off of when I can just sell it directly to my fans and keep the fruits of my labors! The business man in me knows that I now have the power to get my music to a worldwide audience, and aside from not wanting to give up the control of my artistic choices, I also don't think it's a wise business decision for me to give up most of the revenues my art brings in just for the sake of being on Mtv and local radio!
The thing that artists need to understand is that they are not only artists, but they are a small business. According to economic theory, the goal of any business is to maximize profits. 15 years ago, the best thing for an artist to do would be to get signed to a label, as the label would provide the financial backing to produce an awesome album and promote the tour of the artist. This in tern would help the artist gain exposure. Basically, the label was a way of exposing your art to a massive audience. But the problem is that labels wanted to control what was being shown. This is understandable, they want to make money (they ARE a business first and foremost). But now that the internet has provided a way of providing mass exposure for an artist without the use of a record label, the record label is now a dinosaur that will be soon extinct.
With regards to a label providing funding for an album to be produced……..even though I own a recording studio and want everyone to pay me to record their music, I realize that a lot of people are now generating the skills of an audio engineer and are building cost effective home studios that are more than capable of producing top notch recordings. This puts the creative control and budgetary concerns back in the hands of the musician, because the musician no longer needs to seek out a huge loan from a label to hire a top notch producer to record a top notch album for them. If the album flops, the band members are in debt for the rest of their days! Why would anyone take that risk when much more sensible and cost effective solutions are available today?!
This is sort of a rant, and I realize that. It's not very organized, but I hope that the thoughts I portray in it are conveyed well enough for all to understand. The internet has given us the power back. We should take that power and use it to the best of our ability to build our careers on our own terms.
Thanks for reading.
In closing.....here's Julia Nunes on CNN, followed by my very first Videosong!
I'm a business man. I own a recording studio, am in business school, and am working on artistic endeavors with two projects designed to make money off of music that I was involved in creating.
I used to be a "slave to the record industry", wanting nothing more than to be signed to a label and "make it big"! But the more I learn about the music business the more jaded I get at the thought of someone else controlling my art and making money off of me, while I get the scraps.
Napster changed the way we consume music forever. I'm not getting into a discussion about piracy here, I'd be flattered if my songs were being shared on a P2P system. But I bring up Napster because it shows the power of the internet. Music consumers decided they no longer wanted to pay $20 for a CD of 12 songs, opting instead to bypass the music industry and just take the music! Again, I'm not getting into whether or not P2P is a good thing or bad thing, but no one can argue that Napster didn't help change things forever.
Now the consumer is in control, and it's all thanks to the internet! The consumer could turn to myspace (before it turned to myspam) to find new music that wasn't being approved by the corporate music industry structure. They could turn to youtube to watch Julia Nunes strumming her ukelele and sing her quirky songs, or watch Pomplamoose's infectious covers and originals. They can now network with other musicians across the country to book shows without the label telling them who they can or can't play with or what to wear on stage. They can now sell their music directly to their fans without pandering to the labels for a measly $0.15 for each record sold. They can, and have, become famous in their own right without playing a single show!
So now that the internet has broken the old industry model of corporate control and given the power back to the musician, it's hard for me to fathom giving my art to someone else to make money off of when I can just sell it directly to my fans and keep the fruits of my labors! The business man in me knows that I now have the power to get my music to a worldwide audience, and aside from not wanting to give up the control of my artistic choices, I also don't think it's a wise business decision for me to give up most of the revenues my art brings in just for the sake of being on Mtv and local radio!
The thing that artists need to understand is that they are not only artists, but they are a small business. According to economic theory, the goal of any business is to maximize profits. 15 years ago, the best thing for an artist to do would be to get signed to a label, as the label would provide the financial backing to produce an awesome album and promote the tour of the artist. This in tern would help the artist gain exposure. Basically, the label was a way of exposing your art to a massive audience. But the problem is that labels wanted to control what was being shown. This is understandable, they want to make money (they ARE a business first and foremost). But now that the internet has provided a way of providing mass exposure for an artist without the use of a record label, the record label is now a dinosaur that will be soon extinct.
With regards to a label providing funding for an album to be produced……..even though I own a recording studio and want everyone to pay me to record their music, I realize that a lot of people are now generating the skills of an audio engineer and are building cost effective home studios that are more than capable of producing top notch recordings. This puts the creative control and budgetary concerns back in the hands of the musician, because the musician no longer needs to seek out a huge loan from a label to hire a top notch producer to record a top notch album for them. If the album flops, the band members are in debt for the rest of their days! Why would anyone take that risk when much more sensible and cost effective solutions are available today?!
