I host a weekly Songwriters’ Night at a nice little café in downtown Sebastopol, Holy Cow Coffee & Tea. Their website isn’t much to speak of, yet, but you meet interesting folks and get to hear pretty decent music most of the time. The owners are good people, and yes they make a great cup of coffee or tea. I just added a Google calendar with the current schedule of performers to this site. Just go to the “Holy Cow!” page above.
Live music in town
Dec 29
Your dream car
A few posts back, I made a passing mention of Maserati. This got me thinking, so I went to the Maserati site. It’s actually really cool, and well designed. So I’m looking around and there’s a “Car Configurator.” Yesssss!
I wanted something fast and airy, so I went with a Gran Turismo Convertible Sport. Four hundred forty-four horsepower with a top speed of one hundred seventy-seven miles per hour. At $142,800, that’s about $321 per horse. I click on “Configure.” At first, I go with the beautiful metallic red, “Rosso Trionfale,” that the configurator starts with. But, you know, I’m a family man, and red cars are just ego machines that get stopped more often than other colors, so I go with the blue, “Blu Nettuno.” Understated, but gorgeous. I mean, it can afford to be understated, it’s a Maserati for cryin’ out loud. I put a little more bling on the wheels with the 20″ Neptune Nero set which bumps up the price by $1050. The color-matched calipers add another $800. No problem. I add the high gloss trim in “Blu Lacque” for another $2500. For interior leather, the dark “Nero” is okay I suppose, but I really like coordinating this blue theme I’ve got going, so I get the “Blu Profundita” for an added ding of $1350. On to the steering wheel. I’m a sucker for wood, so I go for the rosewood with the leather accents for another $1600. I tweak the carpets for an extra C-note, blue with gray (“Grigio Medio”). Contrasting stitching and embossed trident logos adds $1075. Dual-color, excuse me, -colour , interior: $7900. Windstop (I said airy, but not too airy), $875. MC Aerodynamic package II, $2380. Front parking sensors, $860.
With my $20,490 worth of options, my car is now $163, 290, tax included.
Now, say you’re a person for whom a Maserati is not an impossible purchase. In fact, say it’s a pretty pedestrian kind of purchase. With a little altruistic sacrifice on your part, you can have your Maserati AND become a Fan, too! If, say, you drop off the dual-colour interior, go with the MC Aerodynamic package I instead of II, and ditch the car cover—’cause you’re really gonna garage this baby, aren’t you? And you know, a wood steering wheel is nice, but on cold days, you’re really going to prefer leather. So, ditch the $1600 wood in favor of a $425 tactilely pleasant blue-dyed dead cowskin. Okay, so far that’s $9,505 in savings. Almost there . . . .
Ah, got it. The interior trim. I can get rid of the $2500 “Blu Lacque” and use wood trim instead, which I prefer; and it doesn’t add anything to the price! Now, at $151,285 you have the car you want AND you’ve saved $12,005 in options! So, send me $10,000 and become a Fan. You’ll have the car, my life’s work on CDs for years to come, and and you can pocket the extra $2005! It’s a win-win.
According to a Forbes article dated appropriately on Halloween, Michael Jackson earned $170 million dollars last year. Elvis Presley earned $55 million.
The means that my goal with 900fans.com is to gross (not even net, mind you), for my life’s work, for the rest of my life, less than 6% of what Michael Jackson earned, dead, last year alone.
Rationale #1: Theft is easy.
Oct 11
I got a solicitation in my email this morning. Well, among the several solicitations I received this morning was one from Moozar.com. This is another interesting attempt to create some kind of business model for musicians to earn some money for their work.
It’s not for me, of course, but what got my attention was this line in their come-on:
“95% of digital music reproduction is unauthorized, with no retribution[sic] to artists.”
Bad grammar aside, you know what they mean. Moozar gets some props for trying to get a trickle of cash going to the vast amount of unpaid-for music out there. How they make money I do not pretend to understand.
This is one reason for the existence of 900fans. I assume that most of the music I’d put out online would be stolen multiple times for each single time it is purchased. Why bother? I’d rather send out custom CDs to individuals who are willing and able to pay in one transaction for my life’s work. Simple is best.
Some perspective
Aug 11
Am I being a greedy poser by asking for $10,000.00 per fan? Possibly. But consider a few facts. First of all, we’re talking gross. Let’s say I gain an average of 25 intelligent, perceptive, generous and gracious fans every year. That would be $250,000. Paypal takes 1.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. That’s $4747.50. Reasonable enough. We’re down to $245,242.50. Then there’s taxes. If my adjusted gross incomes comes in at around $200,000, I stand to get hit with a total of about 37.5% in taxes, 28% from the feds, and 9.5% from my long suffering state government. That’s $75,000, leaving me with a net of $170,242.50. At 25 fans per year, it will take 36 years for me to reach 900. That puts the net worth of the arrangement at $6,128,730.
