Something that’s clear is that horticulture hasn’t turned out to be part of the end goal I thought it was. I’m not done with music, even on the industry side.
My approach to music industry work has shifted considerably over the last year. I’m still trying to figure this out and have been working on it from a first principles perspective.
I found myself in a situation where I had no control over my trajectory and was letting my career be determined by “blind ambition” and opportunistic thinking. I had to figure out what I was trying to achieve and what my motives were.
Of course, my love of music starts with an artistic passion. I have a love for beauty and love in the world. Recently, my journey has extended beyond music into horticulture to see what I can learn and expand my passions.
This exploration into plants provided a necessary break from the intense focus on achieving a mission in music. It also became a secondary skill set, giving me more career resilience and another job I’m passionate about when the music industry isn’t providing work. I think this kind of resilience is something we’re going to need more of.
Soon after graduating with my music production degree in 2011, I discovered my “mission” in the industry. This has evolved through multiple mission statements. Currently, I can narrow it down to:
Helping artists be valued for their contribution to society.
This journey has been a whirlwind as I tried to define what needs to be done to make this a reality. Following first principles thinking, I realised that creating business propositions wasn’t solving the problem; it was just creating industry and economy around it.
I’d explored value from a business perspective for about 10 years. So, what about the societal aspect?
Coming from a working-class background, I’ve always had left-leaning political ideals. This has been part of my journey. Everyone, not just musicians, should be valued in society—not just for their contributions, but for their existence. Life should never be taken for granted.
Disdain for a system that doesn’t support this ideology (capitalism) led me to seek an existence as far away from its evils as possible—in gardens. Sadly, I’ve found that these roles in society are also, on average, undervalued, making it hard to earn a justified salary to live humbly but comfortably. I can’t focus on my bigger mission and service to society if I can’t even pay my bills. There’s a bigger issue at play where marketers and executives are the highest valued people in society, while all other trades, including musicians, are treated as lower class (until they achieve celebratory status).
Over the past 5 years, I’ve been vocal about the need for a new left-leaning political party to address these issues. It seems likely that Labour will follow through on some of their promises to address living costs and worker value to create more equity in our society. As I’m not a politician, I can now focus on my democratic duties, such as voting and signing petitions, until the next elections.
So, it’s time for me to figure out my next steps to make direct changes to the music industry. This article outlines my current plans and the thought process behind them.
I am a systems thinker. This means I naturally view problems as interconnected parts of a larger system, rather than through a linear problem → solution approach.
Solving music industry problems has never been as simple as “pay more per stream for streaming royalties”, “tracking metadata and rights is the problem”, or “we need to be fan or community focused” for me. I am always aware that all these moving parts are interconnected, and changes in one affect another. That said, it’s important to try to find the foundational issue that directly affects all of the others.
What I’ve found is that I need to develop a guiding philosophy to direct all my thoughts and actions in the music industry. I’ve been working on this for at least the past year while writing my book to help solidify that philosophy.
I have deduced a formula that I think I’ve followed over the past ~12 years to develop my philosophy:
- What is the problem?
- What is causing this problem?
- What are the systems surrounding this problem?
- What can I do?
- What is the fundamental part of the problem that can lead to solving it?
- How can I gradually shift my focus to working on the fundamental issue over the micro parts?
What is the problem?
Artists are not valued as contributors to society in the same way that marketers, social media managers, and account managers are.
Due to the central “necessity” of business organisations within our societies, we are seen as contributing value to society based on how well we perform in our jobs for these organisations.
Ultimately, no one is truly valued for the unique services they bring to society. Instead, their value is judged based on the business’s balance sheet and how their job directly affects revenue growth and cost reduction.
Entrepreneurship proposes some alleviation from organisation-related valuation, but it is still inevitably tied to the philosophies of business and ultimately ends up serving profiteering over people and the health of our wider environments.
For my book, I take a step further and start with the problem that it’s not just society that doesn’t value artists, but that artists often don’t fully value themselves. When they do, it tends to become a commercial value, which overlooks part of their artistic nature.
Before we can address the issue of artists not being commercially valued, artists need to understand their value to society.
What is causing the problem?
Society is built on a capitalist system that prioritises profit over people and the planet. Most decisions and influences around us have the ulterior motive of someone earning a profit.
