The Starving Artist is an Entrepreneur

The delusional business plan of scaling music as a product

In the business world, we are constantly telling people to find a solution to a pain point and there you will have your supply and demand.

I have pondered on this a lot because my creativity and the flow of my production does not seem to fit into this economic model.

Of course, people are in pain, all the time. And music, stories, paintings, sculptures, etc. help relieve us temporarily of our pain. Art is a balm to the human experience. There will always be a supply and demand for art just to soothe people's "pain points" alone!!!

But, here is the tricky part. Most independent musicians and artists are starving because it's so hard to capture the economic potential of our products. Or, they are working another job to finance their hobby, pay the bills, and provide for their family. Or, they are married and the other spouse is making the majority of the money with typically a "regular" job, so therefore absorbing the risk of musical entrepreneurship. Making money as an artist is nebulous, mysterious, and does not follow a typical business plan because art is mystical by design.

And, here I am going to talk about independent musicians in particular.

Most independent musicians to this day make their money on merchandise, not their actual songs! Pretty nuts, right? At least sculptors and painters make money on their actual art and it's a physical, tangible final product!!!

Whereas, we all know music is intangible.

But, human beings love music and need music and it's not going anywhere. Yet, most human beings feel entitled to music, because it's essentially free most of the time and available to us for free (radio, background music in stores, free music at bars, free concerts in the park, busking, free trials with commercials on Spotify etc...) And, royalities for independent artists don't make shit.

Spotify pays artists between $0.003 - $0.005 per stream on average.

Oh, and it gets EVEN BETTER...

As of 2024, tracks on Spotify must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months to generate royalties on the platform, with song streams updated whenever a user listens for 30 seconds or longer.? From 2024 onwards, artists will also need to hit a minimum number of unique listeners to make their track eligible for royalty payments. This new rule has been introduced to try and prevent bots and other artificial streaming practices from taking place.

So, I hope these financial payments alone justify why I have yet to really put myself out there as a musician because I have been TERRIFIED of the financial repercussions of this extremely risky, dare I say it, DELUSIONAL path. And, I do not want to be a "volunteer musician." I will do this for free, or very little $$ up until a point like most entrepreneurs and small business owners do, but if this does not become profitable, I will at some point close up shop. I do not play music just for funsy. It is NOT my personality. Music is NOT MY HOBBY, it is my CALLING.

(Also performing live shows (gigs) are what is called a "gig economy," which is also difficult to predict financially...)

It just feels like living on a prayer, hoping one day you will get noticed and grow a following through social media and live shows, or get discovered, or go viral, or whatever.

It's the worst strategy ever!!!!

No other industry that I am aware of runs their business on pure luck, circumstance, hard work, and JUST WINGS IT.

And, it just baffles me. And, my heart wants a solution to this!

How can we monetize independent music in a way that the artists do not end up doing all of this for free, or even worse, financing their music from their own pockets for the world? How can we monetize independent music so the royalities actually produce a profit for the artist? Is this even possible?

How can we practically guarantee that if you want to be a musician, specifically an artist that performs and composes in a fame-like fashion (as opposed to a studio musician), you can make a full time living on it, just like an engineer is guaranteed to make a full time living with their career post-university? Again, is this even possible?

The solution may be blockchain technology and digital currency, but this is in its infancy at the moment and not really tangible yet either.

But here is the hard truth about being an artist: you are essentially an entrepreneur. And, most engineering jobs are not entrepreneurship, and if an engineer does venture into that territory, he/she has become an inventor!

So, no, music as a famous performer/composer cannot be guaranteed like engineering, law, medicine, teaching, or pharmaceuticals because it is entrepreneurial.

And the statistics of success in entrepreneurship are not good. OR at the minimum, a TON of trial and error is necessary for success!!! This isn't meant to be negative news, but it's meant to be a REALITY CHECK, so musicians can come up with plans to finance their dreams until their dreams become financed on their own, if that is even possible.

My aim is that if I THINK AND PREPARE like a businesswoman and CREATE AND PRODUCE like an artist, then I will be able to merge these seemlingly disparate opposites and scale a profitable business with my music and other creative projects. I am pretty determined to make this happen, but I am also a realistic person that can only take so much delusional hope. Because "hope is not a strategy."

But, a calling never stops, it never stops CALLING YOU. It comes from the resevoir of your soul and does not care if it makes sense or not to the human reality. It wants to be made KNOWN.

It is a unique path and I am here for it and I am glad you have joined me for the ride.

You can find my music on Soundcloud here (for now as I figure out the mainstream streaming platforms). And, you can listen to the pilot episode of my podcast called "The Priestess House Podcast: where cosmology meets our reality" on my Substack account here. In each podcast, I debut an original song as part of my unique perspective as an artist and accompany my song with a series of oracular transmissions. My podcast will also include scholarship of cosmology, human history/evolution, and mysticism.

Please consider joining me on these platforms as well!

About Kate: I hold two bachelors of arts degrees from The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in Linguistics and Italian Studies. I am a Renaissance Woman determined to blend artistry and consciousness with the business world. I have 13+ years of business and product development experience across an array of industries and I am currently composing and producing my first full-length album. My artistic platform is called Priestess House: where cosmology meets our reality.? I live in Kalamazoo, Michigan with my two sons, George and Peter.