Shows, Live-Streaming & Your Creative Business

Julia Lucille Performing at Levitation Festival in Austin, TX | Photo: Mike Schaefer

A lot of musicians were saddened when all live music stopped during the virus.

This roadblock has forced us as a community to re-examine and come up with interesting alternatives for the performing side of our businesses.

For many years musicians have struggled with grueling tours with little pay, but the attitude has been What can anyone do about it? This is just the way it is.

When the virus hit, we were physically restrained from the status quo. We collectively HAD to do something else.

We started live-streaming.

Live-streaming shows solves many of the problems musicians have been facing with touring.

1. Cost
2. Energy output
3. Stressful lifestyle
4. Limited access to their listeners. On tour you are limited to the people in each town who know of you etc. Online, you have the potential to bring in larger swaths of your listeners because you’re not restrained by geography.
5. Barrier to entry with shows — Audience members have to leave home, drive, park, stay out late…
6. Financial aspects not in artists control — venues and/or headlining acts control ticketing, and how much to pay you.

One of the best parts of the live-streaming movement is how it’s completely in the artist’s court. You don’t need to do ticketing through a venue. You can do it on your website, and get paid by your listeners directly.

And this is how businesses evolve and change. It’s often not comfortable. Great ideas often come when you’re pushed into a corner and you have no way out but to brainstorm new ways of creating, acting, and living. When the old way CAN’T work, you find a new way.

This points to the enormous potential musicians have in the business world, if you accept the challenge to become an entrepreneur. When you become the CEO of your own business, you open yourself up to thrive financially, spiritually, and personally.

A collective solution of how to supplement and build work/life balance back into how we play live has come from ARTISTS. This is the future of music: When YOU come up with the ideas for how to evolve your business yourself, they tend to work much better than any one an outside party might come up with.

How has the virus shaken up your ideas of “the way things are”? How are you evolving your creative business next?

Find more resources for creatives at julialucille.com.