First, here’s the criteria I laid out as what I’d see as feeling “successful.”
The amount of income I get from my music would be sufficient as a living wage
This is still incredibly far away, and I’m not sure it will ever be achievable with the way the music industry is, especially for independent musicians. It’s also kind of a low priority for me, though, as my other sources of income are sufficient for now.
Any time I release something new, I have a fanbase that acquires it without prompting
This isn’t something I’ve really had a good measure of, but I will say that this still hasn’t been the case for my two releases this year
Any release pays for its own production costs within its first month of release
I’d say I still haven’t hit this benchmark just yet. Neither of my releases this year cost in terms of software or equipment (in that I didn’t have to buy anything new for them), but like, I’m still super far in the hole in terms of my startup costs, and even distributing The War Machine to streaming cost $5 which I haven’t yet recouped.
strawberry jelly :9 has made around $94 this year, though, and I also got a job out of it, so, that’s worth something.
I have enough fans that YouTube actively tries to retain my content rather than treating my channel as a liability
This still hasn’t quite changed, although I’m starting to feel it turn a corner, especially with my move to self-administering my videos. (On that note, gosh, I’m falling behind on that project…)
Any release I put out gets visibility in the various streaming platforms' algorithms
Nope, but also I’ve decided to just not care about streaming for now, which feels like a much healthier solution to the problem.
People approach me to express interest in hiring me
This is something that’s changed! In that, as mentioned, some of the work I did on strawberry jelly :9 got me hired as the composer for a small game. It isn’t much, but it’s something.
Concert organizers approach me to express interest in me performing with them
And this one I can happily say has definitely been satisfied; quite a few of my VRChat performances have now been things where people approached me to play at them, instead of me needing to seek out and apply for things.
I am approached with offers for representation, either via an agent or a record label
I am still not signed with a record label (and at this point I’m not sure I even want to be), but I do have a booking agent for my VRChat shows! And she’s the one who approached me with the idea, after having booked me for a couple of events.
I have people trying to interpret my songs on their own, whether correctly or incorrectly, and reading their own meaning into them regardless
This has happened a little bit. So far as I know nobody’s yet to submit their own interpretations to Genius or whatever, but people have asked questions about some of my lines, and that’s a good first step!
Also, here’s a thing I didn’t think of on the original list but which is something that I feel is very much worth celebrating:
People start to recognize me for my music
And this is another cool thing that’s been happening. The performances I’ve done in VRChat have led to people recognizing me as a musician in random places and folks will even compliment me on my music. More than one person has even had a favorite song of mine! (It seems to be tied between Freak Flag and Material Change.)
I also got a surge of interest and recognition after my presence at Furality. (Also a nice little spike of streaming playtime, which unfortunately didn’t last long.)
It’s still only something that occurs in very small pockets in VRChat, and is often intertwined with the work I do for Trans Academy, but it’s been super gratifying and feels great.
Here’s a breakdown of some of my activity:
In 2026, as usual, I hope to get a couple of albums done. Here’s what’s on my current backlog (which is, regrettably, nearly the exact same backlog as I had for 2025):
I also want to get the rest of my back-catalog up on YouTube, which would be a lot easier if I stop thinking that I need to go overboard on the visualizers, and I also want to get some work done on a Canimus-enabled player of some sort. Which isn’t super relevant to making music, but it’s very relevant to helping musicians to be heard in general.
Finally, my plan for performing has been to do 1-2 bigger shows a month, and I’m pretty sure that’s something that I can make happen.
#Introspection #Career #Goals #Success ]]>The gist of the conversation is that pretty much everyone, especially those working in music, always have such a relative, subjective idea of what it means to be “successful,” and the overarching constant seems to be that even people who are making a sustainable living at music, and who have a respectful following, and so on, still don’t see themselves as successful.
I think at this point it’s pretty clear that I am not successful as a musician; my releases do not pay for themselves, much less generating any considerable amount of income, it’s been a struggle to get even 150 subscribers on my YouTube channel, and even getting anyone to listen to my music to begin with is a struggle.
So, here are some ideas of what I think it would mean to be successful as a musician. This isn’t all-inclusive, nor does every criterion have to be met.
That said, there are a few criteria by which I can judge myself successful as a musician:
And that isn’t nothing.
Ignoring pay-for-play scams and other such predatory nonsense, of course. ↩