A little while ago I was complaining to someone about my lack of success (in a long list of other things that were\/are wrong with my life). In the course of this I mentioned offhandedly that I loved playing music, and she interrupted me:<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you<\/em> love it?\u201d I chewed on that one for a while and finally had to conclude that no, that is not success. But it is happiness, even if only in brief, occasional little bursts.<\/p>\n At this advanced age, I\u2019m unlikely to become an overnight (or any other kind of) sensation (although Robert Pollard was my age when Guided By Voices broke, so a guy can always dream).<\/p>\n But I have to ask, what is the absolute worst-case scenario? Probably something like: I have a minuscule audience and barely break even on my expenses. (I hope you will forgive me a moment of self-pity when I say that this is not drastically different from the actual scenario).<\/p>\n What then? It\u2019s not like I would stop writing songs, recording or performing. I don\u2019t think I would be able to even if I wanted to. (Whenever I do harbour the notion of abandoning it all, as in The Godfather III<\/em>, just when I think I\u2019m out, it pulls me back in).<\/p>\n It might seem self-evident, but the fact that my music doesn\u2019t make business types see dollar signs when they hear it, and that it doesn\u2019t fit into whatever the latest micro-trend might be, doesn\u2019t have anything to do with the music itself.<\/p>\n As my brother, a wiser man than me, said in this interview<\/a>, music is its own reward. It\u2019s so easy to lose sight of that in an atmosphere where a few (very few!) artists\u2019 genuine, hard-won success has filled the community with delusions of grandeur.<\/p>\n Truth is, there are only three kinds of people who can \u201cmake a living\u201d in the music biz: If you, like me, are none of these, then it\u2019s probably best to separate your artistic pursuits from business concerns.<\/p>\n I have a lot of respect and admiration for my more business-savvy friends. But the fact is that if I look at my own music career as a business, it is not a successful business. If I look at it as something that I do for its own sake, it actually seems worthwhile.<\/p>\n Earlier this year I was unexpectedly offered a job. It was kind of a no-brainer: being chronically broke is a lot less romantic in your late 30s than it is in your early 20s. I took the job, putting my dreams of rock glory on the back burner for the time being, going back to being a guy with a job who plays music for fun.<\/p>\n And strangely enough, I feel better about my music career already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A little while ago I was complaining to someone about my lack of success (in a long list of other things that were\/are wrong with my life). In the course of this I mentioned offhandedly that I loved playing music, and she interrupted me: \u201cDo you love it?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d I said. It seemed like a … Continue reading “Music, business (Part 3: The Reckoning)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,191,188],"tags":[24,23,20,18],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-rockonomics","category-thoughts","tag-nick-fraser","tag-oversharing","tag-rockonomics","tag-self-pity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cYes,\u201d I said. It seemed like a strange thing to ask.
\n\u201cWell, isn\u2019t that success?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n1. Trust fund kids
\n2. People who are comfortable with a quality of life one step above that of a homeless person
\n3. People who are really smart and serious about the business side of things.<\/p>\n