I’m Justin Bieber, and I think it’d be sweet if y’all paid for me to record my next album.

I know a lot of haters out there are gonna hate on this. “But Biebs, you recently spent upwards of $450,000 on a single birthday party,” they’ll say. Or “Your shoe collection alone costs more than I will earn in my entire lifetime, times three.”

To them I say: You have no idea how many shoes I truly own, it’s actually a crippling addiction. But that’s not the point. I’m doing this for my fans. I love my #Beliebers and my #Beliebers love me. And the perfect way to give back to my #Beliebers is to make my #Beliebers pay for my next album.

This isn’t your grandpa’s music industry anymore, y’all. This is the future of music. We’re living in a world where Soundgarden is spun on oldies stations. Now, I’ve never heard of Soundgarden, but my manager told me that shit was significant. Times are changing. Twitter is the new record label, Instagram is the new marketing, and #ShirtlessSelfies are the new everything.

I’m not mailing you any “incentives” cause y’all know I don’t have the time or patience for any of that shazz. But if you give me $10, I’ll nod my head. Give me $25, I’ll pump my fist. $100, double fist pump (that’s two hands, y’all). $500, I’ll say your name once, softly, under my breath. $10,000, I will write your name down on a piece of paper, dotting the i’s with hearts, and then I’ll fold it and put it in a drawer somewhere. $100,000, I write your name on some of the fancy paper my mom got me to send thank you notes.

I know many of my fans are pretty young and probably don’t have that much money to give me for this, so if y’all need to ask your parents for help, that’s totally cool. Just say it’s for your #education or some shazz. Or food or whatever. I don’t know. Whatever you guys normally ask your parents for, just ask for that, and then give it to my album.

The thing is: Yeah, I could technically record my album with my major label, and I’ve had a lot of success with that model in the past. But if I do it this way, I get to have final say on the final cut. Y’all don’t know how hard I fought to have my unreleased jam, “I Want More Shoez And Hatz” featured on my last album, but the record label turned it down.

My next album will definitely have that song on it and a whole bunch of others, also. Like the one I wrote with Jaden Smith called, “Sh*es/H*ts (The Hats and Shoes Song)” and another one I co-wrote with that kid from Jerry Maguire called “#Sex.”

This is the world now and I’m so #blessed to be making music for y’all #Beliebers. And just remember, if you don’t have the time or #money to contribute to this crowdfund, you can basically forget about ever getting a chance to talk to me.

Lucas is a writer and performer based in New York. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Washington Post, Flavorwire, and as a staff reporter for the Huffington Post. Co-creator of The Days of Yore. Twitter: @Lucaskavner

Photo: lwpkommunikacio

Mike: Logan, did you contribute to that Kickstarter project that was going to fund the next Veronica Mars movie?

Logan: I did not. I have never seen Veronica Mars. I’m saving myself for it. I’m saving it for myself. I’m saving it. You?

Mike: I watched the seasons that took place in high school and enjoyed the show a lot. But I did not give any money to the Kickstarter campaign. Maybe if I were a Super Fan I would have considered it, but I also am torn about donating to projects like these. I mean, I have limited dollars to give, and if I give, I prefer to give to smaller no-name stuff. Not that I think anyone who did give money to the Veronica Mars movie or Garden State 2 is doing it wrong! Support the things you love, no matter what they are.

Logan: Right. I think I’ve only given money to one Kickstarter—my friend Kim’s project to build an art installation at Burning Man. Which is a group of words that sounds stupid together, but they already had a grant, and what they were building was really cool, and they just needed this push to do it, and I was like, you’re a best friend, yes, I will give you $20 or whatever. But other than that, no, I haven’t done this. Kickstarting is a little bit like voting with your dollars. Or maybe it’s exactly like voting with your dollars? And yeah. I guess I’m okay with not voting. Let other people cast those votes for me. I mean, as pumped as I am for Garden State 2, like, is my vote or my $20 really what’s going to make it happen? No.

Also like, there was a while where I made fun of that movie before I’d even seen it because that’s what you did as a young person who wanted to be perceived as a certain kind of person, you made fun of Garden State. And then I did see it at some point and probably liked it because that was the kind of young person I was but THEN I saw half of it on HBO last time I was home and I really did not like it. I agreed with my original assessment, that it wasn’t very good.

