RPF-0042-Interview_with_Dan-O_from_DanoSongs
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00:00:30.000 | Radical Personal Finance, Episode 42.
00:00:33.000 | Can you make money on the internet as a musician?
00:00:53.000 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast for today, Thursday, August 14, 2014.
00:00:59.000 | This is Episode 42.
00:01:01.000 | Today's show is going to be all about making money on the internet with your music.
00:01:07.000 | Can we synthesize and bring together art, passion, and money?
00:01:12.000 | I hope you enjoy today's show because the answer is yes.
00:01:16.000 | [Music]
00:01:27.000 | I'm emphasizing the music this morning because I want you to enjoy it.
00:01:32.000 | Because today we're going to be speaking with the composer, the creator of my theme song.
00:01:37.000 | My theme song is actually called La Mezcla de Rojo.
00:01:40.000 | And that song is composed by a man named Dan O'Connor.
00:01:45.000 | And I found it when I was looking for music for the show at danosongs.com.
00:01:50.000 | When I was looking at the website, it just stood out to me as a really neat project by a musician
00:01:56.000 | to see all of his songs and see how he was making his money.
00:02:00.000 | And I thought about reaching out to him for an interview, and I'm glad I did.
00:02:03.000 | I enjoyed the interview.
00:02:04.000 | And today I'm going to bring you that interview so that you can also enjoy and learn from it.
00:02:08.000 | Today's show is actually pre-recorded.
00:02:10.000 | Today is Thursday.
00:02:11.000 | And it's been--well, it's actually Tuesday as I'm recording this, preparing to head out.
00:02:16.000 | I'm going to be on the road when this is released.
00:02:18.000 | I'm heading out to Texas, Dallas, Texas, for the Podcast Movement Conference.
00:02:21.000 | But I wanted to make sure that I didn't leave you without something to listen to.
00:02:25.000 | So today's interview is shorter than 30, 40 minutes, something like that.
00:02:29.000 | And it's an interview with Dan O'Connor, again, who's making his living from his website.
00:02:33.000 | And I think that you'll enjoy the show.
00:02:36.000 | He gives some behind-the-scenes information on the music business.
00:02:38.000 | And I just think this is one example of a really great strategy that we can use to integrate art and money.
00:02:44.000 | And I hope you enjoy it.
00:02:46.000 | I hope you learn something, and I hope you find it inspirational and educational and thought-provoking.
00:02:50.000 | So with that, here's the interview.
00:02:52.000 | So, Dan, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:02:56.000 | I appreciate your being here.
00:02:58.000 | My pleasure.
00:02:59.000 | Thank you, Josh.
00:03:00.000 | I wanted to give you--we haven't spoken before now, other than about the 45 seconds we just did before I hit record.
00:03:06.000 | But I wanted to give you just a quick intro on kind of how I found you and why I think it's really interesting.
00:03:12.000 | And share that with you and then also with the audience.
00:03:15.000 | I was--when I decided to kind of crank up my podcast a little bit and improve it a little bit, I needed some theme music.
00:03:22.000 | So I said, "I've just got to go online, I've got to find a song and find something."
00:03:26.000 | So I started looking around for songs, and that was how I found your website, which is danosongs.com.
00:03:31.000 | And when I started looking through, I was just so impressed by some of the songs, and I wound up picking your song "La Mezcla de Rojo,"
00:03:40.000 | which is the theme music of the song--excuse me, the theme music of the show, the Spanish-sounding tune that I use.
00:03:47.000 | And I was looking through, and I said, "This--what an interesting story. I would love to get this guy's story of a musician."
00:03:54.000 | And it looks like, just from your website, that you can create your music, you put it out there, everything's automated.
00:04:01.000 | I just downloaded the song, sent you the payment via PayPal, and then you get the money.
00:04:07.000 | So I'm interested today just in hearing a little bit about your story as a musician, because I think it's a good fit for what my show is all about,
00:04:15.000 | which is trying to figure out how to make a living with your talents and entrepreneurship and how to do things a little bit different.
00:04:22.000 | So I'd love--would you be willing just to share with me a little bit about your story and your background?
00:04:27.000 | Absolutely, yeah, and it fits right in with what you're talking about.
00:04:31.000 | I grew up as a musician. I went to music school.
00:04:36.000 | But I got a degree in, actually, music business, which kind of put me into the business world.
00:04:43.000 | One of my first jobs out of school, I was involved with building websites, actually, for music companies, record labels, publishers, things like that.
00:04:54.000 | So I actually have quite a long background in technology, and I tried to take all the traditional routes with music,
00:05:01.000 | trying to find a record label and all that kind of stuff.
00:05:05.000 | And finally, eventually, I kind of said, "Well, you know, let me just kind of see what I can do on my own," you know?
00:05:14.000 | So I put up initially just an old album that I'd done that I was trying to just sell at shows and things like that, and it was only about 10 songs.
00:05:26.000 | But I knew from my technology background that I needed to do a bit of keyword research to see how the site might be found on Google.
00:05:35.000 | And I discovered this royalty-free music area that a lot of people search on, like yourself, right?
00:05:43.000 | Right, exactly.
00:05:44.000 | Yeah, and so I didn't know a thing about it, except that it was a keyword that popped up in my search.