Before art and artists can be truly valued in society, our underlying zeitgeist needs to shift from serving businesses focused on profit to serving people and the planet. This is essentially what left-wing politics are about.
What are the systems surrounding the problem?
This step is where basic principles discussed at a macro level become a mess of micro problems being spot-fixed at higher levels. We navigate the complexities of an existing music industry and economy built around the outdated way artists have been valued in society.
Such systems include:
- Blockchain and Web3 solutions
- Rights ownership, management and royalty recoupement
- Marketing, advertising and exposure
- Fans and communities
- Collaboration and A&R
- Music consumption access and formats
- Live experiences
- Online experiences
- Politics
- Fame and status
- Wealth
- Companies and job demand (economy)
- Bohemianism
- Culture
What can I do?
Understanding where our individual power lies and how we can maximise our lives to support that is a major concern for those of us who live for “service to others” (i.e., those who have a mission to genuinely help other people).
I spent nearly 20 years thinking I would either produce music for artists or run a music business to support them. Lately, it’s become clear that the latter doesn’t work for me. Even offering my own artist development services didn’t feel right because it seemed odd to ask people to pay me so I could tell them not to want to be paid for their work.
Because I believe there’s a fundamental issue in the music industry tied to the philosophy of capitalism, I stopped trying to help within the capitalist system. Instead, I started focusing on talking directly to artists about the problem and what we can do as a movement towards a better world that supports artists.
So, I’ve been writing about the problem as a book. It’s a great and exciting project, but it’s not paying me anything. How could I return to the music industry, which has been paying me, and ask to be paid for work I don’t believe in? It doesn’t benefit either of us for me to do that. But I need to live, and I need to use my skills, experience, and capabilities to feel fulfilled.
I think this is where many capitalists misunderstand the idea of Basic Income. People will still have an innate drive to fulfil their potential, and if this is based on the ethics of service over profit, it can only be beneficial.
But BI wasn’t an option for me at this point, so I looked for other things in my life that gave me joy and fulfilment and found gardening. I had been gardening for about three years at home and at my parents’ allotment. After many setbacks, I eventually found some accessible work in gardening. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this potentially saved my life, giving me the physical and mental health benefits I was losing while working from home and falling into a rut. It reminded me again (whenever I do explosive strength training, my body quickly changes shape and ability) what my body should be doing most of the time. But, as mentioned above, I can’t earn a true living wage in this industry, even considering career progressions.
Additionally, I’ve realised that I’ve been neglecting my mind. I’m not an elitist thinker and don’t believe in natural tendencies, but I do believe I’ve been nurtured to have strong leadership and thinking skills that are wasted if not used for a mission. Horticulture gives me a great environmental mission, but it’s only part of my passion. I can never truly give up music, which I’ve devoted 20 years to and still think about daily.
This has shown me that a radical approach to boycotting capitalism can’t really work, even on an individual level, if you’re trying to achieve something greater than day-to-day struggles. This is true even if you’re avoiding materialistic and consumerist traps.
It’s been a great reminder that my goal is to uplift everyone to enjoy the finer things in life, not to bring myself or others down to poverty where we can’t even afford to enjoy Epicurean pleasures with friends. I’ve tried adopting a most basic, modest lifestyle but have driven myself to poverty, which is ultimately what I’m trying to prevent everybody from having to fall into.
So now, after starting to piece together an idea of what my societal ideal is, I need a reforming approach towards a capitalist-free society.
This means I need to follow a new plan that includes some ambition to make enough money for a comfortable lifestyle. This will allow me to finish my book and further develop my ideas to help solve issues faced by artists and non-executive workers in society.
My 2024 plan
- Wind down my artist development services to make room for service and communication to patrons.
- Start a Patreon page and try to get ≥150 patrons supporting me for ≥£10 / month.
- Transition to working 2 days per week in horticulture as I can afford it by increasing other income sources.
- Start my RHS Horticulture course.
- Finish first draft of book.
- Start a gym membership when I’m working <3 days per week gardening.
Fallback: find a 3 day per week £30k pro-rata white collar job, preferably in the music industry and preferably for a B Corp organisation.
In this respect, I humbly ask that if you like my writing or believe in my mission and have some disposable income, you become an early patron of my work. I will be thinking of rewards, exclusive writing, and more to offer soon. For now, any support in helping me get closer to my goals to continue my work would be extremely appreciated!
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