Mike: I remember liking the soundtrack, but I honestly don’t really recall what the plot was about. What else have I funded on Kickstarter? Lots of one-off publications. Tomorrow is one example of that. There have been a few things that I’ve given $5 to simply because a friend posted their friend’s project on Facebook or Twitter and I thought, sure, why not? Have your friends ever asked you to donate to their Kickstarter projects and did you feel like you were obligated to give?

Logan: Well everyone I know (and lots of people I don’t know!) already know that I don’t have any money. So I haven’t gotten personalized pleas. But I’ve been on emails, I’ve seen Facebook posts, mostly friends making movies. I didn’t realize I had a rule, but I guess I kind of have a rule, that I just feel like, those pleas don’t apply to me right now. Like, I actually do not have the money to be funding anybody’s passion project, even mine. So I don’t even click through usually. I mean, I could just as easily say I’ll give everyone $5, but … I don’t do that. I just sort of have to disengage from that.

I mean, it’s sort of like I have to have the same rules with people asking for money on the street. If I have a dollar or two in my pocket or in my bag, I’ll give it. Or if I have a sandwich, I can give it away. But that’s it. It has to be sort of random and easy and I definitely can’t make a decision every single time about it. It’s too exhausting. So the big decision is made, for now: I can’t afford to give to Kickstarters, I can’t afford to give to people on the street. Unless there happens to be a dollar in my pocket. Unless the request happens to come from my best friend. ETC .

Mike: I’ve only had one bad experience with someone who asked me to donate to her project. She was a friend of a friend I had met once or twice at a party eight years ago? She probably sent me 10 emails asking me if I could donate to her project, and it was awkward for me to be like, “Sorry, I don’t really know you?” But I finally had to say that. To stop the emails. I feel like there should be some sort of etiquette where you can ask once for a donation. Maybe twice max to be like, “Today is the final day!” But otherwise, sheesh.

Logan: I have been trying to find this article I read a few weeks ago by this dude who … produces plays maybe? (I can’t find it.) He wrote that his problem with the celebrity Kickstarters—and Kickstarter in general—is that it is not an investment. If the project does well, you don’t do well. There is no guarantee of any kind of on your “investment.” There is no explicit agreement between the person donating the money and the person who gets it. He said basically, that if he asks you for money, he should be giving you a way to get that money back. And I thought that was compelling.

Mike: Yes, because in Hollywood, the people who fund and invest in movies get to be producers and if the movie does well, they get to profit off of it. It would be kind of cool if they did is so that if, say, Garden State 2 did well all the people who gave money to the movie would get some share of the profit. Like, the goal would be $3 million, and Zach Braff could buy out a third of the movie and be like there are $2 million in shares left! But instead people get posters and T-shirts or whatever. But really, someone else should try that.

Logan: Brb gotta go code some shit.

The city of Chicago has just announced a partnership with Kickstarter called Seed Chicago which aims to use the trendy crowdfunding platform to finance economic development in the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

The funds would go directly into local businesses (and business training programs), not city infrastructure, with the goal of helping to revitalize some of Chicago’s many neglected neighborhoods.

It’s certainly easy to understand why Chicago boosters would want a way to support their city’s economic development that keeps aldermen far removed from the money. While crowdfunding city development sounds like a cool idea, it’s not entirely clear whether this is the best model: at its core, it’s just a curated collection of regular old Kickstater projects that have been given the city’s seal of approval.

One problem with the Kickstarter approach is that a contribution is basically a gift, not an investment, so funders don’t expect to see any return on their money. This is not such a big deal when one hopes to eventually receive a product, game, song, movie, or other reward, but when used this way it’s basically just plain old charity—albeit tech-enabled. Except that Kickstarter donations are not even tax deductible unless the project is started by a nonprofit (as some, but not all, of Seed Chicago’s are).

Either way, this suggests that most of the backers will be well-off do-gooders, not neighborhood residents. After all, why donate money to a business you could support simply by walking down the street and shopping there?

Other so-called “equity crowdfunding” platforms now in the works would allow even small-scale, Kickstarter-sized contributors to receive an actual stake in the business, once the SEC gets around to writing the rules that Congress asked them for last year. That approach might ultimately be a better fit for supporting for-profit neighborhood ventures, and would allow even small investors to feel that they have “skin in the game,” as Ankur Thakkar of the mayor’s office put it in that Atlantic Cities article.

In any case, it will be interesting to see whether these projects can even reach their funding goals, let alone contribute to broader economic development. Would you Kickstart a business in your city–even one you never planned to patronize?

