In this post I want to talk more about my story, my vision as a composer and the decisions that led to where I am right now. It’s going to be a really personal and lengthy text, since I’ll be talking about a lot of things I’ve been wanting to get out of my system for a long time.

I’m Andreas Schauer, a 27 years old composer from Germany. I’ve been writing my own music since I was 14. I started out in the metalcore and hardcore genre and later migrated to post-rock when I was 19.

During that time while I was playing bass in hardcore bands, I also discovered an interest in orchestral music through the OSTs of games like Final Fantasy X, XII and XIII, Journey and Shadow of the Colossus. That’s a big reason why I started attending a music school with 18 from which I graduated when I was 22. The day I decided to attend that school was the day I decided I wanted to make a living with my music.

One thing you have to know about me: I don’t just like music. Even „loving music“ wouldn’t be able express my true feelings about it. I absorb music. With every fiber of my being. Almost everything I do is for the sake of playing, making, understanding, teaching and experiencing music. My entire existence is dedicated to music.

Everything about music fascinates me. When I was in school I had no trouble understanding the most difficult musical concepts, because it just made sense to me. When my hands have nothing to do, I tap rhythms all the time. I can’t concentrate when music is playing in the background, because I would focus more on the music than on my actual task. Hell, I can’t even concentrate on the lyrics of a song, because the music is distracting me from them.

That’s the type of person I am. Born to connect with and express myself through music. Music simply inspires me. All kinds of genres, styles, combinations of instruments, techniques, concepts. I want to try them all out and make all kinds of cool music with it.

I’ve now been trying for almost 9 years to make a living out of my music. Without much success. Admittedly I didn’t put that much effort into promoting/marketing, but that’s more because the current web2-based social media landscape simply is incredibly draining for an anxious introvert like me. It is unbearable. The music industry as it is today isn’t made for someone like me.

Let’s discuss this in detail.

One of the first pieces of advice someone in the music industry will give you is: Stick to a specific style of music, find your niche. That way it’s easier to market and pitch your music, so that new people, and more importantly bloggers/PR-people, know what to expect from you.

Consisting fans kinda know what they are getting into with upcoming releases and they of course can tell other people about you and your music more easily. And after all it makes sense: being really good at one thing is usually better than being okay in a lot of things.

But I just can’t. I physically can’t restrict myself in that manner. I’ve tried to do this multiple times and it made me feel so incredibly unhappy and unfulfilled.

To me it feels so limiting, even encaging to restrict myself to just one or two genres. I have so many ideas for songs I want to write. On a daily basis I hear music of varying styles that just inspires me to try it out as well.

You can imagine what a pain marketing became for me once I accepted that fact about myself (hint: literally impossible).

But wait! There’s more!

Web2 social media marketing in general is just a massive pile of noise where everybody’s constantly shouting at each other. It’s a rat race for the attention of millions of people. There’s no heart, no soul, it’s all just noise. We’re at the mercy of inherently flawed algorithms that prioritize „engagement“ over enjoyment or quality, let alone anything to do with artistic intention.

You have to constantly be active and basically be a content creator rather than an artist. The content around the art becomes more important than the art itself. People even start changing the structure of their songs to be pushed by the algorithm.

But you have to do it in order to make it. And when you finally do make it and you have your millions of streams on Spotify, you are rewarded with … minimum wage. So much bullshit for nothing. My music, or dare I say my art is worth more than that.

Also for me as an introvert, using social media in general is incredibly taxing even with just the few people I follow on my personal instagram account. Imagine how it is for me to do marketing there. Living through the anxiety of not making it, putting in 150% of my ressources into my work just to get fucked by the algorithm because reasons (which in turn increases anxiety levels), all while constantly feeling vulnerable for putting myself out there.

I never lasted for longer than a month with any of my projects, because I didn’t feel any joy at all. And I don’t think that gets better when you have thousands or even millions of fans. I don’t want to be known by so many people. I don’t want to be popular. I just want to make music.

So after many failed attempts at social media marketing I stumbled across the complete opposite of it in the summer of 2019. The other end of the spectrum within the music industry: writing music for sync licensing.

In the licensing branch of the music industry you basically write an album of 10-12 similar sounding tracks and submit it to a catalog. You sign a contract and grant the catalog exclusive distribution and publishing rights for these tracks. The owner of the catalog then tries their best to get your music into commercials, movies, videos and tv-series.

If your song is chosen and gets into one of the aforementioned media you will get a sync fee (much money) and royalties every time the project is aired (depending on the gig, possibly a good chunk of passive income which can quickly add up).