00:05:52.000 | And I thought, "I've heard about this," and what I really, really wanted is I just wanted people to listen to my music at the end of the day.
00:06:03.000 | And I thought, "You know what? I'm going to just make this incredibly easy to download and use."
00:06:10.000 | And I discovered this thing called the Creative Commons license, which is kind of a relatively new idea in music,
00:06:19.000 | which is, at first I let people use the music for free if they credited me.
00:06:26.000 | I did that for many years until recently, and that's really what got my site to be very, very well known.
00:06:33.000 | I'll go into later why I changed, which is an interesting story.
00:06:37.000 | Anyway, so I kind of went from this idea of, "What can I do with my music and technology and combine the two and create a resource," which I knew is very important on the internet, right?
00:06:51.000 | If you're building any kind of website, you want to create something that's a resource and that's reusable, right?
00:06:57.000 | Whether it's your blog is an amazing resource for people. It's useful, right?
00:07:02.000 | And that was the difference, was that I wanted to make something useful and not just really for listening.
00:07:09.000 | And it turned out to work really, really well.
00:07:12.000 | And I also knew that you wanted to have, of course, multiple sources of income, which I'm sure you must talk about in personal finance.
00:07:20.000 | Absolutely.
00:07:21.000 | Right on. So I have three sources of income.
00:07:23.000 | One is the AdSense that you see on the site. It's about a third each, actually.
00:07:28.000 | Two is the individual donations per song basis, which is done through PayPal, which I did with you.
00:07:36.000 | And then the third one is you can buy a whole package of all the songs for $50, which I do through ClickBank, which uses the affiliate network of ClickBank that basically opens me up to thousands of channels of affiliate marketers.
00:07:53.000 | And so I have those three main sources of income for the website.
00:07:58.000 | And it's worked out really, really well. It's grown a lot.
00:08:02.000 | Of course, I still do my – I'm still involved in business, but the website is a nice – perfect for your show.
00:08:11.000 | It's an investment and it does just sit there. It's like a CD or it's like a certificate of deposit rather, or a stock or what have you.
00:08:21.000 | And you read online about how one of the best passive income investments you can make is in a website that is content-oriented and authoritative.
00:08:34.000 | And, man, it really, really works.
00:08:38.000 | That's awesome.
00:08:39.000 | Yeah.
00:08:40.000 | So is this your full-time thing? You said you're still working in the business world?
00:08:44.000 | Yeah. No, I still work in the business world, but I do this as it's kind of like on the level of sort of an investment, a passive income project is really what that site is for me.
00:08:57.000 | It's turned out to be significant, enough to pay my mortgage, which to me is a big deal.
00:09:03.000 | It's awesome.
00:09:04.000 | And it's only gotten bigger over the years.
00:09:06.000 | And it's something that I do on my own time. I get asked a lot for, "Oh, can you compose for this? Can you do custom music for that?"
00:09:17.000 | And for me personally, it's not really worth it when I can just on my own time with no deadlines whatsoever, with no boss, nothing at all.
00:09:28.000 | I just can create my own music when I want and put it up when I want.
00:09:33.000 | And I like to keep it that way.
00:09:36.000 | That's awesome.
00:09:37.000 | I was buying a camera recently and I stumbled into another artist that I had never found, but I just was blown away when I found his website.
00:09:46.000 | A guy named Trey Radcliffe who hosts a travel photography website called StuckInCustoms.com.
00:09:53.000 | And I was reading his camera reviews because I was interested in getting a mirrorless digital camera.
00:09:58.000 | And I started looking at his story and it's funny, he says almost the same thing.
00:10:03.000 | He had started just creating his art, doing his photography.
00:10:07.000 | And someone asked him, I saw an interview as far as what does he do.
00:10:10.000 | And he says, "Well, one of the things, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, but I refuse to take any commissions."
00:10:15.000 | He says, "I go where I want to go. I take the pictures that I want to take and I put them online and people buy them."
00:10:21.000 | And he says, "I never take clients. I never take a paying client." He says, "Trey, will you come to Paris and photograph this event?"
00:10:28.000 | He says, "I'm not saying necessarily that you shouldn't do that. I mean, if someone's going to pay you $10,000, I think you probably should do that."
00:10:34.000 | But he says, "I don't. I just want to sit and create my art."
00:10:37.000 | And he's built this huge business off of just simply doing that.
00:10:41.000 | And I think it's so inspirational to hear that it can be done and that it allows you.
00:10:46.000 | It seems like you have that ultimate sense of creative expression to be able to do that and put it out there.
00:10:53.000 | And then through the miracle of connectivity, allow the people that want to find it to find it.
00:10:58.000 | It really works. And so this guy, Trey, he does what? So then he does stock photography?
00:11:03.000 | Right. So he does similar to yours. His website is Stuck in Customs.
00:11:08.000 | He posts a new travel photo every day and you can look at them for free.
00:11:12.000 | You can download them if you want to use them. You've got to get in touch with them.
00:11:15.000 | I don't know which version of the Creative Commons license. I think it's probably a Creative Commons license.
00:11:20.000 | And he sells lots and lots of pictures. So for the commercial users that want to use it, he sells lots of pictures.
00:11:27.000 | Everything's fully available. If you want to grab his picture and toss it on your desktop, he's got it there in high res.