Photo: zol87

Darin Ross is better known to the Internet as “Luckyshirt,” his online handle. He’s casually amassed nearly 50,000 followers on Twitter and I don’t know how many on Tumblr because it won’t tell me and it seems rude to ask. He did this by being a person who said funny things—and that’s all. He started using the sites in the Wild West days of their beginning, when Follow Fridays and retweets and reblogs really meant something because we were all hungry for more people to follow. Back then, if you were funny and a popular friend pimped you out, you were almost sure to gain dozens if not hundreds of followers in a day.

For years, Darin’s use of social media stayed close to its origins of just being original and funny musings into the void, picking up more people and friends as he went—like a snowball or a wordy game of Katamari Damacy. Then last year, he took a break from the Internet and came back with a sprawling, mysterious art project, teasing everyone into taking part. That project was “Find the Starlight.”

I watched “Find the Starlight” roll out as a series of posts of just a photograph with two peoples’ faces blurred out in red blotches. Confused, I would click on the link and be met with cryptic messages, prompting me to be like, “Whaaaaaaaaat?” For weeks this went on. Photograph, link, cryptic thing. Photograph, link, cryptic thing. I had no idea what Darin was up to. Then, after what seemed a lifetime, a Kickstarter campaign for “Find the Starlight” began and it was clear this wasn’t a friend publicly losing his mind—it was a multimedia storytelling project. And it took off. Darin’s fundraising goal was set at $2,500 and with only 190 backers he raised $4,500 instead.

With the success of this came a second Kickstarter project, “SUPERFIGHT!,” a board game billed as Apples to Apples meets Cards Against Humanity. This time Darin’s fundraising goal was a lofty $10,000. With just over a week to go, the project already has 573 backers and has raised $27,885 at the time of this writing. With these two projects, I can’t help but think of Darin as a sort of Internet hometown boy making good. Fascinated by the turn of events, and being a backer of SUPERFIGHT! myself, I asked Darin if he’d be willing to talk to me about how this all came about. Not being a total jerk, he said yes.

So Find the Starlight—WHAT IS IT?

DR: It’s a very elaborate joke. The Starlight is just an animated gif I made of my friend’s cat.

Hah.

Even after all this time, it’s hard to explain. It’s part conceptual art project, part book series, part studio art stuff, part treasure hunt. But at its core, it’s a story—one I have been writing in some form or another for years. It’s being told by a man who calls himself “M”. M is sending weird things to people and burying them in weird places. At the same time, he is sharing parts of the overall story online. A confusing bit at a time.

Were you previously writing it in short story form?

I was writing it in novel form. At the same time, I was working on an art project that had this element of hidden things to it. Then one night in my car it struck me that they are the same story. They always had been. And more importantly, they could tell the story with one voice.

And when did it become clear you’d need to go to crowdfunding for this? (pause) Crowdsourcing? Ugh, whatever the kids are calling it.

Well, originally I had planned to sell the art pieces. I had no idea how. I will never be able to hang a price tag on anything I create in that spirit. So I was thinking auctions. But as I made them, I realized I didn’t want to sell them. At all. I wanted them to just show up places. In mailboxes, in public places, everywhere. I very literally wanted to give it away. But the auctions were going to fund the pieces. So I was stuck. Then, someone on Tumblr saw that struggle and suggested Kickstarter. Three days later, it was submitted “in character” [ed: the M character] and pending approval. It was perfect for this.

You shared the nervousness you were experiencing while waiting for Kickstarter to approve the project. Why did you think it might not be approved, when I see projects all the time for, like, “Help us drive around the country giving sandwiches to homeless people in homemade forts?”

Is that one still live, because I’m either backing it or stealing it.

No, I think it actually got removed after going viral.

I thought they wouldn’t approve it because M submitted it. And everything was very… him. The rewards were just nouns. “A Page.” “A Bag.” Things like that. And the video was a film in reverse of a box being buried under the Griffith Observatory with clues to find it there. Someone did, and it was one of the most fulfilling moments of my life. The guy who found it recorded himself finding it, and his excitement will carry me until I’m dead. So it was a project that pretty much just said, “Hey I’m weird. Give me money to be weird.” But they let it through. With one change. They wanted me to call it an “Interactive Storytelling Project.” So I did. Made it sound like some flash game for Carmen San Diego, but it got me through. Sandiego may be one word. I’D ASK HER BUT…

It is. It is one word.

