Hard Times For Musicians

I haven't posted in a while so it's time that I did. Unfortunately I don't have much to say about left handed guitar playing or playing a right handed guitar upside down this go-around. The subject here is hard times, and for the musician, the possibility of losing your instrument to survive. It happens more often than you think, even to the best musicians.

One of the toughest ways to make money in this day and age is in music. You can be the best, make recordings, put them on the Net for download sales but people will find a way to download your music for free anyway. Most people who steal music are of the attitude that all musicians are rich and don't need the money. The fact is that of the hundreds of thousands of musicians who sell downloads on the Internet, only about 3000 make enough money to earn a living, and that's world wide. Not very many really rich musicians out there. Most of these hundreds of thousands have other jobs to support themselves. The best way for a musician to make money is to play live and sell merchandise, T-shirts etc. But not everyone plays live. A great number of musicians only record, and depend on download sales, which kills the argument of music stealer's that "I'll go to your concert or show if I like the music that I stole". That's a bogus argument.

That brings me to the subject. I've been playing the guitar left handed for about 30 years now. I've owned several guitars that I've sold or traded in for other guitars. My latest was a Martin DM. The financial crunch hit me pretty hard the last couple of years. My download sales have dropped to zero. You'll notice that I have ads on this blog. The revenue is small. I had to put a freeze on my regular web site so it's not available at this time. To top it off I had to pawn my Martin two weeks ago. Any one who has been in music for a while knows that there is no shame in pawning an instrument. It happens all the time. I've had a PayPal "Donate" button on the right sidebar of this page for the last couple of years that I've used for online left handed guitar lesson payments. I just added "Help me get my guitar out of pawn" to the button. So if you find the information contained in this blog beneficial and feel like giving up a buck or two, I would greatly appreciate it, but please don't feel obligated. I'll continue posting as much as possible.

You can also help out by finding the "Buy The CD Now" button on the right sidebar to purchase my CD "The Lighter Side Of Poverty" via CDBaby. You can download the whole album or purchase singles. You can also have the physical CD shipped to you. The album was recorded in 2006. My newest music can be sampled and purchased by clicking this link to Soundclick.

I'll get back to the subject of playing a right handed guitar left handed in the next post. Until then, best to all. Ben

Update: I got my guitar back. Will explain in the next post.