Quality

I was up late again but I finished a new song. Songwriting is very mysterious. It never happens the same way twice. I do not have a formula. At one time, I was trying to write a commercial song, now I just want to write a good one. Most people judge the success of any creative endeavor by commercial standards. If that is the yardstick then Robert Johnson, Van Gogh, and Mozart were failures during their lifetimes.

A few years back I was peripherally involved in the sale of some music rights to a major company. There were several well-known songs involved in the package. The company that bought the songs used a factor system. They assigned a dollar amount to each song and estimated the number of years it would take to reach that number in royalties received. The number of years was the factor. The dollar amount they offered for each song had to fall in a factor of under twelve. In other words, they had to make their money back in twelve years. I do not know many people in other businesses that would hand someone a large sum of money and say, “we don’t expect to see a profit for twelve years” So these evil, greedy, corporations are thinking over the long haul.

I find that comforting. What it means to me is that in the end quality is what matters most. I may fall short but I can always strive for quality.

Cross Marketing
The Tulsa Drillers minor league baseball team gave away Moses bobbleheads Friday night. Club spokesman Brian Carroll was quoted “We’ll probably draw two kinds of people for the game: the Moses fans and the bobblehead collectors”.