Well then.

And this is a project that is simply for your joy and artistic fulfillment, right? You’re just looking to put some good vibes out in the world?

Very much so. More importantly and selfishly, it’s the only thing I have ever found that really feeds the jerk of a creative monkey on my back. It takes everything I love about creating things and funnels all of that into one story that oh by the way is an amazing story. I know how gross that is to say, but it’s easy for even me to be tricked into thinking I’m putting makeup on a toddler. The story started all of this, and I think people are going to love it. That will mostly come with the books. But there are already fans of the characters after having read three paragraphs about them. It’s crazy. All the way around.

How did you come to the amount of money you thought you’d need to get this funded? Like, one may as well ask how to crowdsource a cloud, man.

Seriously. Then add to that the part where you get nothing if you don’t make your goal, and it’s a real game of darts in the dark. So I factored in the cost of the boxes, of some of the other things coming, and threw the dart. What I love about Kickstarter, for things like mine, is you can just scale the project according to how much backing you get. So I did. It went way over, so Chapter One got way bigger. It’s the most comfortable and perfect fit for a creative person I could imagine outside of the arrival of a physically attractive fairy godmother. Don’t make it weird, godmothers aren’t always blood.

But they are always old, Darin.

In our sample size of one. Yes.

Good point.

Fingers crossed.

The thing I love about this success story, which is what I’m calling it, is that you went to a base you already had. You were “Internet popular” just on personality and then when you asked them for their help, they went above and beyond. Amanda Palmer gave a TED talk recently called “The Art of Asking” and this seems to be that all over, which is exactly the opposite of how we’re used to being advertised to.

This is a real can of bees, too. Because for years I had been making jokes and being a real mess of a single dad. Just an Internet idiot. Then I left for a few months when I realized I was wasting all of my creative energy on this “Luckyshirt” guy. People laughed at his burrito misfortune, but it wasn’t feeding the monkey. Or me. So I stopped. When I came back, I was slinging this story at them. The jokes were gone. It was weird pictures of weird things from the story. There was a complicated puzzle to solve. And people went after it. Someone solved it, and received an iPod in the mail labeled “The Blue Key”. And all it does is receive weird texts from M. Then I asked them to give me money to keep doing that nonsense. AND THEY DID. Even though it wasn’t what I had done the entire time they’ve known me. They helped me because they saw what it meant to me. And I can’t think of a more humbling or amazing thing to happen to a maker of things. And I love drinking Amanda Palmers.

Half iced tea, half indie rocker.

Hahahaha.

The whole project seems like an “If you build it, they will come” situation that I think a lot of companies just plain don’t understand when trying to build their own Internet presence. You can’t just throw up a Twitter account and expect it to sell more whatever. You have to cultivate a relationship with people on their terms. (pause) That’s not a question apparently. It’s just me going on a rant.

It’s so true. Everyone keeps telling me to reboot and start twitter accounts for things I make. To me that’s like anyone else making an account for his or her arm. I don’t want to follow someone’s arm. I want to follow them. Because of that relationship. Just be a person, companies.

So when did your other project, SUPERFIGHT!, come into being? Was it a direct result of seeing the power of Kickstarter?

It was absolutely a direct result of that. In obsessing over the Starlight project on there for 30 days, I saw hundreds of other projects. And it was just a huge bucket of inspiration at a time when I was high on validation and support. It’s like this magic island where you can go and say “HEY I WANT TO MAKE A THING” and the island just drops money on you. Except the island is amazing people thank you everyone I love you. But yeah, who would ever walk away from that? I’m going to Kickstart things until the sun burns out. Which, if you go to the planetarium show at Griffith Observatory, you’ll learn is totally happening. So yeah. All you need is ideas now, man. And amazing generous people I love you thank you.

Was this another idea that had been kicking around your head for a while?

Very loosely. For years. But it was all so complicated and foggy. Then one night I was sitting on my couch and lightning struck. Just make it simple. Just make funny things fight funny things. People like funny things and violence. And simplicity if you get it right.

People do like those things.

So I decided to give myself a birthday present, and submitted Superfight based on nothing but an idea—one I believe is solid and awesome, but still just that. And once again, people got behind it. But this one was different. Seventy percent of backers are total strangers who were just browsing Kickstarter. No relationship. They backed just for the game. It was a very different experience when compared to the Starlight project. So the ideas still have to be good. Or people just have to feel REALLY sorry for you.

