Perhaps, in midst of these difficult times, many of you have found music to be a source of joy and a reminder of the enduring beauty of our humanity. Here then is something that might make listening more accessible. After years of selling downloads of my CDs from my website, I have decided to offer them for free. No strings attached. If you want to listen to the music – and don’t already pay for a service that lets you play albums without commercials – you can go to the music page on my website and download the albums to your phones or computers.
It just doesn’t make sense to try and sell the music any more. Not since you can also hear all this music on Spotify, and Apple Music, and YouTube, and Tidal, and Deezer, and services I have never even heard of. They play it on Pandora and Jango and other free internet radio. And for each “play” of any song of mine, I get one-third of a penny. So when the songs on my new album, Heart of Hearing, got 1000 plays, after a month up on Spotify, I earned $3.
I am aware of the privileges I have that permit me to offer my work for free, as I am not dependent on this aspect of the music “business” for my livelihood. Many young and deserving artists are not so fortunate.
Speaking of being young and starting out… I remember the excitement I felt after college when I first started hanging around professional jazz musicians. They shared what they were working on, and I, soaking up their passion and dedication to the music, understood, that the only way to see for myself, if I too possessed that same drive to learn, and if I would ever be good enough to play with them – was to simply start practicing earnestly. And that changed everything.
I have been incredibly fortunate to be around such inspiring people and to work with them my entire professional life. I offer a deep bow to the musicians on these albums, most of whom are still alive and are still practicing and performing with focus and a contagious joy.
There is a measurelessness to this type of success that I can get behind.