The music industry is whack.\u00c2\u00a0 We all know this, but as a person making DIY punk music it’s always hard to reason about making money from making music.\u00c2\u00a0 Working a crappy (and moreover, undignified) job to support making records is something that is respected or revered.\u00c2\u00a0 With many folks making music coming from college-educated backgrounds or middle-class economic situations with lots of community and family support, the reality is that people could easily transition from a life where they live at income levels below the poverty line and make music to a life where they work a dignified, or at least lucrative, job to support themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 Are you flaunting your privelege by artificially living in poverty or by succumbing to an economic vision that doesn’t allow musicians to support themselves without all the cruft, exploitation, hype and wasteful promotion of the traditional record industry?<\/p>\n
I don’t have the answers to this, but in his song Moment of Clarity<\/em>, Jay-Z seems to have made his decision, at least in his completely different set of experiences in life and with the music industry:<\/p>\n The music business hate me The music industry is whack.\u00c2\u00a0 We all know this, but as a person making DIY punk music it’s always hard to reason about making money from making music.\u00c2\u00a0 Working a crappy (and moreover, undignified) job to support making records is something that is respected or revered.\u00c2\u00a0 With many folks making music coming from college-educated backgrounds… Continue reading monetizing music<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[694,693,644,39],"class_list":["post-1597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-industry","tag-jayz","tag-money","tag-music","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-pL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1598,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions\/1598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n’cause the industry ain’t make me
\nHustlers and boosters embrace me
\nAnd the music I be making
\nI dumb down for my audience
\nAnd double my dollars
\nThey criticize me for it
\nYet they all yell “Holla”
\nIf skills sold
\nTruth be told
\nI’d probably be
\nLyrically
\nTalib Kweli
\nTruthfully
\nI wanna rhyme like Common Sense
\n(But I did five Mil)
\nI ain’t been rhyming like Common since
\nWhen your sense got that much in common
\nAnd you been hosteling since
\nYour inception
\nFuck perception
\nGo with what makes sense
\nSince
\nI know what I’m up against
\nWe as rappers must decide what’s most important
\nAnd I can’t help the poor if I’m one of them
\nSo I got rich and gave back
\nTo me that’s the win, win
\nThe next time you see the homie and his rims spin
\nJust know my mind is working just like them
\n(The rims that is)<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"