Tag: money

  • I am an artist

    The text on the left is from a t-shirt that can be purchased here. I have seen it going round on the internet among my many creative friends. And rightfully so. I know many of them have a hard time making ends meet doing what they love and what they do best.

    But there is an alternate strategy to follow as a musician. One that I personally follow. And I’m not alone.

    In the Dutch news paper NRC.next of July 28th (the one with their Lowlands supplement) there was a front-page article titled “Rock Star looking for part time job“. You can read the whole paper including the article here in Dutch (page 4 and 5 of the regular edition). The simple truth is that very little musicians in The Netherlands can pay the bills with just rawking out. Only big stars with a broad appeal and their face on tv regularly can actually make a living with it. Professional, trained musicians will often have teaching jobs in music or do a lot of session work (for the aforementioned big stars and their labels). But many indie artists will have a job on the side or more usually, they have a day job that pays the bills and making music is something that makes them an extra buck. Even though they would rather be doing that alone. You can’t get rich making music, let alone earn a living.

    But there’s an immense freedom in accepting you will not make (much) money  from what you love doing. It means you can do whatever you want, without fear of ending up in the gutter. You don’t have to please others for their money. Plus I take pride in the fact that I have skills outside music that some one is willing to pay me for. It does mean however that your productive out will be lower than most artists and you will have to plan your spare time more carefully. Or simply work less so you can spend more time on what you love doing. I did that. And it was the best choice I ever made.

    I’m not saying this will work for any creative endeavour, but you can invest on growing into a skilled artist who makes the art he/she wants and still live comfortably. Your audience will be smaller, your means a bit more limited, but the possibilities endless. You’re creative, figure it out! But please, if you ever run into some one who does work as a professional artist and is dependent on the money, please pay them. Pay them well. Or do something equally awesome (and of the same value) for them in return.

  • “Buy me a drink” explained

    You may have noticed the “buy me a drink”  link that shows  below every post (also in all the places besides b-sting.com where it is crossposted, like Livejournal and Facebook). Two people now have asked me what that’s about. I’ll explain in case it leads to misunderstandings.

    B-sting.com is my music website where I not only talk about music, but also plan to release my own stuff some day soon. A lot of the music will probably be given away for free (partially at least, with an option to ‘support the artist’), so as a business model for my ‘internet venture’ that’s kinda sucky.

    “Buy me a drink” is basically nothing more than a donate button. The cap a street musician puts in front of him where you can toss in a coin if you like it. But “donating” sounds like I’m a starving artist, a charity in need of financial help. I don’t need money, I have a well-paid day-job and this is blogging/musician thing is what I do because I love doing it. Any artist with stars in his eyes dreams of one day ‘living off art alone’, but I’m realistic, so for now happy with just a complimentary drink. And who knows, maybe one day all the drinks combined make up for a bit of the expenses I make to do what I love doing.

    So I liked the idea of the “buy me a beer“-plugin for WordPress (except that I don’t like beer, but luckily you can customize the plugin). It’s like saying “hey, I like what you’re onto there, let me buy you drink, my friend!”. Just like in real life. For those familiar with Facebook, it’s sort of the ‘like’-button of my website.With the difference that you can buy a drink and you decide what you pay. Two cents, 2 euro’s, doesn’t matter, you can toss a Zimbabwean dollar in the hat if you like. You can even buy me a drink irl, if you want.

    Let it be clear no one needs to press that button and buy me drinks. It is completely optional. It’s not like when every one buys a round and you have to too. And even though I do admit I greatly appreciate the gesture if you do, I won’t like you any less if you don’t. To be quite honest, so far no one has bought me a drink at all. So no, I’m not raking in big dough. But that’s to be expected since there’s no music yet, only blog posts for one and a half months. And if you don’t want to give money, a “great post!”-reply or a “Like” on Facebook every now and then suffices too. Not that lack of replies has ever stopped me from blogging either though.

    P.S. Has any one ever spotted a street musician who plays Gimme Some Money? They totally should.

  • How to become famous without talent

    Meet Florence Foster Jenkins. The no-longer living proof that with enough money passion and persistence you can become famous despite having no talent at all. She really, REALLY wanted to become a classical singer, but her rich dad would not let her. However, when he father died and she inherited all her fathers money, she could kick off her singing career.  How little talent she had can be heard in this YouTube video. Despite all this, she went on to perform for audiences even in Carnegie Hall, deaf to the critics’ laughter.

    She may have been really awful, but she loved making music. You can’t blame her that. And in the end her lack of talent did bring her fame. Realistically though maybe she should have stuck with singing in the shower and spent her money otherwise. In that sense, not much has changed.