With this money I want to do the following:
- Not have to work at anything but music. This amounts to having a job that I love, a real dream of many folks like me.
- Pay off my house.
- Put money aside for my kids’ college.
- Put money aside for retirement.
- Have health insurance for the family.
- Pay the musicians and other creative people who work on the albums and 900fans.com.
- Pay other expenses related to music equipment.
This does not mean going to gigs in a Maserati. Just the 12-year old minivan. I may still be a talentless poser, but greedy? I think I’m being fairly reasonable.
But a Maserati is a nice car. . . .
Steve White passed away, Friday, April 22, 2011 just before midnight. He was one of my oldest friends. It’s impossible to put such things into words.
But you should know about his music. He lived in Southern California, 57 Miles from Mexico. He played small gigs along the coast, where the media-saturated and distracted audiences didn’t pay enough attention to know what a gem they were missing. He could make a living, because he toured Europe twice a year to audiences who did know. But that’s a different soapbox. If you like acoustic blues/roots music, then you have albums and albums of great music to listen to.
Steve developed his own approach. He played a baritone guitar, double-dropped D, but sometimes tuned down to a low C or A. He used a percussive hand technique to keep the beat, and play the bass notes against the treble. On top of that, he was a killer blues harp player. With the harp in a rack, his unique right-hand groove and a slide on his pinky, you’d think you were hearing enough music. But that wasn’t all. He built an amplfied footboard and turned his feet into his traveling percussionist. When Steve got going, you just wouldn’t believe all that sound was coming out of one person. But the best part was how damn musical he was. When you listen to Steve, especially on the many cuts where he was playing by himself, you have to appreciate that he was recording live, one take, no overdubs.
His dad was in the foreign service; so Steve learned to play the blues in Thailand. Never wealthy, never compromising, he worked day jobs, honed his craft, and never quit, never quit, never quit. The result was solid, sometimes brilliant songwriting, masterful playing, and a legacy of original songs that anyone can play, but only Steve could own. For the last 10 years, after developing connections with blues fans in Europe, he was happily able to make a modest living. On one of his tours, a film crew followed him around and produced some great footage that you can checkout on YouTube.
Best of all, Steve was a generous soul. Unlike some musicians I could mention, his music is available and reasonably priced. Best best of all, shortly before he was diagnosed with the cancer that silenced him, he made what might arguably be his best album ever, Home Away From Home. Produced in Iceland with a quartet of great musicians, it will be released in the next month or so.
One of the remarkable things about Steve was that music was simply something he breathed. He was trained as an artist, and he became a good one. Some of his album covers are from his paintings, but Home Away From Home is a treasure because it comes with a lyric booklet thats full of his artwork.
If $10,000 is too rich for your blood, and you want actual music right now to put on your iPod, head over to iTunes or CD Baby, or Steve’s website. You like acoustic blues and roots music? I present, the great Steve White. You will thank me.
P.S. In the interest of minimizing frustration, I’d like to point out that iTunes is befuddled when it comes to finding this particular Steve White. There are two other Steve Whites, one a blues musician, another listed as “comedy.” I can’t vouch for them, they may be good finds as well. The Steve White I’m talking about here has three albums currently in iTunes:
Better Days,
Brand New World, and
57 Miles from Mexico.
More music is available through his website.
So I Had This Epiphany…
Jul 29
Like other independent musicians I know—good friends some of them—I could be spending my time selling. That is, trying to convince as many people as possible to spend 99¢ on one of my songs. To do this, I’d have to put hours of time and lots of upfront money to record, then tour (from which I’d earn next to nothing), give away lots of product to develop interest, keep up a Facebook page, a band website, keep it all going while hoping to generate a buzz, oh, and write songs with the care and attention and passion that I started with. . . .
But then, it hit me. Why try to get 1,000,000 people to each give me 99¢ when I’m just as likely to get, say, 900 people to to each give me $10,000? And so:
900fans.com.
Here’s the deal: I want 900 people to become fans of my songs. This will cost $10,000 a pop.
A fan will receive my CDs, at regular intervals, for the rest of my life. My personal goal is one CD a year. They will have a user id and password to access a fan-only section of the website.
When I reach 900 fans, I will put all the songs on the CDs in the public domain.