00:11:33.000 | You can take his beautiful picture and put it there. But there are plenty of people who buy it and that supports him.
00:11:39.000 | And then he has other lines of income as well. He has some courses that he sells about how to make pictures.
00:11:45.000 | He's got just various projects. But it's exactly very similar to what you're doing.
00:11:50.000 | But his, I mean, it seems like he's got kind of an empire. I think if I heard the interview correctly,
00:11:56.000 | he has like 10 some full and part-time staff all over the world that are working with him.
00:12:01.000 | Some doing licensing, some doing not. But he's got this empire of him just going out and taking pictures,
00:12:06.000 | traveling and putting them online. It's amazing.
00:12:09.000 | Awesome. And yeah, I'm looking at it. His pictures are incredible.
00:12:12.000 | They're beautiful.
00:12:13.000 | He does the HDR, the photography, the high dynamic range, I think, where it's just very evocative and very emotional
00:12:22.000 | with a lot of the after effects. And I love that style of photography. I think it's so beautiful to see.
00:12:27.000 | And what's amazing is, and I think the thing to get across to your listeners who might be thinking about
00:12:34.000 | maybe starting something up online, is you can start so small. Like everything they say is true.
00:12:41.000 | You can start so small and you can take it as far as you possibly want.
00:12:46.000 | In fact, I've had to kind of scale back a little because I don't have the time to handle the customer service.
00:12:53.000 | Wow. Yeah.
00:12:54.000 | Personally, and I have other lines of income going on. So it was just a personal choice.
00:13:02.000 | But you can take it as far as you want. The key is start small, start with an investment you can handle.
00:13:10.000 | I literally started with one page and 10 songs. And over five years, at one point I had a full on community.
00:13:21.000 | I have a blog with a few hundred posts and I have over 100 songs now.
00:13:27.000 | Just doing them one month at a time. It's a great thing.
00:13:34.000 | The real key though, and people talk about it again all the time, and it seems cliche but it's true,
00:13:42.000 | is you have to be passionate because you have to put the work up front.
00:13:48.000 | It has to be something you want to do without knowing that you're going to get a surefire paycheck.
00:13:55.000 | And it's something you're going to be doing anyway. Clearly he's doing it with his photography.
00:14:01.000 | This guy Trey is a great example.
00:14:03.000 | And the risk is so small. If it doesn't work, and this is kind of my thought about a business like yours,
00:14:11.000 | the first 10 songs that you listed, you had already created them. It was already done.
00:14:17.000 | And if it didn't work, what are you at? You're at the time and whatever it costs you,
00:14:21.000 | whether in time or skill acquisition or in paying for your hosting fee and to get your website up.
00:14:27.000 | And that's the worst that it costs you. So there's no risk of starting it.
00:14:33.000 | And then once you have something started, you can learn, you can develop, you can adjust as time goes on.
00:14:39.000 | One of the things that attracted me to your site, once I found it,
00:14:44.000 | I didn't exactly know what I was looking for when I was looking for a theme song.
00:14:48.000 | I was like, I need a song. I don't have the time to go and get something fancy done.
00:14:53.000 | I just need some kind of song that works for me.
00:14:56.000 | And so on your site, you have all these different songs from all these different genres.
00:15:01.000 | You composed and created all of the songs in the different styles yourself?
00:15:06.000 | I did actually. Yeah. And that's the amazing thing about software nowadays,
00:15:11.000 | is you can buy software packages that basically enable you to do this stuff out of the box.
00:15:19.000 | I'm fundamentally, like it says, if you go to my site, I'm really an acoustic rock singer songwriter.
00:15:27.000 | And I've kind of just tried out different software over the years and tested out with different styles and experimented.
00:15:34.000 | And that's why each one's a little different, because I never really feel like doing the same style twice.
00:15:40.000 | I'm like, I did that style. Now let me try what's dubstep like. I don't even know what that is.
00:15:47.000 | I'll see something in the software I'm using that says dubstep style. Try this.
00:15:53.000 | And then you mix and you match and you do a little composing. And it's really cool.
00:16:00.000 | And it just seemed it was a perfect resource for me, because I could just on one spot,
00:16:05.000 | I could say, ah, here's all these different styles. And then I could listen to all of them.
00:16:09.000 | And I could say, you know what, I'm not so into the country and I'm not so into the guitar.
00:16:14.000 | I don't really want the instrumental. Ah, this works for me. I'm in South Florida. I like Spanish music.
00:16:21.000 | This one's really good. It's upbeat. I like the feel of it. And it just felt really cool.
00:16:26.000 | And then just with the even the way that you had to set up, and I know you've changed it since then,
00:16:30.000 | but I could download the whole song. I could play it. I could kind of play around with it, see, does this work?
00:16:35.000 | And then when I was ready for it, send you your money and use it. And it was a hassle-free situation for me.
00:16:42.000 | Right.
00:16:43.000 | What have you changed over the years? You mentioned that you changed the style of license.
00:16:49.000 | What are some of the lessons that you've learned in the years that you've been doing this?
00:16:52.000 | Big lesson learned was, you know, if you open yourself up to the complete freedom of the Internet,
00:17:01.000 | it can be a great thing. And my site became extremely popular. And it's always been very easy to use.
00:17:07.000 | And it still is. But, you know, there are people who abuse the Internet.
