Turning Your Art into A Business

I have heard the saying that anything worth having is worth fight for. I have also heard the saying that success does not come easy. Here’s another one, what does not kill you makes you stronger. I could probably list ten more of these quotes that are meant to motivate and inspire. They remind us that perseverance comes only through commitment, belief, and action. No one hears quotes like these more than those who are on the up-n-coming. Those who dared to start a business, join a team, or become an artist. This is because they are more susceptible to discouragement, disillusionment, and fear. But I'm going to focus this blog strictly on artists and I’ll tell you why later. I want to talk about some of the struggles and obstacles artist face when attempting to turn their art into a business. In particular, I want to talk about the financial struggles, and how that will often cloud the ability to create and be creative.

First, let's take a little trip back in time. In the old days, if you were artist, your man goal was to get a wealthy king, an archbishop, a duke, or anyone with wealth and power to fall in love with you or your work. This affection would translate into patronage. Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another (per google). The support from their patrons allowed artists to focus their time and energy on their work. The famous composer Ludwig Van Beethoven depended on the support of patrons for part of his income. Beethoven would in-turn give his patrons private concerts and exclusive access to his unreleased pieces. While the system of patronage has become somewhat extinct, there are still some business practices that sort of mirror that early practice. For example company endorsements. Also, there are some websites that give artists an online platform to garner support from fans in the form of monthly subscriptions. Examples of this would be patreon.com, whom I suspect got their website name from the word Patron.

I'd like to interject some history on my self here and I'll tell you why later. I have always dreaded the title of artist. It either meant you had little or you had everything. The artist who had little were nobodies, and those who had everything were royalty. Because I haven’t achieved the level of fame and fortune that most of the artist that I looked up to growing up had, I was ashamed to take the title of artist. It would be like excepting that I am a nobody and I never believed that I was a nobody.

I became a musician when I was 15. But in all honesty, music had always been part of my life. I wrote my first rap when I was 13 and had been listening to rap and r&b since was 5 or 6. All in all, music had always been part of my life. I officially became a musician when I started playing the acoustic guitar. I was a self-taught musician. I spent a lot of time watching youtube tutorials and read as many books on the topic as I could get my hands on. I also joined my high school chorus to help hone my musical ear. I started playing professionally around the age of 18. First, it was in church, then I started to get invites to do gigs with various bands. Also, I would get the occasional invite to go to the studio and record guitar parts. I eventually landed a steady gig playing with a band called South Beat. I opened for Lenny Williams with those guys.

I got into medicine because my ex-fiancé suggested I become a medic as a backup plan. At first, I was against the idea, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. She had been a nurse for years and so she had a lot of experience in working in the medical field. I figured, she knows me, if she thinks being a medic would be a good fit for my life then I’ll give it shot. I excelled beyond my wildest dreams in the paramedic and EMT program. I graduated top of my paramedic class and was awarded most outstanding student in my EMT class. I've been working as a medic for about 8 years now. It has been, for the most part, my bread-n-butter in my adult working years.

I thought all that would change when I landed a publishing contract for my music with a company called Bertelsmann Music Group, BMG for short. I was filled with so much excitement, I could hardly contain my self. It was extremely hard balancing the two careers and quite honestly I was looking forward to finally being able to devote all my energy to my work as a musician.

Although I loved to help people, the main reason why I became a medic was to be able to support my self and my family financially. Getting a publishing contract, along with an advance, meant that my music would finally be able to provide that for me. Long story short the group that I was part of decided that they were going to keep my portion of the advance, despite me telling management and other members that think we should get separate accounting. They wanted the money to stay in a big pool that didn't belong to any one person individually but rather served the group collectively.

The problem with that is that I had no say on what was happening with money. Things like food, furniture for the house we were staying in, and paying for the utilities was completely out of my control. I couldn't even get a pair of jeans if I wanted. I had quit my job as a medic in Florida and moved to California once I signed the publishing contract. I was not being taken care of and I had no Plan B lined up. Being a professional writer/musician was it.

Things got weird and ugly. Finally, I had enough and I approached the groups acting manager and the leader privately and expressed to them that I felt we should all get individual allowances. The manager told me to get a job. I felt dejected and rejected and I caught a flight back home that same week.

The other members continued to except publishing advances for the group in my absence and never attempted to send me any money after I left. The only communication attempts by them would be random messages on Facebook and Instagram. It was always these short one worded messages that meant nothing. Things like “you good bro” or “bro call me”. About three years after I left the group they landed a song with Justin Beiber and received a $90,000 payout for one of the quarters that year. Prior to that the groups first major success was a song that I wrote and produced called “Slow Down”, which got picked up by an up-n-coming artist in Belgium by the name of Ian Thomas. That song made it to number 6 on the Billboards hot 100 pop chart in the UK. It stayed in the top 10 for 8 weeks.

When I left the group I returned to Florida and found a job as Paramedic Security officer for a company called Elite. They serviced mostly high-end properties with wealthy residents. While working I met a woman by the name of Elly Singer. One day she called for an officer to assist with something. The dispatcher sent me. When I showed up at the door, she started a casual conversation about her life and started telling me about her stepson “the famous writer”. She told me he did some work for Disney and worked on some famous Broadway plays like Chicago. He worked on the Hercules the animated movie (Going the Distance) and Mulan. After hearing this, I felt compelled to tell her about my self and shared with her my background in music. Elly decided that it would be a wonderful idea if I met her stepson David Zipple. She felt that he might have some good advice for me considering my current situation. I agreed to meet with David and she arranged for us to have a sit down during one of his holiday visits.

I went to their mansion in Palm Beach on a Sunday afternoon. At a small table in front of their back yard pool, facing the golf course, sat me, David, Elly, Joanne Zipple (Davids sister), and a nameless chubby fella who never spoke a word. I told them how I was a self-taught musician, who started off in church then started playing with local bands. I also told them that after a few years of doing club gigs I decided to take my writing seriously and started writing songs. We talked for about 45 mins or so. The conversation was light. I told David that I loved the Disney animated movie Hercules and in fact, it was one of my all-time favorites growing up. And, in that whole movie, no song stands out more in my memory than 'Going the distance', the song he wrote.

That's partly because the producers used the melody of that song as the main musical motif in the movie, sprinkling it here and there so it stuck in the mind.

When I asked what advice that he had for me as a writer, he told me that I should move back to California. To be honest, that's the last thing I wanted to hear. I had just come back from California and was just starting to get back on my feet again.

I explained to him how I had sent countless emails to my publishing company to see if they could separate the accounts. Meaning every writer gets paid an equal portion of the remaining advance payouts and whatever royalties their music made for that quarter. Payouts happen every 165 days or so. BMG refused to do such a thing, even after I explained how I was being strong-armed out of my advance. BMG said they would not restructure the accounts until they recouped their initial advance. They also told me that the situation was out of their hands and that I would have to take up the matter with the other members of the group if I wanted my money. I had been down that road before and it was a dead end. That was the precise reason why I left the group in the first place.

After our conversation, I stood by the pool away from everybody and had a cigarette. Staring at the golf course, I attempted to process it all. Not just that moment, but everything that led up to that moment and everything that would follow.

Okay, so how does all this tie in together? Well part of me feels that getting a publishing contract was the equivalent of getting a wealthy patron to support me as an artist. I thought I would be free to live a life engulfed in my art. Free to go where ever my heart desires for inspiration. Free to spend countless hours testing new sounds, and experimenting with different guitars. For the first time in my life, I thought money would no longer be a factor and all I would have to do is exist and create.