WHEN MUSIC BECAME WATER, WHAT BECAME OF MOTIVATION?

In 1979, if I wanted to hear the new album from one of my favorite bands, I bought the album.

My first album cost $9.99, I remember because I had to pay my folks back ten dollars from my allowance. (my folks absorbed the sales tax as folks have been doing since folks walked the earth). Later, CDs settled somewhere around fifteen bucks and remained there for decades.

That was real money in 1979. That’s about $46 today. And since I regularly bought three to eight albums a month as a young adult, I was spending the equivalent of roughly $150 to $370 a month in today’s money - sometimes more. (That math doesn’t account for the 10 albums that I got for one penny from Columbia House).

We would make cassette copies for friends, which sounded worse than the record. A copy of that copy sounded even worse. Copy protection was handled by physics - until music became digital. A digital copy was identical to the original. One person bought a CD, and twenty people could have it. Then twenty thousand. Eventually, we all "owned" a copy of that Weezer CD.

A lot of my peers talk about Spotify as though it is the devil—raking in billions and hoarding all the money. Spotify came along long after music had become free. I’m not sure why I’m defending Spotify, but at least they figured out how to collect some money from people who had already become accustomed to paying absolutely nothing. I’m sure Spotify would be happy for you to pay them $150 each month, and I’m sure artists would receive a lot more as a result.

Don’t get me wrong - people still make huge amounts of money in music. Artists tour. Merch is king. Songs appear in movies and advertisements. Publishing catalogs sell for enormous sums. And yes, substantial money is made from streaming when the audience is large enough. I have been fortunate enough to participate in those arrangements at my particular level.

MUSIC BECAME WATER

You turn on the faucet, and there it is. Plenty of people have written lengthy articles explaining it much better than I just did above. The point of this article is what follows in its wake.

If music is now just a cheap utility like water, it presents an obvious question for someone like me:

Why am I still writing songs?

The world is not suffering from a shortage of them. Millions of people can now write and record fully produced songs - even on their phones. Artificial intelligence is already manufacturing perfectly competent ones faster than I can launch Pro Tools. The answer is that I love creating something where nothing yet existed. Some people paint pictures. Some knit blankets.

Writing and recording a song is therapeutic. It's how I process life. I enjoy beginning with a tiny little melody or lyric idea, then taking it to a full production. Then I enjoy listening to it in my car a thousand times. And if that is as far as the song ever gets, I am a happy man. That may sound like an embarrassingly modest goal after decades of making hundreds of records - some of them even notable - but it is true. There is something deeply satisfying about driving down the road listening to something that previously existed only inside my head.

But I don't mind it when somebody else likes it. Several million is also acceptable.

ONE FACE OR THOUSANDS

The best lesson I ever learned was from one artist I worked with during the 1990s - a true rock star who enjoyed his success and had worked hard for it. But if I ever lost track of him while we were on the road, I would find him at a piano somewhere in a storage room, singing for two people.

In a few minutes, he would be entertaining thousands. But at the moment, he was happy entertaining two, because his motivation wasn’t only in the numbers. It was the smile on people’s faces - one face or a thousand.

WHICH PART IS THE FUEL?

I founded and run a software company. Companies around the world rely on a solution that I once only imagined to carry out their work and make their livings. Of course it took an amazing team to bring that idea to life and to help it grow. But it began as an idea in my head. I find that enormously gratifying. I also enjoy making money. My motivations are mixed.

But which part is the fuel?

In art or in business, what is our actual motivation? The product itself? The numbers? The money? The pleasure of creating something? The satisfaction of seeing other people benefit from it? Probably all of it.

Most of us seem to operate from a fairly untidy mixture of motives. We can love the work and still want to be paid well. We can care about customers and still enjoy closing a large deal. We can create art for its own sake and still check how many people listened to it. Ambition does not cancel out the love. But it may be worth asking which motivation remains when the rewards are disrupted.

Perhaps the thing bringing the most joy is volunteering with troubled young people. In that case, the right career may simply be any dependable one that pays the bills and leaves the most time available for the thing that matters most. Maybe closing a difficult deal is your jam. Then a sales position is not merely the job funding a meaningful life - it is part of the meaningful life.

THE SMALLEST REWARD

Perhaps the question is not whether our motivation is pure. The better question is: What is the smallest reward that still provides satisfaction?

Would I still write the song if I were the only person who ever enjoyed it? Would I still build something if nobody knew I had built it? Would I still perform if the audience consisted of two people standing beside a piano in a storage room? Success is wonderful. Money is useful. Recognition opens doors. There is no particular virtue in pretending we do not want any of them. But they are unstable.

Industries change. Audiences move. The rewards we receive from our work may shrink, grow, disappear altogether, or take a completely different form. When that happens, we may discover what was actually motivating us all along. Tomorrow, I will likely sit down and work on another song that nobody requested and that the world does not need.

But I’m going to love every minute of it.

Cheers,

Paul