Tales From The Music Hard Drive Graveyard
Dear Friend,
You may have noticed I slowed down blogging. That's because I'm not sure I've done the music biz right. I thought if I wrote an album, tried to build a fanbase online, and sell CD's I'd be able to break through all the noise and deliver Guitar Driven Power Pop that Baby Boomers would enjoy.
I was wrong. The truth I discovered is few people really care. Pushing new music out to a handful of boomers, while fun, doesn't seem to be relevant. Today, people want free music, and worse yet, don't want to pay for music at all. For the same reason, fine artists don't make a living until they die unless they go commercial, like Walt Disney.
Like I mentioned on my last blog, I need to get real. My best bet to get music out shouldn't rely on Facebook, or social platforms, or email lists. Instead it should rely on quality production, TV and movies. So that's where I'm headed. Sure, you might be able to find me gigging out around Pensacola Beach, something I've considered for a while. But to really represent something amazing one or two things must happen. 1: I must build a team of very good musicians to build a solid community. 2. I must do better production to cut down on costs.
What I mean is this: I can write music. But, I don't have time to post videos on YouTube every day trying to get 1 million followers so I can sell music. I have many other interests, which all keep me balanced. Those interests include my family, my friends, shock physics, thermodynamics, cellular materials, ballistics, and explosives engineering. Not to mention my regular job, investing in real estate, energy production, ConcertoXL, and other business interests. Plus, keeping my singing voice, guitar chops, drumming chops and production education take a great deal of time to stay up on.
And that leads to a very interesting question about my planned second album, "Hook, Line & Sinker". Should I really write it if no one really cares? Of course I should! But I realized to get it done, I've got to slow down and do one track at a time, delivered to you hopefully once a month on a regular basis. I just can't pull an Adele, and drop an entire album and keep all of these other skills up to par. So, you'll get singles.
I'll likely use my SoundCloud account to do that. This way, you can get free music you can stream, leave me comments without filling your inbox. I'll also take down old stuff so as not to keep irrelevant material on there.
This should also give me time to look into the Hard Drive Grave Yard. "What's that," you might ask? Well, for every song you hear, there are 9 more garbage songs you never hear. You remember Prince, right? He had a vault of stuff that no one heard. Same with the Beatles, Kiss, and so many other artists. What happens is we store these snippets forever and they they never get out of our hard drives. Hence, "Hard Drive Graveyard". I've come across a method which can help me get them out of the dump and into the creative space again. So, I'll explore this and post some tunes on SoundCloud. Go head and click the link to follow me.
Those ones that you "like" on SoundCloud, we'll keep and put on vinyl down the road. Just keep this in mind:
If there are 9 garbage songs, each taking 40 hours to make, for each 1 good song, break even costs get multiplied by 9. So each record has $4680 worth of garbage you never hear. And that means I have to sell 360 records at $20 to break even on labor costs. Then there's the cost of the vinyl record, which can easily go for $1,100 per 50 pressings. That means each record, just to break even, would be about $115 dollars!
This business model doesn't make sense unless I've got thousands of fans, which I don't. So, does it make sense to spend all of this money with so few fans? No.
That's why I'm not doing it without your support. As much as I hate to admit it, it doesn't make sense to spend so much money doing something only a few people in the world appreciate. And that's why I'm going to try to get financial support via TV and movie synchronization. The upshot is you won't get nearly as many blog postings from me asking for your money.
But, if you like my music, and choose to support me directly, you can have unique pieces of music, which are exclusive only to a handful of people. Those would be the vinyl pressings. Or you can get free content on SoundCloud. Or, if you want me to help produce your music you can drop me an email and discuss. My fee for music production should be around $40-50 bucks per hour. If I can help you make music here on Pensacola Beach, that would make one of my dreams come true. My production business should be called "Pensacola Beach Music Studio", or "Beach Ball Music, LLC" or something like that.
You see, I really do want to make a community of musicians that'll gather here once a year on our beach and cut tracks together. That would be so much fun. Sort of like Daryl's House. Then, we can have some awesome Gulf shrimp and grits!
Anyway, this is the update I've wanted to write for a while. Things are going to have to change to make music and keep the lights on. And that's a good thing.
Have a happy Thanksgiving, stay healthy, and Covid free.
And thanks for reading my blog.
Love and Rockets,
Russ
#RussMainesMusic #BeachRock www.RussMainesMusic.com