Is This Thing On? A Soapbox Announcement.

Hello, can you hear me down the back? Ong, tsu, check, ong, tsu.

Just a quick post to give a big shout out to youtuber, Mary Spender. Gotta love what she is doing for independent musicians! The education, training and advocacy, just as much as her music, is awesome!

Mary's album, Super Sexy Heartbreak

If you're not already, sign up to her newsletter/blog and likewise her toobz. Oh, and buy her album, Super Sexy Heartbreak, too.

WTF am I talkin' about? Being an independent musician. No booker, no bouncer, no A&R/record label tosspot. Dig?

Mary has independently picked up a baton I took up in 2004, after Apple had released Garageband and Rich "iFingers" Senior founded MacIDOL.com. All those Garageband music sites, like MacJams, MacIdol, Sir George Martin's Garageband.com and several others all showed that music could be truly independent! Mary pushes this message hard. She is out front, head and shoulders, on this issues. I used to call it "owning the whole widget." I wasn't very good at it, and had too many life responsibilities to spare the time to get better at it. Mary is running with it like the queen of Pamplona! And she is 100% right - her success at it is proof of it.

This is the 1970s punk DIY model, only the internet makes it easier and cheaper. Services like Distrokid puts you in the virtual stores and streamers, Shopify and others lets you sell music hardcopy and merch. You can perform live from your rehearsal space. You only need 1000 people, with a hundred bucks to spend in a year to make a living wage as a soloist. The only reason to "sign up with Satan" (take a record deal) is greed or stupidity. Or both.

Mary tells it better than me. Follow her, she's the new generation, I'm an aging genX and retired from music. Really, I'm beyond it now, a dicky ticker and adult onset type 1 diabetes leave me active enough to walk a few km and make bodged engineering stuff for my rehearsal space. I love playing live but I can't put the energy into a live show any more, to do so would probably, literally kill me. So I hand over to Mary, queen of owning your own show, with my favourite line from the film, White Men Can't Jump, "Listen to da woman!" She's wise, she's very wise and right on the money!"

But wait, I've got one more thing. This may not be here for much longer, depending on how bandcamp's new owners turn out. This my stuff, Secrets of The Hand's #ImminentFlood. Also, my toobz, too. Be a musical tradie, own your own business, you no longer need patrons, just loyal fans and inventive songwriting. Isn't that all we ever needed?

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