You don’t have to actively promote your work other than getting it into music catalogs (talking about exclusive catalogs that are actually curated and not open for anybody). When the album is accepted, you’re done and the process repeats. You won’t get popular, you don’t need a huge internet presence and you can just make music.

Sounds good? Absolutely! But there’s a catch. Just getting your music into a catalog is not enough. In order to increase your chances of actually getting one of your songs licensed you need to write a lot of music. And I mean a lot. In order to make it, it is recommended to write an album consisting of 10-12 tracks every single month, because the demand of quality music in this space is high.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s possible and I can say that I managed to learn the art of writing decent music fast. But now you have to do it a second time. And a third time, and a fourth time and so on. And needless to say that it’s also helpful to find your niche, so have fun writing essentially the same song a hundred times!

But one symptom of said high demand of music is an immense drop in quality. And when you actually start to listen to the music featured in these catalogs you begin to notice that the vast majority of these songs sounds pretty bland and formulaic. They’re filled with cliches, free from any creative risk. Imagine hundreds of songs with the name „Sad.mp3“. That’s how it felt like browsing through these catalogs.

Nonetheless the songs get the job done as they fulfill their purpose as background music, but that’s all. It’s just enough to get the job done.

And I want to be clear here: I don’t say any of this to shit on any fellow composers or the owners of said libraries. The people I’ve worked and interacted with in this branch were all incredibly nice, kind, dedicated and talented people. And the effort they’re putting into their music/catalogs can not be understated. It’s a tough business.

But it was just not the right thing for me. After having to pump out so many similar sounding tracks in such a short time frame, I lost interest almost immediately. It’s just natural to begin to cut corners and after a while, everything you do sounds the same. You just want to get it over with and move on to the next thing. I was burned out after only three albums.

And I had the feeling I would have been wasting my talent and my ressources had I decided to stick with sync licensing. And additionally, having to limit myself and stick to a certain style of music made me unhappy again.

So in the end, both as an artist promoting my work as well as a music-producer trying to license my work I noticed one similar thing: My art had no inherent value in the current musical landscape. It was always up to other people/middlemen to decide, wether my art was worth it or not.

One of the most crushing but also most liberating days of my life was in March of 2021 when I decided to give up on my dream of making a living with music and to rather focus on music tutoring instead with music remaining a hobby of mine. I tried everything I could and I accepted defeat.

Over the following couple of months I could distance myself a bit from the idea of making money with music and being relieved of that burden felt good. I felt something other than fear or apathy again when creating music.

But then, in October of 2021 my brother, a landscape photographer, gave me the NFT-talk.

NFTs were on the rise, the music industry (and lots of other industries) were going to fundamentally change over the next couple years, even months. I should hurry up and get something together.

Hearing these things was overwhelming at first and it still is. But over the course of three months I taught myself TouchDesigner and got to work. And on January 12th I released a collection out of 12 audiovisuals on OpenSea, called „Embracing Identity“. I also learned everything I could about web3 and NFTs and got in touch with the community a little bit via Twitter.

These three months were insanely exhausting for me, because I had to create a collection, learn a program and learn about ten billion things I’ve never even heard of, all while continuing to teach my students, create PDFs for them to study and maintain a long distance relationship with my wonderful partner.

And now I’m here. I still don’t understand everything about NFTs and the web3 landscape, but I feel like all of this might actually work out quite well.

I like that the focus of promotion in web3-communities lies in building and strengthening connections with others. It’s about community and depth. And because this whole space recognizes digital art as valuable and is willing to pay for it, you won’t need millions of fans to „make it“ as an artist, but only like a hundred really engaged and nice people who believe in you and your work.

On days when I don’t feel optimistic, that’s the one thing I say to myself in order to lift myself up: “It’s about connection now and not so much about numbers anymore. And as an empathetic person myself I am really good at that”.

Everything in the web3-space is just so much more personal and meaningful and I really feel like I have a chance of building a wholesome and supportive community around my art.

The web3-space and its wonderful community inspire me to push my boundaries, to connect with others and to realize my art in ways I’ve never thought would be possible for me.

I’m done seeing my musical diversity and my richness of musical ideas as a weakness. They’re my greatest strengths and I want to build upon them.

It’s been a while since I last felt so excited about making music and I’m happy I finally see a way to make my dream a reality. Let’s fucking go!

If you read the entire text, then I want to let you know that I really appreciate your time and I’d be happy if you reached out to me on Twitter, so we can connect with each other. Thank you so much and have a nice day!