From: david@roth-music.com (David A. Roth)
Newsgroups: rec.music.funky,rec.music.makers,rec.music.synth,alt.rap,alt.rave
Subject: Re: Tha Bizness.
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 02:31:48 EST
Organization: DAVID A. ROTH MUSIC
Reply-To: david@roth-music.com (David A. Roth)
X-Mailer: uAccess - Macintosh Release: 1.5v4


In article <BzBo8H.Gvn@world.std.com> (rec.music.funky,rec.music.makers,rec.music.synth,alt.rap,alt.rave), LindaMc@world.std.com (Linda M McInnis) writes:
> 
> In article <1992Dec15.073306.10371@cs.ucla.edu> gds@cs.ucla.edu (Greg Skinner) writes:
> >
> I know I'll get hate mail on this reply but here goes....

Any hate mail you will get will be from people who didn't give their
all to make it and have sour grapes.  Chances are they are not making
it in any other field either but merely existing.
> 
> There are a LOT of good paying musical jobs but there are very few
> chances to make millions of dollars.  One of the problems I hear
> when I deal with musicians is that they all want a million
> selling album and zillions of dollars for doing it.

This is no different than words spoken by a group of software developers
who started a small company because they got excited reading about
Bill Gates-type stories.  Any income level of success is going to
be because someone is in it for the long haul and they love what they
are doing.  They would even do it for free just to do it.  This is
common among all people interviewed who are successful with respect
to judging success by income levels only.
> 
> There are lots of musicians who make a good satisfying living out
> of music but it is because they have an attainable set of expectations.  

Just like any other business approach.  It would be foolish to expect
the software program written in college as a first assignment to be the
next Lotus.
> 
> I think it's a question of choices and quite often I hear the same
> complaints from people who are in the software industry as the
> music industry: they want to get rich quick and are not willing
> to compromise along the way on anything or to decide what is
> really satisfying to them personally.  They just don't think about
> what it's like to be famous.  I guess the question to ask is
> what do you want from music and what are you willing to give
> to get it?  For that matter that applies to all of life.  
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

People will fight your statement because it goes against the myth
that you just have to be lucky and that's it.  People are only interesting
in hearing the success stories where they were "discovered".  It just
doesn't happen and any attemps to find the real truth behind such
stories from the media and non-jouralistic news shows will show a
person who was working just as hard as someone who went into busines
for themself and after 20 years they are suddenly become a so-called
a success.
> 
> If you set your life
> up in a way where you spend more than you earn (i.e. having
> children you can't afford, living somewhere you can't afford
> buying a car you can't afford, etc.) then you've set yourself
> up for failure and you have no one to blame but yourself-it's
> not the system or society, the problem is you and the choices
> you've made.

This is why you sometimes see people who's family income is $200k
a year but they are in debt because they spend $250k a year.  They
are not in pursuit of a worthy goal.
> 
> 
> Alright, I'm braced for the hate mail from tortured 
> artists...:-)

No hate mail from this artist.  I'm only tourtured by the constant
stupid stereotypes of the starving artist routine.  Instead, if someone
opened and closed a store every year because of bad management and
continued to loose money people would still call that guy a "business man".
Yet an artist making a living at it for years is still considered
living on the edge even though they don't have the debts that the
so-called "business man" does.

Don't let *anyone* even try to tell you that you can't do something unless they
have done it themself.  It's too easy to sit back and click mouses
at a work station passing false misinformed judgements on people who are
in pursuit of something you don't have the guts to even try!

David
david@roth-music.com