00:17:13.000 | And what actually happened was I had someone at one point literally download every one of my songs,
00:17:21.000 | create albums from them and release them and start charging for them.
00:17:26.000 | Wow.
00:17:27.000 | And, you know, I had to go through this whole process to get them removed from iTunes and all of these things.
00:17:36.000 | And they were starting to make royalty claims. It was crazy.
00:17:41.000 | Wow.
00:17:42.000 | Yeah. And so that's why I, you know, my music is still one of the most inexpensive around.
00:17:49.000 | And you can listen to everything right there. And, you know, the site's actually still doing very well.
00:17:58.000 | But it's a slightly different model only because I don't just allow people to just freely download the music because,
00:18:06.000 | and that's just one case out of about 20 things that have happened like that over the years.
00:18:14.000 | So, you know, you've got to be careful with your intellectual property.
00:18:19.000 | I think you want to be free and you want to be open.
00:18:22.000 | So now I've learned this and I've learned the licensing business incredibly well.
00:18:27.000 | And so I'm working on a complete album that now I know all the players in the licensing industry.
00:18:35.000 | And what's happened is all these companies like Rumblefish is one, Audio Revshare,
00:18:45.000 | they've scooped up literally hundreds of millions of songs and they claim royalties on YouTube, on all the video channels.
00:18:57.000 | Your podcast would never get touched because it's an individual podcast.
00:19:01.000 | So anywhere that music is scannable in a system, now everything's in this huge system with these huge companies.
00:19:09.000 | So now I'm starting to get into the other side of that.
00:19:14.000 | I'm going to do an album and I'm going to release it that way and go the more traditional route.
00:19:21.000 | But I'm going to leave Dano Songs as it is with all these songs here that have been licensed.
00:19:26.000 | And I still will continue to allow them to be licensed.
00:19:30.000 | But you live and you learn and you understand why there's certain things.
00:19:35.000 | I'm on the cutting edge. Of course the big record labels don't allow anything to be downloaded.
00:19:41.000 | There's no freedom. They prosecute people. You know what I mean?
00:19:45.000 | And then I was on the exact opposite spectrum but I learned my lesson there.
00:19:49.000 | So it's like an experiment. You have to learn and adjust.
00:19:52.000 | So would you say, if you were starting over today, could you gain the exposure by going in that more traditional route?
00:20:03.000 | Or do you now have the luxury, since your site and your product has become somewhat popular,
00:20:09.000 | do you now have the luxury to pull in the control a little bit more?
00:20:13.000 | I think that I'll be able to use some existing subscribers and existing traffic to my site and some of the social media I have to push a more traditional album.
00:20:27.000 | But really the luxury comes from the experience of learning the system in and out.
00:20:34.000 | And understanding how to release and how to launch products and how to market.
00:20:40.000 | For instance, I know now I probably will allow my next album free use but non-commercial free use.
00:20:48.000 | And that'll be the big difference. You know what I mean?
00:20:51.000 | And also I'll probably require a login and maybe an approval. You know what I mean? On a project.
00:20:59.000 | But even now, if someone emails me and says, "I just got an email today.
00:21:05.000 | Hey, can I get a couple of your tracks just to show my boss to get approval before I pay?"
00:21:11.000 | No problem. No problem. That's fine.
00:21:14.000 | It's just you've got to be... if you're just one person and you don't have a staff,
00:21:20.000 | and in the case of maybe some of your listeners who are trying to just get started,
00:21:26.000 | you've just got to take into consideration what you can handle as a person.
00:21:34.000 | And if you're willing to outsource and how far to take that.
00:21:37.000 | And I've learned about outsourcing, using sites like Elance, using sites like Fiverr.
00:21:44.000 | That's all been a big lesson here as well for me.
00:21:48.000 | The reason I say it is because I'm new to online content creation.
00:21:55.000 | So my podcast is relatively new.
00:21:59.000 | And it seems to me that in the online world, what works the best is to create and give as much as you possibly can.
00:22:08.000 | And then once you create and give everything that you can,
00:22:12.000 | you create a sense of loyalty and a sense of appreciation on behalf of most of the people.
00:22:18.000 | And some people will abuse that and many people won't.
00:22:21.000 | So I just think of so many examples where I will want to...
00:22:26.000 | I did this recently. I had a problem with my podcast.
00:22:31.000 | I couldn't get what we're doing now to work.
00:22:33.000 | I could not get my Skype to integrate with my soundboard, to integrate with my recorder.
00:22:37.000 | I tried everything. It wasn't working.
00:22:39.000 | And so I was just looking for answers.
00:22:41.000 | And I found an article that worked really well on a podcast website.
00:22:45.000 | And I said, "Okay, that may be my problem."
00:22:47.000 | I reached out to the person. They answered my question really quickly.
00:22:50.000 | And then I needed to buy some equipment.
00:22:51.000 | So I went and made a donation through their PayPal donation button.
00:22:55.000 | I went through their Amazon link or B&H link to buy my equipment
00:22:59.000 | because I wanted them to get the benefit for the value that they had given.
00:23:04.000 | And it seems like just to me the benefit of that I see as a virtuous cycle
00:23:10.000 | that when you're getting started, if you can give as much as you can for free,
00:23:15.000 | then you can build up. You eliminate the cost for people to find you.
00:23:19.000 | And so you can build an audience.
