I recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to help raise money for my band to go on tour. For most independent musicians, asking people for money is one of the most difficult things we do. It’s far more difficult for me than hustling for gigs and organizing other musicians for rehearsals and then trying to pay those musicians something reasonable for the time and effort they’ve put into the music. Additionally, most of the people we reach out to aren’t particularly close to us — they’re often strangers who may have some peripheral interest in what we do — so it becomes that much more difficult to receive the support we’re asking for.

As a musician, when you reach out to potential supporters you’re usually only successful if two main factors about these people are true:

1. They need to want to give you support. This requires that they like you as a person and that your music resonates with them in a way that is special and unique. Put simply, your music needs to connect with them. And my point here is that “connecting” isn’t just about the music.
2. They need to have the means to support you. Even if they see the importance of helping you out, they need to have the expendable income that allows them to do so. The last couple years hasn’t been great financially for a lot of people in the world. If you’re struggling to pay your bills or feed your family or find a job, I’d guess that supporting music and the arts is low on the priority list.

Even if the two criteria above are met, then you’re still faced with the logistical problem of having each person actually know you’re asking for help. It’s really easy to get lost in the shuffle when you’re competing against so much noise that all of us experience in our inboxes and on Facebook, Twitter, or myriad of other social networks on a daily basis.

The Life of an Musician

Most musicians who make a go at a full-time profession in music go one or both of two routes: teaching and playing pickup gigs. Neither of these are usually very lucrative. We often rely on patron funding or commissions to make it possible to record albums, hire promoters, produce schwag (t-shirts, posters), and, of course, go on tour.

What about album sales and streaming? Surely those generate a decent amount of revenue. Right? The truth is, most musicians make very little from either albums sales or online streaming. When we sell an album — either a physical copy or a digital download — we’ll usually take in somewhere between $5 and $7. That’s not too bad, but remember to produce a physical CD cost a minimum of around $1 and that’s only taking into account the actual pressing of that CD. When you look at all of the other costs associated with pressing that one disc, the revenue from each one sold starts decreasing pretty quickly.

With streaming the situation is much worse. You would have to generate millions of streams to make any serious money. For most of us that’s certainly not going to happen. Elias Haslanger recently wrote a great post about this. My streaming numbers for Kinetic look very similar to his figures.

We Value Entertainment Less Than Art

Most full-time musicians find it difficult or even impossible to make a real living wage. There is no minimum amount that we have to get paid for a particular gig. The old idea of a strong musicians’ union is all but dead. Many musicians, even if they’re somewhat established, sometimes play for free. This can be for some benefit they’ve been asked to perform at or just to get their foot in the door. Most full-time musicians ofen don’t have the luxury to do as Mike Monteiro and Harlan Ellison suggest.

None of this will begin to change until our society puts more value on the arts. Everywhere you look you can see how little most people and politicians — I’m purposely separating them out — value the arts. For example, this year the National Endowment of the Arts budget, for the 2nd year in a row, will likely be cut by $20 million, representing the deepest cut to the NEA in 16 years.

Music programs in schools are suffering, too. When I was coming up through middle and high school, the opportunities in music we had were incredible, and I went to a public school in a fairly small town in California. Between visiting clinicians, band field trips, and special concerts with guest artists, there didn’t seem to be the same constraints as we see today. Those experiences have real, long-lasting results. They helped me see a clearer view of the path that led from being a student of music to being able to earn a some wage for it.

Shut Up and Play!

I realize that I’m doing a lot of complaining, but these are serious issues.  The more the arts decline in our culture the worse off we’ll all be. Period.

Think of your daily life. How much of it involves listening to music, watching a film, or reading a book? What if you didn’t have those things in your life? What if you still had plenty to choose from, but the quality drastically declined because artists weren’t able to fund new creative ventures? Ask yourself if the world that you want to live in is one where the value of what’s happening in Kim Kardashian’s life is greater than the value of fostering creativity and connecting with one another in a way that only the arts provides.