[ScottWhigham]

This is fairly fascinating to me - I'm a musician as well and love this stuff. What would have happened if John Coltrane, for example, had done what Miles Davis did and focused on the business side more?

I wonder, though, if perhaps you are nit-picking on a pithy title? "Be valuable" doesn't have to mean "learn business at the expense of creating value in your music", does it?

[sgoranson]

I think he was pretty clear with "Making sure you're making money is just a way of making sure you're doing something of value to others."

Maybe it's like this: getting paid implies your work has value, but your work may value even if you are not getting paid?

[derefr]

Your work may have value, but you won't know for sure; you might just be heading down the wrong path and producing crap. Getting paid gives you an axis to measure your efforts upon, which gives you a direction to hill-climb.