00:23:22.000 | And then if you want to be more restrictive at that point in time, that's fine.
00:23:26.000 | But it just seems like it would be different for a new musician.
00:23:32.000 | And that's why I was interested.
00:23:34.000 | You said something different, but it seems like if I were a new musician,
00:23:37.000 | I just want my stuff to get played.
00:23:39.000 | I want people to like it, to get played, to get seen,
00:23:42.000 | for people to enjoy and appreciate, to have your stuff heard.
00:23:45.000 | And then later on figure out the business stuff as you go.
00:23:49.000 | So I think of the technology as a great equalizer,
00:23:53.000 | that people can find the content, but man, it's got to be the Wild West on your side
00:23:57.000 | trying to figure out the licensing and all of that.
00:23:59.000 | That's the main problem. You're absolutely 100% correct
00:24:03.000 | that you want to give away as much as possible.
00:24:05.000 | And that worked incredibly well and still will for any musician who wants to do it.
00:24:11.000 | Specifically for musicians, just be careful because if you're licensing to people
00:24:16.000 | that are going to use your music in commercial ways,
00:24:20.000 | but you're also allowing it free by potential abusers
00:24:25.000 | who can put it in systems that will start charging other people royalties,
00:24:30.000 | that can cause problems.
00:24:32.000 | Unforeseen to me at the time.
00:24:35.000 | And I still deal with that, occasional issues where I have to explain
00:24:45.000 | and document, "Okay, no, this is definitely my song and you are allowed to use it
00:24:51.000 | and these guys, I have to contact them to take this thing down."
00:24:56.000 | Will you explain what you said with those two sites,
00:25:00.000 | you said something like Rumblefish and the other one,
00:25:03.000 | explain what they're doing because it sounded like I didn't understand
00:25:06.000 | what they're doing with all of the online content.
00:25:10.000 | Okay, so say you're an indie artist.
00:25:13.000 | This is the other route that I may take for my next album.
00:25:16.000 | This is what 90% of indie artists do.
00:25:19.000 | They create an album, they go to a site like a digital distributor like CD Baby.
00:25:25.000 | They're one of the most popular.
00:25:27.000 | They sign up for the Sync licensing program.
00:25:31.000 | This then takes their album, not only puts it in iTunes and Amazon,
00:25:35.000 | but puts it in the Rumblefish system.
00:25:37.000 | Now what the Rumblefish system will do,
00:25:39.000 | say my name is Joe and the shark fish,
00:25:45.000 | and I have a song called "Hello Baby."
00:25:48.000 | The Rumblefish audio tags the song "Hello Baby"
00:25:53.000 | and they go through the YouTube, and now I think Twitch has it as well,
00:25:59.000 | their system, and it will identify any video using "Hello Baby"
00:26:05.000 | and put ads on that video.
00:26:08.000 | And that then, the money goes partially to Rumblefish,
00:26:12.000 | partially to CD Baby, and partially to the artist.
00:26:16.000 | Yeah, that's how big it is.
00:26:18.000 | And there's hundreds of millions of songs.
00:26:20.000 | And the problem is that there's audio mismatches.
00:26:23.000 | So there's a fellow composer who does exactly what I do,
00:26:28.000 | pretty much called Kevin MacLeod on the site called incompetech.com.
00:26:33.000 | He does a lot of classical music.
00:26:35.000 | And now the site's like--it's called Audio Content ID.
00:26:42.000 | They will mistakenly match classical pieces to Kevin
00:26:48.000 | from Incompetech's original creations.
00:26:52.000 | So then he has to go through and straighten out every single one,
00:26:56.000 | sometimes directly with Sony Music.
00:26:58.000 | If you look at Kevin's blog, you can actually see
00:27:01.000 | where he actually will have to contact Sony and say,
00:27:04.000 | "You're saying that this song is some Bach recording that you own,
00:27:10.000 | but it's not. It's my own classical piece."
00:27:13.000 | Just because it's somewhat similar, but it's not.
00:27:17.000 | Anyway, so that's what's going on right now.
00:27:21.000 | But it's mainly really just on YouTube and the really big sites
00:27:24.000 | where they have Content ID.
00:27:27.000 | Is it possible for somebody who is a dedicated musician,
00:27:31.000 | and let's just assume a decent level of competence, they're good,
00:27:35.000 | is it possible to make a full-time income to support yourself in today's world?
00:27:39.000 | Well, here's the other thing I've learned.
00:27:42.000 | Full-time income is very, very different from one person to the next.
00:27:47.000 | I have four kids.
00:27:50.000 | My full-time income requirements are a whole different level
00:27:54.000 | than a guy who's in their 20s, you know what I mean,
00:27:57.000 | at a music school, who wants to make full-time income.
00:28:01.000 | I'd say in that case, absolutely.
00:28:04.000 | There's demand everywhere for indie music.
00:28:07.000 | If I was single, I could live off of what I make right now on Dano Songs.
00:28:11.000 | There's no doubt about that.
00:28:13.000 | So it's absolutely possible.
00:28:15.000 | And not only is that possible, but I forget the name.
00:28:20.000 | There's this guy, he did this song called Code Monkey.
00:28:27.000 | He was a creative--yeah, Code Monkey.
00:28:31.000 | This guy did what I did.