This is sort of a rant, and I realize that. It's not very organized, but I hope that the thoughts I portray in it are conveyed well enough for all to understand. The internet has given us the power back. We should take that power and use it to the best of our ability to build our careers on our own terms.
Thanks for reading.
In closing.....here's Julia Nunes on CNN, followed by my very first Videosong!
Monday, July 4, 2011
The 4th of July is finally upon us……
These are my unfiltered thoughts.
Well, today is a first for me. My first 4th of July in which I'll likely not see nor even speak to Sarah since July 4th, 1999!
I anticipated that today would be a tough day for me. That is why I was planning a road trip over the 4th of July so that I could make my first 4th after the "divorce" into a grand event and make a whole new batch of memories surrounding this date. But then I got laid off………and that road trip was history.
So instead, I was planning to have a huge BYOB bash at my house in Marion today. But the problem is, as I've posted many times here, that I live in FUCKING MARION! I have no friends in this town, and I'm 50 miles from the friends I do have. I only had two people interested in coming up, and 1 of them was under 18. Not that there's anything wrong with him, but inviting a minor to a BYOB party could open a huge can of legal worms if anything went wrong, and I don't really want to spend the 4th of July in Jail. So there's no party today.
Instead I'm sitting in my house, drinking beer, and mixing Enemy By Mourning's CD.
I got a call earlier that I didn't see come in. It was from Sarah. She left a voicemail wishing me a happy 4th of July, and said she hopes I get to see some fireworks. What she doesn't understand is that for a while, my plan was to either run from this day or pretend it didn't exist. I can do neither. It's like the Grinch on Christmas when he found out Christmas morning that Christmas still came, even though he tried to get rid of it. The 4th of July is here, and today would have been my official 12 year anniversary with Sarah had she not left me in February.
I'm trying not to get down about it. The fact is that most of the time I no longer am mourning the loss of the relationship, today included. I hope and believe that I'm over it, it'll have been 5 months tomorrow since she moved out! But then again, how long does it take to get over nearly 12 years of being happy and spending every day with one person, then losing that person? It's like I suffered a death in the family in some ways, and I mourned my mother's death for 10 years before I let it go! I don't think this will take that long, but who's to say that it should or should not take a certain amount of time? People try to put calendars on things like this, but there's no way to know how long it will take a person to get over something. Only time will tell.
If I mourn anything still from the relationship, it's me mourning the magnitude of the losses I've suffered. She left, I moved on, but it was a major loss to endure that flipped my entire life upside down and threw it around for a while. It's not been pretty at times.
I know that I mourn something, because I can feel it in the back of my throat. My throat is a little tight when I think of today being the 4th of July. I refuse to allow myself to reminisce because I don't know how I'll handle that. Needless to say, for some reason, I can feel that I'm on the razors edge today. I try to ignore it, but I know I'm there.
So now here I am. it's the 4th of July 2011. I'm trying to decide what to do with my day. I was going to avoid Red White And Boom anyway Friday night, but lucky for me I had a migraine anyway that kicked my ass for 16 hours. I've been ignoring fireworks or any mention of the 4th of July because I'm afraid of what it might bring up. Is the best course of action to ignore and bury? Doubtful. Likely the best course of action is to forage on into what I fear and try to get past it. But do I have the strength to do that today?! Would it be smarter to just let the 4th go past me and ignore it, knowing that it would be another year before I'd have to deal with it again and I'd likely be ok by then?!
I don't know what I'll do. But I know one thing. I never thought I'd be where I am now.
Happy 4th of July.
Well, today is a first for me. My first 4th of July in which I'll likely not see nor even speak to Sarah since July 4th, 1999!
I anticipated that today would be a tough day for me. That is why I was planning a road trip over the 4th of July so that I could make my first 4th after the "divorce" into a grand event and make a whole new batch of memories surrounding this date. But then I got laid off………and that road trip was history.
So instead, I was planning to have a huge BYOB bash at my house in Marion today. But the problem is, as I've posted many times here, that I live in FUCKING MARION! I have no friends in this town, and I'm 50 miles from the friends I do have. I only had two people interested in coming up, and 1 of them was under 18. Not that there's anything wrong with him, but inviting a minor to a BYOB party could open a huge can of legal worms if anything went wrong, and I don't really want to spend the 4th of July in Jail. So there's no party today.
Instead I'm sitting in my house, drinking beer, and mixing Enemy By Mourning's CD.
