If you don't make any money from distributing your music or from merchandising, how exactly do you make a living? It sounds like you're not a professional musician. Professionals could make a living just from selling concert tickets, but they need to be popular enough to have a strong following and sell a LOT of tickets when they play a venue.
>I'm glad I don't make Pop music, and I'm working to make timeless music, the POP life is not for me.
The music I listen to isn't so popular these days, but these bands still generally need to make a living if they want to be full-time musicians, and they typically do it with concert tours and merchandise. (Streaming and CD sales seem to be mostly only good for advertising for them.)
Most musicians are only getting booked at large festivals which don't pay well, they're often the only ticket in town post-pandemic, as they pack volumes of artists together onto one big lineup. The smaller events rarely provide a good return on investment. Lenny Kravitz for example invests in NYC real estate these days, and has brand deals.
However, granted, these are older, long-established bands, and all the guys are in their 50s or 60s or older, and their audiences seem to be older/middle-aged people who grew up with these bands, and also some younger people who found an appreciation for classic rock and metal music.
Here in Japan, however, there's lots of local (newer) metal bands that play gigs by themselves profitably. The dynamics of the music business seem pretty different from what's going on in America.
Also lets be real... your website is a rare breed... imagine advertising web design... and not having a responsive website... your website looks like its from the early 2000s...
www.winternett.com (A good example of how not to build a website in 2024) do you need someone to go update your website so its responsive or are you getting around to that?
Also "Lenny Kravitz" is not a huge artist.. its not the late 90s early 2000s anymore.
I find it very ironic that someone like yourself has the audacity to talk about the current developer market and stating that there are too many under qualified and under educated developers... meanwhile.. your website... looks like that.
Then the next thing they put out could be bad and I won't want it.
I'm called an "Apple fan boy" because I claim the Apple things I buy are the best versions of those things. But if/when Apple releases something mediocre, I won't want it. E.g. Vision Pro.
As a musician myself, I don't want fans, I just want a vast audience to hear my music so that a percentage of people out of it connect with it and collect it. No merchandising involved beyond the music, and streaming it is free... Social media dictates that all musicians need fans to grow, and that is toxic towards good authentic music happening. Major labels manufacture artists, and assemble teams of people that take actors and turn them into musicians, then the marketing machine makes up entire stories, and even lies about these musicians that can't hold up when the budget runs out. If you recall Milli Vanilli, that's just one instance of manufactured artistry. Now with Ai, it's just Milli Vanilli without collateral damage and artists to pay, the good thing though is the whole charade only works for Pop music, and it may entertain fans for short periods of time, as seen with pretty much all the BackStreet Boys, No comebacks Alright!
I'm glad I don't make Pop music, and I'm working to make timeless music, the POP life is not for me.