00:28:33.000 | He was giving away Code Monkey.
00:28:36.000 | Jonathan Colton, okay?
00:28:39.000 | He's an indie guy, and he was giving away Creative Commons,
00:28:43.000 | and someone made this crazy cool video out of it,
00:28:46.000 | and he sold 500,000 copies totally on his own from his own website.
00:28:53.000 | Wow.
00:28:54.000 | And so not only is it possible, I think, to make a living,
00:29:01.000 | but another guy is--what's his name?
00:29:06.000 | Mackleroy, I think his name is.
00:29:08.000 | He's a rapper.
00:29:10.000 | Mackleroy, I think.
00:29:13.000 | Macklemore.
00:29:14.000 | Okay.
00:29:15.000 | This guy is an indie guy.
00:29:16.000 | He's a multimillionaire.
00:29:17.000 | Really?
00:29:18.000 | I mean, it's like--the sky's really the limit.
00:29:22.000 | It really, really is.
00:29:23.000 | You can do so, so, so much completely on your own.
00:29:26.000 | Of course, you've got to learn to outsource.
00:29:28.000 | You've got to treat it like an entrepreneur.
00:29:30.000 | You're only going to be able to do so much as a guy sitting on your own.
00:29:34.000 | You know what I mean?
00:29:35.000 | But if you learn how to use Fiverr, if you learn how to use Elance,
00:29:40.000 | get an assistant, you know what I mean?
00:29:42.000 | Get marketers to help you learn how to use promotion companies
00:29:47.000 | and learn how to keep books so that you're making a profit, you know what I mean?
00:29:52.000 | And just be awesome and make awesome videos and make awesome songs.
00:29:56.000 | There's a demand, and I think that you can not only make a living,
00:30:01.000 | but you can become completely wealthy, you know what I mean?
00:30:05.000 | I mean, it's very possible with the Internet, and it's done quite often.
00:30:10.000 | Right.
00:30:11.000 | I'm glad you pointed out the difference between different people's requirements.
00:30:15.000 | I read an article about this lady, and she wanted to be a full-time musician,
00:30:21.000 | but she played some off-the-wall, something like the hammer dulcimer
00:30:25.000 | in this very eclectic form of bluegrass.
00:30:30.000 | I don't remember what it was, but she wanted to be a full-time musician.
00:30:33.000 | And so she made the decision.
00:30:35.000 | She moved into--do you know what a teardrop trailer is?
00:30:38.000 | A small teardrop trailer, like a little tiny camping trailer that you pull behind a car.
00:30:42.000 | Okay, well, I'm going to in a second because I'm looking it up.
00:30:45.000 | Right, just Google "teardrop trailer."
00:30:47.000 | Basically what they are is this old-fashioned design from back in the early 1930s, maybe.
00:30:53.000 | Okay, cute.
00:30:54.000 | And they're these tiny little trailers that are about 4 feet by 8 feet big,
00:30:59.000 | and then they're about 4 feet tall, and they're really light,
00:31:01.000 | and you can pull them behind a car.
00:31:03.000 | Well, she had an old car. She had an old Saturn, about a $1,000 car.
00:31:09.000 | She built this tiny little teardrop trailer.
00:31:11.000 | She painted it bright pink.
00:31:12.000 | She did it all herself with plywood.
00:31:14.000 | The thing cost her a few hundred bucks.
00:31:16.000 | And she tossed her instrument into her car.
00:31:18.000 | And the story was she travels the country full-time,
00:31:22.000 | making her living as a full-time musician,
00:31:24.000 | but she was a single, middle-aged lady,
00:31:26.000 | but she's living on like $700 or $800 a month.
00:31:30.000 | And she's so impressed with her for following her dream and doing it,
00:31:33.000 | but the only reason she could do it is because she cut her expenses to that point.
00:31:37.000 | And that's where it always seems like that's the tradeoff.
00:31:40.000 | That's what I talk a lot about on my show is,
00:31:43.000 | would you rather make a living as a full-time musician traveling the country,
00:31:46.000 | playing your eclectic instrument?
00:31:48.000 | If so, are you willing to live in this little tiny teardrop trailer?
00:31:52.000 | Exactly.
00:31:53.000 | Or do you want a different lifestyle?
00:31:57.000 | And either are fine. It's your individual choice.
00:32:00.000 | Right. Exactly.
00:32:01.000 | No, and that's exactly the case.
00:32:04.000 | Yeah, that's why it can definitely be done.
00:32:10.000 | I mean, there's no doubt about it.
00:32:12.000 | What kind of things have you learned to outsource?
00:32:15.000 | And what's made the biggest difference for you?
00:32:17.000 | Well, one of the biggest sources of traffic
00:32:22.000 | was really treating my site as a blogging content model.
00:32:27.000 | And I actually had writers hired,
00:32:34.000 | and I would regularly have people write about
00:32:38.000 | all kinds of different topics that would appeal to filmmakers.
00:32:45.000 | So I'd have them write about lighting, about different kinds of cameras,
00:32:51.000 | and I would regularly post things that would be potentially interesting
00:32:54.000 | to people who license music.
00:32:58.000 | So that's a great way, because really when it comes down to it,
00:33:02.000 | and you explore all the ways to generate traffic,
00:33:05.000 | the only real, completely honest, easy, highest return on investment way to do that
00:33:14.000 | is with content, and that's with a blog.