I got a call earlier that I didn't see come in. It was from Sarah. She left a voicemail wishing me a happy 4th of July, and said she hopes I get to see some fireworks. What she doesn't understand is that for a while, my plan was to either run from this day or pretend it didn't exist. I can do neither. It's like the Grinch on Christmas when he found out Christmas morning that Christmas still came, even though he tried to get rid of it. The 4th of July is here, and today would have been my official 12 year anniversary with Sarah had she not left me in February.
I'm trying not to get down about it. The fact is that most of the time I no longer am mourning the loss of the relationship, today included. I hope and believe that I'm over it, it'll have been 5 months tomorrow since she moved out! But then again, how long does it take to get over nearly 12 years of being happy and spending every day with one person, then losing that person? It's like I suffered a death in the family in some ways, and I mourned my mother's death for 10 years before I let it go! I don't think this will take that long, but who's to say that it should or should not take a certain amount of time? People try to put calendars on things like this, but there's no way to know how long it will take a person to get over something. Only time will tell.
If I mourn anything still from the relationship, it's me mourning the magnitude of the losses I've suffered. She left, I moved on, but it was a major loss to endure that flipped my entire life upside down and threw it around for a while. It's not been pretty at times.
I know that I mourn something, because I can feel it in the back of my throat. My throat is a little tight when I think of today being the 4th of July. I refuse to allow myself to reminisce because I don't know how I'll handle that. Needless to say, for some reason, I can feel that I'm on the razors edge today. I try to ignore it, but I know I'm there.
So now here I am. it's the 4th of July 2011. I'm trying to decide what to do with my day. I was going to avoid Red White And Boom anyway Friday night, but lucky for me I had a migraine anyway that kicked my ass for 16 hours. I've been ignoring fireworks or any mention of the 4th of July because I'm afraid of what it might bring up. Is the best course of action to ignore and bury? Doubtful. Likely the best course of action is to forage on into what I fear and try to get past it. But do I have the strength to do that today?! Would it be smarter to just let the 4th go past me and ignore it, knowing that it would be another year before I'd have to deal with it again and I'd likely be ok by then?!
I don't know what I'll do. But I know one thing. I never thought I'd be where I am now.
Happy 4th of July.
The Social Network…..
(This is NOT a movie review)
I saw The Social Network last night. Wow.
I hated the ending, just seemed to drop off cause they couldn't find a logical ending point, though I realize it was cause there was nothing else to really say. I guess I'm used to stories that end as opposed to just hanging there, so I get why they did it that way, but I digress.
I'm not writing a review of the movie. I'm writing because that will now be one of "those" movies for me. It ranks now with films like "The Pursuit Of Happiness"
In other words, it'll be one of those films that makes me wanna go out and do great things because it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time and not doing anything outstanding with my life.
I know that everyone's life is different, but under a different set of circumstances that could've been me. I didn't have those circumstances, I had the ones I've had. But the circumstances didn't make those people. What made those people was the drive to do it, and their own obsession. Zuckerbrug changed the way I'll do my business forever with Facebook. Sean Parker changed the music business with Napster, though some in my position would argue that as an audio engineer it was to our detriment (my own thoughts are not being reflected here).
So what the fuck am I doing? Sitting at home watching south park and playing on Facebook. I know what I want to be in life, and I'm trying to be that, but why haven't I implemented this on the scale that these other people have?
There are a few key differences between these people and me. 1, they had money. Sure, according to the film, Facebook was started with a $1000 investment. $1000 wouldn't do shit for a recording studio, so I'd need an investment of quite a bit more than that. Also, these people were able to tap into their existing social networks for their own benefit. I'm trying to go out and meet people, and to some extent it's paying off for my company, but not quite as quickly as it seemed to in the film for the founders of Facebook (I know, it's a 2 hour movie, and all that development likely took a lot longer).
But the film really ignited a fire in me. It made me wanna go out there and do everything in my pioneer to turn my situation around. I'm 30, I barely have an income, and I'm not doing so well in College. I'm building a recording studio from the ground up with almost no budget, and am trying to get where I need to be in life through my own means. Some would call it me trying to pull myself up by my own bootstraps…….but you have to have boots first to do that! LOL!
Not that I'm complaining about my progress. Sure I'd love to have more studio clients and better gear……who wouldn't? On a gear front, I know I can't compete with some of the other studios in town, but I do the best I can with what I have and I know what I'm doing. Slau said something on twitter a few days ago that sticks with me…“@SlauBeSharp: BE an audio engineer and DO what audio engineers do and you'll HAVE what audio engineers have—not the other way around." - I hear ya bro. I'm working on that. I've followed similar advice from Bob Baker for years, and know the value of that way of thinking. An audio engineer isn't a collection of gear, it's a person with a specific skill set. Sure, some of the other studios could beat me on the gear front, but I still know what I'm doing and have what I need to get the job done. That's the best I can do at this point, and I'm going to take it as far as I can.
