[winternett]

I have worked for over 20 years in IT development and consulting while loosely making my own original (self produced) music and (occasionally) performing live. I decided the past year (mid 2020 until now) after all of the pandemic issues and shutdowns to see how far my music would go and I incorporated my record label and released more music than I ever have before. My plan was always to be practical first before being adventurous. Many of my musician friends who were adventurous are stuck trying to recover financially and catch up skill-wise now that they have families and health care needs, so practicality simply has to be a part of any plan in my opinion unless you are born with a silver spoon (which i wasn't)

I found that may others had the same idea, and that I was instantly competing with many others that had a lot more resources than me, including major industry record labels. Conversely, I had more time to realize that a lot of the statistics were not realistic because of taking the time out to investigate with my knowledge of IT and development.

A lot, probably of the majority of musicians that look successful are in reality not. Most are discovered based upon their geographical location and connections they have (especially family connections and sheer luck or favoritism that I really can't be jealous of). Success (real honest success) is a very steep uphill battle for everyone in any career field.

Based on my experience though, I'll never stop creating music and doing things my way, but social media is of little help and lots of hype in terms of music discovery, so I stopped investing heavily in it, developed my own web site, and I spend time producing video content to accompany my music rather than posting monologues and skits. I love what I do, and no longer have dreams of it paying off, but regardless I'm very fortunate to have work that pays very well as a back up plan. No regrets on my end.