00:33:18.000 | Right.
00:33:19.000 | And so that was the most successful thing that I would have done,
00:33:23.000 | is hire writers, basically.
00:33:25.000 | That's neat.
00:33:26.000 | Yeah, yesterday I did an interview with a man out in Vancouver,
00:33:32.000 | and we were just talking about, in essence, capitalism is money,
00:33:36.000 | and money is basically a system of accounting for the exchange of value.
00:33:40.000 | And so the great democratizing influence of the Internet
00:33:44.000 | is that those who provide the most value,
00:33:46.000 | and value is subjective to the consumer,
00:33:48.000 | but those who provide the most value in any specific area
00:33:51.000 | are going to be rewarded with eyeballs
00:33:53.000 | and are going to have an opportunity to potentially turn that into money in some way.
00:33:59.000 | So what a great democratizing influence.
00:34:02.000 | I think it's super, super exciting.
00:34:05.000 | Absolutely.
00:34:06.000 | If somebody wanted to follow your path,
00:34:09.000 | let's say that there's somebody listening who says,
00:34:11.000 | "I love music.
00:34:12.000 | I'd like to be able to make a living on my passion of music,"
00:34:18.000 | which is always that challenging chasm to cross.
00:34:22.000 | Right.
00:34:23.000 | What words of advice, from being a ways down the road,
00:34:25.000 | what words of advice would you have?
00:34:26.000 | What path would you take?
00:34:27.000 | What would you do the same as you've done,
00:34:29.000 | and what would you do differently?
00:34:31.000 | If you want to go the composing path,
00:34:35.000 | which is very different than the singer-songwriter path,
00:34:38.000 | I think you need to clearly define what you want to do.
00:34:43.000 | That's what I learned.
00:34:44.000 | I kind of got up there, and I kind of threw up my singer-songwriter,
00:34:48.000 | and then I kind of experimented with my instrumentals.
00:34:51.000 | You know what I mean?
00:34:52.000 | I've only recently just got really, really clear that my passion is singer-songwriting,
00:35:00.000 | and for my next CD I will release the instrumental tracks,
00:35:05.000 | but the focus is really going to be on the songs.
00:35:08.000 | You know what I mean?
00:35:09.000 | The voice, the words, you know what I mean?
00:35:12.000 | I'm not a composer.
00:35:14.000 | That's a very different kind of a guy.
00:35:16.000 | You know, like in Compotech.
00:35:19.000 | If you haven't checked him out, check him out.
00:35:21.000 | He's a composer.
00:35:22.000 | You know, he composes films.
00:35:24.000 | You know what I mean?
00:35:25.000 | That's what he does.
00:35:26.000 | I think it's really important to know where your best ability lies.
00:35:31.000 | If you're a composer, know it and be it.
00:35:34.000 | If you truly want to make a living at it, then find out how to do it,
00:35:41.000 | which is you want to contact people who hire composers, film producers, people in TV.
00:35:48.000 | If you just want to create a web business, okay, then you could do something like what I did.
00:35:54.000 | You could come up with something totally new and unique.
00:35:58.000 | If you're a singer/songwriter and a performer, write great songs, make albums, and release them and get fans.
00:36:09.000 | If maybe you're just a -- I shouldn't say just a bass player, but maybe you're a bass player.
00:36:14.000 | You know, if you're a bass player, your path is totally different.
00:36:18.000 | You just have to be -- you have to become an incredible bass player, and you'll have plenty of work.
00:36:25.000 | Right.
00:36:26.000 | You will have to turn down work every day.
00:36:29.000 | You'll have no problem making a living if you're starting out.
00:36:32.000 | That's the key is what is my ability within music.
00:36:36.000 | Know it, define it, hone it, become good at it, and get it out there.
00:36:42.000 | I think that's really the cornerstone of it.
00:36:45.000 | Does that make sense?
00:36:46.000 | It does.
00:36:47.000 | Okay.
00:36:48.000 | Are there any resources as far as for musicians, books, websites, blogs, industry leaders
00:36:53.000 | who are talking about the business side of music that you're aware of that would be helpful to somebody?
00:36:58.000 | Oh my gosh.
00:36:59.000 | The best thing I could advise is don't read anything.
00:37:01.000 | It's all so outdated.
00:37:03.000 | Really?
00:37:04.000 | Every book, even on music and the Internet, they are so far behind.
00:37:08.000 | Anything that's published.
00:37:10.000 | Some of the blogs are good.
00:37:12.000 | Like maybe just -- oh, okay.
00:37:15.000 | One of the best blogs really is the CD Baby DIY Musician.
00:37:20.000 | Okay.
00:37:21.000 | Let me see.
00:37:23.000 | Make sure that that's right.
00:37:26.000 | What was his name?
00:37:27.000 | Derek.
00:37:28.000 | I read his book, The Founder.
00:37:29.000 | Wasn't his name Derek?
00:37:30.000 | Yeah, he sold it a long time ago.
00:37:32.000 | Yeah, he's awesome.
00:37:34.000 | He's a whole other thing.
00:37:36.000 | Sivers.org.
00:37:37.000 | Sivers, that's what it was.
00:37:38.000 | He wrote his book.
00:37:39.000 | What was his book?
00:37:41.000 | I read it.
