Oct 10, 2014, 22:52

In recent years most musicians I know have seen their living costs go up as their fees have stayed exactly the same. One of these musicians I know read Robert T. Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad Poor Dad and promptly shifted his life energy into aquiring stuff that generates residual income – like condominiums. He shifted to a “rental income” model rather than a “labor income” model.

 

I’ve made lots of dumb mistakes trying to get the same kind of royalty checks Andrew Lloyd Weber gets. Perhaps the biggest of those mistakes was not watching my costs. I once incurred a ton of business debt in order to launch a coupon code website that was poorly researched, under-funded, unoriginal, and had a manager – that would be me – who had no passion whatsoever for the coupon business. What I learned from that mistake is that expenses saved on the left side of the ledger are the same as income earned on the right side of the ledger.

 

So after seeing this incredible Ted Talk by YouTube’s Kevin Allocca I decided to utilitize my hard-earned wisdom by creating a hit song for under $1,000:

 

The result is this novelty song, which I wrote and produced specifically for enjoyment/use by parents who are potty-training their kids:

My relationship with this song right now is complicated. I realize no one wants to actually think about poopy diapers. Creative colleagues who have watched the video looked down at their shoes and unconvincingly murmered “That’s great, man.” It took an overseas animation team almost 12 months to deliver a video that not a single person has ever watched and said “That’s awesome!”.

But the real estate has been developed. And a baited hook now bobs in the water of our pop culture with a fishing line that leads to my pole.

Is there any hope for my little $1,000 ditty?

Here’s what I tell myself: In 1983 Paramount Pictures found itself deeply invested in a film in which no one believed. A young, untested producer handed the studio what journalist Soraya Roberts called a “thinly disguised life-support system for a music video”. Critics panned the film and – just to hedge their bets – Paramount sold 25% of the film rights before it was even released.

The film was Flashdance. It’s soundtrack went on to sell over 6 million copies. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has said he had no idea that all the dim lighting – made necessary to help conceal all the body-doubling – would become the stylstic key to one of MTV’s most heavily rotated videos. Michael Eisner – then president of Paramount – had no idea that Jennifer Beal’s frantic on-set decision to cut up her sweatshirt – after it shrank in the dryer – would become a look adopted by every pre-teen girl America that year.

Nobody knows anything.

So here’s to crossing the finish line with my song “Poopy Diaper” and just getting the damn thing done. And here’s to tired parents – in every country in the world – who don’t care how annoying my $1,000 song is. They just want their kids to start using the damn toilet.

 

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace with over 30,000 tracks online where media producers, video producers, filmmakers, game developers, businesses and other music buyers can license high-quality, affordable royalty-free music from an online community of musicians mbielenberg@musicrevolution.com.

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