Sonic Sustainability: Fuck the music industry, gimme something better.

At the beginning, your love of music was more than enough.

No force on Earth could stop you from playing and writing music. You must have played that one chord progression on loop for a collective month of your life. Everyone you met was enthralled to learn you could play. Your friends were easily impressed as you struggled through a cover of Neutral Milk Hotel’s King of Carrot Flowers. Dad said “At least you have a hobby” and Mom said “Please keep it down, we’re trying to watch that episode of The Office when Michael Scott leaves”.

Damn, how things have changed. Michael Scott is gone and you’ve since realized that food is expensive, rent is a step away from extortion, and that “check engine” light will stay lit until Christmas.

Now that you’ve graduated from high-school and that Neutral Milk Hotel cover is “played out” (even though you can finally make that transition from F to B-flat and back without cheating). At every holiday gathering your Uncle Max will ask you “When will you get a real job?” and you’re forced to retreat into the nearest coat closet for 40 odd minutes to listen to The Pixie’s Doolittle to remind yourself.

Your family never understood your music career — and hell, you might not either. It’s fucking crazy out there. You’ve read countless articles detailing the deplorable profit margins with mainstream music platforms but even engaged fans habitually enter $0.00 in your Bandcamp’s “Name Your Price” field.

If you’re certain of anything at this point it’s that you need a lot more than a love for music to make it in the music industry.

Today, it’s damn easy to start a music career. Just a few clicks and you can have any number of social media accounts, music platforms, and merch shops. The internet makes it easy—but it makes it easy for millions of other musicians too.

Even if you’ve worked your sonic magic and enraptured the attention of a label representative you’re still not in the clear. With some research, it’s quite clear that there are a large number of players in the music industry’s ecosystem divvying up your pay.

Don’t get me wrong, these actors do great work and I respect the hell out of producers that churn out awe-inspiring work on a regular basis (I’m looking at you Will Yipp)—it’s just incredibly valuable to know whose hands grace your revenue stream.

Now, no forthright soul will deny that being a successful musician takes a metric fuckton of work. Getting it all done yourself is a near Sisyphean feat. To keep yourself floating in the pond of relevance one needs to handle:

• Marketing, networking and connecting (your web presence, your blog, your “musical persona”, your web content updates, etc.)
• Finances (budgets, production costs, sustainability, income, etc.)
• Performing (logistics, rehearsals, bookings)
• Learning (reading about the music industry, charting your progress)

Obviously, not everybody chooses to do it on their own. I would go so far as to argue that most of the artists in your music library have had a little help and many of whom are getting by just fine.

Certainly not all streaming platforms are out to squeegee your royalties and certainly not all record labels are thieves. Though difficult, it is indeed possible to have a fiscally sustainable career in music.

Simply understand that an overwhelming majority of your income will not come from selling your music.

A noticeable majority of a musician’s income is coming from shows and this probably shouldn’t surprise any touring bands or musicians that have tracked their earnings. Most notably here is a criminally unfair distribution of profit made from music sales—like I mentioned earlier, a majority of your income will not come from selling your music. However, the real horror can be seen by looking at the whole forest and not just the trees.

On average, artists receive only ~31.2% of their total net revenue.

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking…

…and I totally agree with that thing you just thought. It is hella messed up.

As a both a musician and a designer, I’ve aimed my crosshairs at the music industry in an attempt to carve out a place for passionate musicians in need of funds with a single mission:

If millions of musicians are having difficulty turning a profit within the current music industry ecosystem, we need to identify new opportunities for revenue. We need something better.

My design solution actually came into view when I stumbled upon Max Bemis’ Song Shop. Busy balancing a music career as the frontman of Say Anything and a home life with a wife (Sherri Dupree Bemis, frontwoman of Eisley) and two adorable kids, Max has ends to meet.

The idea is relatively simple. Max is a talented songwriter. His fans would pay to have a personalized experience.

Connect the dots and you’ll have two happy parties mutually benefitting from an artistic transaction.

When asked what gave him the idea for song shop, Max said:

“As people frequently download records illegally now, I was thinking about how a musician can present something that’s totally original and ACTUALLY MEANINGFUL (not to say original music isn’t meaningful but the act of buying it has been diminished). I asked myself: as a music fan what is something I would actually want that can’t be pirated? What is something that would touch my heart in a truly direct way?”

My answer was “a song written by Dave Grohl”. I thought to myself “I would probably pay a thousand dollars to have my own Foo Fighters song about my life. Though I don’t consider myself as talented as either Grohl OR Conley, I realized a lot of kids probably would value a song written about them by me (which is crazy to think about, but uncannily it’s true). I started dabbling in doing a few songs until I realized I had a strange ability to do lots of songs, and then I teamed up with my friend Aaron and Factory 77 who helped me turn this into a real, functioning small business.”

Now, not everybody can crank out songs like Max can. I understand the creative process is not scalable and the energy to write hundreds of songs to turn a profit can violently daunting. This service would not have to cater exclusively to personalized songwriting .

There are endless kinds of offers a band or musician could make besides custom music: career advice, private tutoring, playlist curation, birthday phone calls, gear recommendations, poetic musings, multimedia collaborations—the list goes on. Maybe you’re fucking crazy enough to go barhopping with some lucky devotee (but that is entirely your prerogative).

Whatever you want to offer, the fans want to take.

Spellbound with this this idea, I crafted a prototype I call Sonally.

Sonally wouldn’t have to live alone. It could easily fit into platforms you already use. Spotify and Bandcamp are just a few.

Wherever you offer your music you could offer your talents.

At the end of the day, I would fucking love to live a world where a career in music is fiscally viable; a world where I could watch my ever-talented friends and bandmates quit their shitty part-time jobs and spend more time doing what they love.

I’m curious to see if this concept has captured the interest of the music community.

If it has, let me know in the comments below. If it’s total shit, please let me know. Want me to check out your band? Oh, I’d love to.

In any case, thanks for reading.