00:37:42.000 | It's a short little book.
00:37:44.000 | I find it here also.
00:37:46.000 | Short little book, awesome book that was just worth -- oh, Anything You Want.
00:37:50.000 | It was his Anything You Want, Entrepreneur Lessons from Starting, Building, and Selling CD Baby.
00:37:55.000 | It's just a fabulous short book that he wrote.
00:37:58.000 | Awesome.
00:37:59.000 | Really enjoyed it.
00:38:00.000 | Great.
00:38:01.000 | Yeah, I would recommend, if anything out there, the DIY Musician blog at CD Baby.
00:38:05.000 | I'll make sure to link to that.
00:38:07.000 | Yeah, I like that.
00:38:08.000 | Nothing else really is memorable.
00:38:10.000 | You're much better not to read anything else and to do.
00:38:15.000 | Right.
00:38:16.000 | Figure out what you're good at, get good at it, and get out there.
00:38:20.000 | Figure out who's hiring and buying what you're good at and get to them.
00:38:25.000 | And figure it out along the way.
00:38:27.000 | You're going to learn so much more by acting every day a little bit at a time toward what you want.
00:38:33.000 | And then you're going to be the expert.
00:38:36.000 | Because the people writing these books are like -- they're still somewhat a decade behind, really.
00:38:44.000 | That's probably true in many industries.
00:38:49.000 | I come from the financial planning industry, and I feel the same way.
00:38:54.000 | I'm like, "You guys don't get it.
00:38:56.000 | Look, you need to change the model."
00:38:58.000 | So finally I got sick and tired of it and said, "I'm going to go and change the model."
00:39:02.000 | Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:39:04.000 | Your website is danosongs.com.
00:39:06.000 | Any other places that you would like people to find you or anything else you want to plug while we're here?
00:39:10.000 | No, that's my main thing right there.
00:39:12.000 | You can check out -- I think my Facebook is facebook.com/danobuzz.
00:39:18.000 | If you want to just like me.
00:39:22.000 | I post if I -- sometimes I do a little acting.
00:39:26.000 | I'll post it there, a little personal stuff.
00:39:29.000 | And I'll post new songs and stuff.
00:39:32.000 | And where do you keep your blog, the writing?
00:39:34.000 | Is that on Dano Songs?
00:39:35.000 | Yeah, I'm kind of taking a little chill on that while I work on an album.
00:39:40.000 | Yeah, that's Dano Songs blog.
00:39:42.000 | You'll find it.
00:39:44.000 | I will.
00:39:45.000 | Thank you so much for being with me.
00:39:47.000 | I appreciate it.
00:39:48.000 | Okay, Josh.
00:39:49.000 | Well, take care.
00:39:50.000 | Great.
00:39:51.000 | Awesome.
00:39:52.000 | And I'm really excited for your listeners to get out there and maybe try something new for themselves and make some passive income.
00:39:57.000 | You know what I mean?
00:39:58.000 | I do.
00:39:59.000 | I love it.
00:40:00.000 | That's what the show is about.
00:40:01.000 | That's great.
00:40:02.000 | Take care.
00:40:03.000 | And that's the interview.
00:40:05.000 | Dan, thanks so much for coming on the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:40:07.000 | I appreciate your making the time to do it.
00:40:10.000 | I appreciate it.
00:40:11.000 | And I hope that you benefited from this.
00:40:13.000 | Again, my goal is to bring you lots and lots of inspiring stories like this because I find that the inspiration is helpful.
00:40:23.000 | And so if you're a musician, consider doing something like Dan has done.
00:40:26.000 | Go and check out his website if you're in the need for music, if you're a podcaster, or if you're maybe creating videos, anything for which you need music.
00:40:34.000 | Go and check out some of his resources.
00:40:36.000 | He's got an amazing collection of music from all different genres and all different styles.
00:40:40.000 | So I hope it can be useful for you.
00:40:42.000 | That's it for today's show.
00:40:44.000 | I am going to, on the way out, I'm not going to talk over the theme song.
00:40:47.000 | I'm going to pull the volume up, and I'm going to play the entire song, and I hope you enjoy it.
00:40:51.000 | If you don't want to hear it, we're done for the day.
00:40:53.000 | But I want you to enjoy the song.
00:40:56.000 | It's a really fun song, and I want to give Dan his credit and play his song without me talking over it.
00:41:02.000 | So that's it for today.
00:41:03.000 | Come back tomorrow.
00:41:05.000 | Tomorrow being Friday, and you will hear the show, "How I Would Become a Millionaire Working at Walmart for Minimum Wage."
00:41:14.000 | Have a great day, everybody.
00:41:17.000 | [music]
00:41:20.000 | [music]
00:41:24.000 | [music]
00:41:28.000 | [music]
00:41:53.000 | The Hartford Small Business Insurance knows that running a small business is a big-time commitment.
00:41:58.000 | So this holiday season, they're celebrating hard-working small business owners with a chance to go to iHeart Radio Jingle Ball in Miami on December 16th.
00:42:07.000 | Nominate yourself or another small business owner for a chance to win a trip for two.
00:42:12.000 | Includes airfare, two-night hotel, tickets to the show, plus $1,000 in spending cash.
00:42:18.000 | For official rules and entry information, visit iHeartRadio.com/SmallBusiness.