Like many other music professionals, I have involved myself in about 20 different roles over my 18+ years in the music business. Mostly I call myself a music producer, because it seems to be the most broadly undefined category available. I'm also a writer, a musician, a performer, a band leader and occasional theorist on the music business.

After reading the last two posts on Andrew Dubber's excellent New Music Strategies blog, I have spent the last few days writing down and categorizing all the things that I do. It has opened up a lot of insight into how I spend my time, and I am finding as much clutter in my activities as I find in the junk drawer at my studio. (Perhaps those two are related)

I first categorized my list into Learning, Writing, Performing, Collaborating and Relaxing (with lots and lots of subcategories). I then realized that most of these categories fell into the broader concepts of Creating, Selling and Maintaining.

What I am finding difficult is bridging the gap between creating (songs, writing, performances, recordings, etc) and selling (earning money from these creations). Both creating and selling seem to involve a lot of overwhelming maintenance for each. And I think I am someone who defines himself as a creator first, a maintainer 2nd, and a seller as a distant 3rd. But my goal for the year is to bring these elements together a bit more, or better still, delegate the selling and maintaining to others.

It seems that the more I collaborate with other people, the easier it is to do all three though. So a large part of the effort this year will be focused on projects that I can work on with others. A new band and possibly starting a new label for some of the artists I work with (if I can find someone to launch it with who wants to do the selling part...)