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Current mood:  creative
Category: Music
Can you imagine what lies in our future? Here we are, how many of "us" are there? Let's just talk about music. How many musicians are there in the world? And how many of us are truly working together? Very few.
We were sold "The Battle of the Bands" mentality a LONG TIME AGO!!! Keep us fighting for fame and fortune, while the powers that be control the media, the distribution and the marketing, and subsequently ALL OF US!!!
Things have changed, we now have internet, we have more control, but there's one thing we still don't have... each other!!! We have NO COLLECTIVE POWER AS A BODY OF PEOPLE! We gave it away a long time ago, and God only knows what it'll take to bring us together. We are islands unto ourselves. Even in bands, every musician is alone. Why, because we know as soon as "the band breaks up", we are each ALONE again!!! We have no COLLECTIVE POWER! We have no group influence, and we have no ability to use our collective power to do anything, except possibly book a few shows together, and maybe share our friends and fans with one another, and share our vibes on MySpace, and finally iTunes is now available through Guitar Center for all the unsigned bands.
Oh, the more successful bands have learned all about touring together since the very early days, but still, even there, there is no collective group force of united musicians. There is a "musicians union". But they do not represent ALL of us!
Just imagine though for a minute if we were to come together, and organize ourselves in order to make a difference (for ourselves and for the rest of the world). There are nearly 250,000 metal bands alone on MySpace. That's close to a MILLION metal players if you put 4 in each band. That's metal, and metal isn't even that big! Try country or pop music! Look out!!! Please, let's try not to get judgmental about which specific art form we've chosen to express here...
Oh, we've managed to get by. We have our "other jobs", and our relationships we depend on for insurance purposes, etc. What would happen if a million musicians got together to negotiate health insurance for all of us? How about 50 million musicians?
Let's dream a little further now...
Let's put an end to "Pay to Play". How? I've read a few numbers in reports and some say there are over 85 million guitar players, just in the USA! There's quite a few other instruments, so lets just be conservative and say there are 250 million musicians in the world. Ok, so we put our minds together, and we each contribute $1.00. That's $250,000,000. We start buying clubs, one by one. And pretty soon, we own them all, paid for, never to pay to play, ever again - because now the clubs are OURS!!! Forever!!! Now what do we do with them? For starters, we have the opportunity to provide jobs for ourselves. We can work our way up doing various jobs in the clubs, and learn all the ropes, and KEEP all of the $$ we earn from people coming to the shows. We can garner sponsorship from major music manufacturers, in return for advertising their sponsorship!
Believe me, if we all kept kicking a buck or two here and there, we'd have all of the clubs paid for, with no mortgages to worry about in very short order! Once the clubs are paid off, whoever brings people to show gets to keep the $$ from the tickets that were sold, ALL of it!!! The club itself can find a way to pay the employees by selling food and drinks and merchandise. But, the club doesn't have to worry about paying the bills! Because the collective musicians effort has all of that covered.
Hmmm... then what?
The thing we have to remember is the future. Your band might not see immediate benefit, and this is how we have been sold our isolation. Oh, "if you just hold out for yourselves, maybe YOUR band will be successful", and thus, we have NO POWER COLLECTIVELY!!!
The future. The future is up to US! But only if WE get together and empower responsible leaders WHO REALLY CARE ABOUT THE FUTURE OF ALL MUSIC, AND ULTIMATELY OF EVERYONE ON EARTH. Oh yes, I am an idealist, and I believe in the future of this world becoming a BETTER PLACE!
We can just sit back and let things continue the way they are, or we can start opening our hearts and minds, and look for ways we can all come together. I want to see this happen in my lifetime. The time for battling is over. How about ROCKING FOR FREEDOM!!!
Let's just take a minute and look at the future of music in general. Has it all been done already - NOT EVEN CLOSE!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are literally BILLIONS of new ideas out there waiting to be sung, written, played, and performed. You might ask why everyone sounds so similar? Media control. Because we do not own the media outlets, we are subject to whatever they "allow" us to express.
My software, Souloh(TM), is soon to be released. This program will unleash a whole new Universe of ideas to explore for musicians of all types. New ideas are wonderful. Our ability to make them heard is a whole other matter. You may have noticed with my ads, I have a slight bias towards new music...
Plaay Neew Riiffs!!! is our Motto!
Mostly, I'd like to see us musicians start making a difference in the world. A great deal of us whine and moan and complain and scream about this and that, and how BAD everything is in the world.
LET'S MAKE IT BETTER, and start figuring out how we can JOIN FORCES and start making things BETTER!!! We can definitely start by writing songs about SOLVING THE PROBLEMS in the world, and getting people to sing about ANSWERS, rather than bitching and moaning all the time.
I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions. I am hoping with the release of Souloh to begin to amass some of the resources needed to make this dream a reality. I'd love to see us pulling together, and making things better for ourselves and for as many other people as we can possibly reach.
If you have survived this far, I sincerely thank you for reading and caring enough to make a difference. You are one of the rare people this world needs, and I thank you for hopefully wanting to make a difference.
Thanks again for reading, and I look forward to being your friend for a very long time.
Peace, Love and Music!
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