Patrons Wanted!
In early april, I explained why I now have free downloads: so that you may download my music, put it on your iPod or stereo, listen to it lots of times and then, hopefully, you will become a fan!
Naturally, the next question I asked myself is: how am I going to make money, if my music is free? (it’s always about the money, innit?) The long term answer is easy: concerts! Fans go to concerts and artists get paid to do them - problem solved! The catch, of course, is that you need a lot of fans buying tickets for a concert tour to be profitable. Your numbers just ain’t big enough for that yet. Plus you are everywhere! This would be a lot easier if you where all bunched together in a town near me, but no, you had to go and scatter yourselves from Los Angeles all the way to Melbourne! Ugh! So, if touring is out for the moment, then what?
The answer is what I have been working on for the past months: from now on, you will all have the opportunity to become a patron of my music. “What’s a patron?”, you might ask. Well, in the days of old, patrons were rich folk who paid for the upkeep of the likes of DaVinci and Beethoven, allowing them to focus entirely on their artistry. Nowadays, we have a thing called micropatronage, where a bunch of individuals, who don’t have to be rich (but don’t let that stop you), financially support an artist. One of the individuals could be you, the artist could be me.
Now, this is not meant to be a get-rich-quick scheme for me. Not at all. I don’t want or need to be rich, I just want to make enough money so that I can eventually quit my job and devote all of my time to making wonderful music. If you do decide to help me with that by becoming a patron, I feel it is very important that I also give something back to you. Therefore, I have created a patron only section with downloads that are only available to my patrons. There’s only a small selection now, but I will add more stuff as we go. Patrons will also have other benefits, which you can read all about here.
There you have it, my answer to the one question. I think this is going to be a great thing, for both me and for you. Who’s with me?
Convinced already? Signup here!
Danijel Gajan Jun 06, 2008
OMG! This is so brilliant! Some time ago I was discussing a similar issue with a friend of mine - we were wondering if the musicians should be selling their recorded music, or should they rely entirely on concert earnings. We weren’t even aware of a third solution! This is very inspiring indeed.