Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Support your struggling artists

We enjoy the freedom of working outside label/management structures, allowing us to follow whatever whims we like and put the results out directly to you, dear reader. However, we don't make money from it. Now, one of our most-visited net presences is at the Free Music Archive, where we have a page...

Keshco at the Free Music Archive

From there you can see that our recent EPs have been downloaded many thousands of times - Accountants By Day alone is approaching 45,000 downloads. It's great that so many people have shared in our music, which is shared under Creative Commons licensing.

On the top right hand corner of the page at the FMA, there's a box with a dollar ($) symbol, saying "Tip The Artist". We're looking for ways of making this free music idea work financially, and micropayments seem a good way to go. You can click on the tip box, and then via Paypal, donate anything you wish, as little as $0.01 if you feel like it, towards our past and future music-making. If we get enough little tips, we can put the money towards something useful, like monitor speakers or better mics, or just towards the rent. It also gives us that warm, fuzzy feeling that people appreciate what we've put out.

Have you heard of any alternative money-making schemes for musicians or other creatives?

All the best now x

PS: If you, like us, are skint, you may appreciate the wise words of Alvin Hall, in Your Money or Your Life: A Practical Guide to Getting - and Staying - on Top of Your Finances (Amazon UK affiliate link; Amazon US for those differently-docked - oh go on, every little helps). The early stuff is of more immediate use for scrapers in making tiny budgets stretch, the latter bits aimed towards those who have already put by a little cash and want to know how best to invest it.