MOTUnation.com

Buenas Y'All,

Obviously, I'm of the School of Put it Out There.

However, I am very selective where I Post these offerings... and, the access will be temporary.

Like here, in this Forum, fellow Motu users, mostly artists etc., I somehow don't think one of you guys will connect this up to a Giant Internet Pipe and let the World smoke it... if you know what I mean.

I found getting my music out to Radio Stations, Reviewers, ect., was a real pain through most of the Online offerings.

It's hard enough to ask 'reluctant' purveyors to even look at new music, let alone jump through hoops to just get to it.

Fortunately, I write html and upload everything myself. So, if the impossible happens and the music catches fire...yeah right... I can have the access down in a flash.

After my Promoting and Sharing is done then, The Pay-Page will be under ZenWest.com then and all will be right with the monetary Gods and I to can become one of the elite and snub such Guerilla Marketing.

Besides, it's not like the World is out there searching for Me, and if a few thousand people get my music, so much the better.

I'd much rather get the music out there, get radio play and reviews, maybe get heard by the right people, at the right time, than have it buried somewhere in the safe but hidden hard drive of my Mac. Might have just as well kept it all in my head...

So, fellow MOTUers... Listen and Download as much as You want, share it with Your Friends and Family, Producers, Directors, and other Eclectic types and I'll do the same for You... if you want...

Pura Vida... Tranquilo...

I suspect that there are well-established and long-standing music publishers that lose money in one area because they know they'll make it in another eg. in the case of "contemporary classical" composers where published score & parts are involved.

If a particular composer is getting good airplay on a European radio station the return should be quite respectable, and that's going to more than compensate for taking a loss on the publication and distribution of the printed music.

Any composer can now put pdf on their own website for free download. I've done exactly this, renouncing for the moment trying to make anything from selling the actual sheet music. If the music gets known and played then a return is going to come through the performing rights organization; I'd rather get the scores into the musicians hands easily to get the music played. There's little to be made from selling an individual score, but here in France even an amateur group performing protected music will pay €65 to SACEM (the minimum tariff possible).

Perhaps this is all not quite the same as an album with higher production costs, but still a related principle.

I think there's nothing bad in offering your own albums to people as long as you are a young musician with no background and no links in the music business. You need to get the word out and that's the option, why not?

James Steele wrote:

PS- By "real" money I mean, living comfortably without having to worry if you can get enough to get by for the next few months.

Since I've been self-employed I don't think I've ever know that for certainty for the last 20 years or so.

That problem is not limited to the self-employed !!