But now I'm wondering what the best way for me to make my mark will be. I mean, how can I REALLY make an impact that will last? What can I do that will get me noticed quickly by the people who I hope to have as my clients?
Some would say that in todays realm of social media, and with my lack of any kind of budget for advertising, that I'm doing what I can to get myself noticed. I'm going to shows, handing out cards, and talking to people. It's so easy to be ignored on Facebook or twitter when you're asking for someone's business. It's harder to ignore them when you've listened to them for 20 minutes over a couple of beers at a show and made friends with them.
So maybe that's where the stepping stones to my advancement lie. Maybe right now I'm in the "paying my dues" phase and the rewards will come in time?! Who knows. But after watching films like "The Social Network" and "The Pursuit Of Happiness", I really get the desire to take myself as far as I can as quickly as I can. Let's see how motivated I get now…..
I saw The Social Network last night. Wow.
I hated the ending, just seemed to drop off cause they couldn't find a logical ending point, though I realize it was cause there was nothing else to really say. I guess I'm used to stories that end as opposed to just hanging there, so I get why they did it that way, but I digress.
I'm not writing a review of the movie. I'm writing because that will now be one of "those" movies for me. It ranks now with films like "The Pursuit Of Happiness"
In other words, it'll be one of those films that makes me wanna go out and do great things because it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time and not doing anything outstanding with my life.
I know that everyone's life is different, but under a different set of circumstances that could've been me. I didn't have those circumstances, I had the ones I've had. But the circumstances didn't make those people. What made those people was the drive to do it, and their own obsession. Zuckerbrug changed the way I'll do my business forever with Facebook. Sean Parker changed the music business with Napster, though some in my position would argue that as an audio engineer it was to our detriment (my own thoughts are not being reflected here).
So what the fuck am I doing? Sitting at home watching south park and playing on Facebook. I know what I want to be in life, and I'm trying to be that, but why haven't I implemented this on the scale that these other people have?
There are a few key differences between these people and me. 1, they had money. Sure, according to the film, Facebook was started with a $1000 investment. $1000 wouldn't do shit for a recording studio, so I'd need an investment of quite a bit more than that. Also, these people were able to tap into their existing social networks for their own benefit. I'm trying to go out and meet people, and to some extent it's paying off for my company, but not quite as quickly as it seemed to in the film for the founders of Facebook (I know, it's a 2 hour movie, and all that development likely took a lot longer).
But the film really ignited a fire in me. It made me wanna go out there and do everything in my pioneer to turn my situation around. I'm 30, I barely have an income, and I'm not doing so well in College. I'm building a recording studio from the ground up with almost no budget, and am trying to get where I need to be in life through my own means. Some would call it me trying to pull myself up by my own bootstraps…….but you have to have boots first to do that! LOL!
Not that I'm complaining about my progress. Sure I'd love to have more studio clients and better gear……who wouldn't? On a gear front, I know I can't compete with some of the other studios in town, but I do the best I can with what I have and I know what I'm doing. Slau said something on twitter a few days ago that sticks with me…“@SlauBeSharp: BE an audio engineer and DO what audio engineers do and you'll HAVE what audio engineers have—not the other way around." - I hear ya bro. I'm working on that. I've followed similar advice from Bob Baker for years, and know the value of that way of thinking. An audio engineer isn't a collection of gear, it's a person with a specific skill set. Sure, some of the other studios could beat me on the gear front, but I still know what I'm doing and have what I need to get the job done. That's the best I can do at this point, and I'm going to take it as far as I can.
But now I'm wondering what the best way for me to make my mark will be. I mean, how can I REALLY make an impact that will last? What can I do that will get me noticed quickly by the people who I hope to have as my clients?
Some would say that in todays realm of social media, and with my lack of any kind of budget for advertising, that I'm doing what I can to get myself noticed. I'm going to shows, handing out cards, and talking to people. It's so easy to be ignored on Facebook or twitter when you're asking for someone's business. It's harder to ignore them when you've listened to them for 20 minutes over a couple of beers at a show and made friends with them.
So maybe that's where the stepping stones to my advancement lie. Maybe right now I'm in the "paying my dues" phase and the rewards will come in time?! Who knows. But after watching films like "The Social Network" and "The Pursuit Of Happiness", I really get the desire to take myself as far as I can as quickly as I can. Let's see how motivated I get now…..
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