Here's what performing live is actually like for indie musicians. You do some open mics where people are talking to their friends or facing the bar, turning to clap perfunctorily. The sound is crap and people can't understand the lyrics. Move on to showcases and shared gigs - the sound is still usually bad but you get more time. The audience is chiefly the other musicians and their friends. Occasionally you'll get a good gig with actual audience members - if you have your cd with you, selling 10-15 cds is a great night. If you have a band, you book some time at a venue where several other bands are playing, the "headliners" playing after midnight after a lot of the crowd goes home. The band might split ten to fifteen bucks between them. (Jazz players tend to make more at their gigging at $50/head.) Touring is finding other friends in other nearby towns to share a gig with - if you have been around for a while and have 2-3 cds to your name you might be able to get an announcement in the paper, and you can sell some cds but if you get a hotel, that plus the gas money means you're in the hole. If you're doing well, with a name and a track record, you can get paid a few hundred bucks or maybe break a grand for the occasional big events. Still not generally as much as you'd get if you were a cover band at a wedding. If you're younger and go on tours with your friends, sharing beds and floor space in Motel 6's and trying to get on to the college circuit, a successful tour is where you take a couple of weeks of vacation from your real job and break even.

I know it's common for people to believe that these days the secret is to use the recording as a marketing expense for touring ("where the real money is") but it is a myth. Yes, there exist groups that make good money touring, but even among groups with good music and good recordings, they are the exception more than the rule. The musicians that I know that are paying their way as a musician are invariably also doing things like pit musician work in theatrical productions, or teaching... or a bit of graphic design work for other musicians, while convincing themselves they're earning that money as a musician... - and they're generally not saving for retirement or paying for health insurance.

Also, I think there's this common belief that if musicians give their music away for free, they will get this massive visibility bonus that will translate into significant monetization. I think that's a myth, too. From a consumer's perspective, if a musician is giving away their music for free, it's not valued. And there are a lot of musicians trying to give their music away for free. In that approach, you have a hard enough time getting people to listen in the first place, let alone come to a determination of whether it's good or not.

Anyway, I don't have music career goals. (In my case, it'd be silly, since I have a successful programming freelance career.) What would be great, over time, is if my music habit paid for itself largely from recordings, maybe $10k a year and enough time to release a cd every year. Not in the cards for this release unless I sell out, reprint, and make good money on the digital side. Maybe a few cds from now things will snowball a bit.