With this project, you have the printing and fulfillment in place. Did you get a quote beforehand and base the backing amount on that, or was this again an estimate?

I read an interview with the guys who Kickstarted “Cards Against Humanity,” and they were super helpful. Listed everything they did. So I just followed their lead. Priced the game and its expansions the same. Stayed independent rather than selling the idea to a publisher, and got my quotes. It was risky, as you never know what you’ll get with overseas manufacturing with regard to time and communication. But so far so good. The world is a pebble these days.

Walt Disney had it right.

Did he make a card game?

No, he made a ride called “It’s A Small World.” READ A BOOK, DARIN.

Is it on laserdisc yet?

Laserdisc! So is the game done? You have an impressive number of expansion packs you’re offering to backers.

I wanted it to be customizable. So that just sort of happened. There are these stretch goals people use to bait backers into pushing the numbers up. I started that way and hated it. I unlocked them all the second day. If they are good, I’m making them. Not just if people give me more money. The game could be printed today, but I am obsessing over it in a good way. Really refining it until it’s perfect. And getting a lot of help and input from friends.

And with this game, there’s clearly joy in it, but this is a project you’d like to make a profit on someday, right?

Absolutely. Profits I’ll use to make more games, then more profits, then more things to bury in more places. Find the Starlight is my true love. This will help me get back to it more frequently.

So you’re just planning on ouroboros-ing this? Will the circle be unbroken?

Is that a Cirque du Soleil reference or a hockey thing?

Ouroboros is the snake eating its own tail, aka, the Auryn from Neverending Story.

Yes. This grants wishes.

Anyway, what I mean is, is some of the money going toward, like, your kids’ college fund, or is that pretty much covered and this is all about doing more fun stuff?

No, some is absolutely going toward living. And my kids are 99 percent of that. If I get really lucky, this thing will take care of all of that for a bit.

So is part of the plan to get SUPERFIGHT! into stores?

DR: Oh, absolutely. There is no reason this can’t make it into comic book stores and Targets. It will take time. You have to get the copies out there and let people love it. Then their friends want it and off you go. This stuff has never been easier in human history. I’ve talked to board game cafes in other countries online. There are fulfillment centers that for all practical purposes give me a warehouse and shipping fleet. And I’m just some dad.

How did you get clued into the existence of a board game cafe? Was this guidance from the Cards Against Humanity guys or your everyday Google search?

Google searching like a tween looking for topless Beiber picks. Twitter searches. Facebook searches. Reading game blogs and forums. All kinds of nonsense.

Anyone can do this then. You’re saying it’s an exciting time to be alive?

Absolutely. On both counts. It’s all just sitting there. If my last comment was to be believed, you’ll have to work your ass off before you can even begin working your ass off, but if you love making things, it’s not work.

And maybe you’ll need some nifty skills in creating eye catching graphics and videos?

And that just barely. I have loved projects that were just a person sitting there talking. Design will always matter at some level, but I’d hate to see anyone discouraged because they are conceptual and not visual artists. If people see and believe in the core idea and in you, they’ll trust you to get the help it needs.

Well, I think that’s probably a good note to end on. Believe in yourself. Make it happen.

Swim until you can’t see self-doubt. Just kidding, you’ll drown before you get there. Just take a Kickstarter boat.

Thanks, Darrin! This was fun.

Thanks for having me on my computer!

You too can find Darin on his computer at http://twitter.com/luckyshirt and http://luckyshirt.tumblr.com. Lindsay Katai is a writer/performer in Los Angeles, Calif.

Guitar enthusiast S.T. VanAirsdale did some arithmetic and figured that the rewards promised to Veronica Mars Kickstarter backers are going to add up! (By his math, just the T-shirts—34,000 shirts at $3.90 each is $132,600—will be 4% of the estimated project budget)

Consistently crazy to me how small amounts of money add up. That’s not sarcasm. I am actually shocked on a regular basis that small sums of money add up to one large sum of money. It’s a cool trick. I fall for it every time.

I met Matt Duke at a concert venue in my college town, cornering him so I could take a picture for the student website I worked for. Several years later, he has three records and one EP under his belt from working with record labels, and is now self-financing his next record on a Kickstarter, which, full disclosure, I contributed to. I cornered him at a show again, and he amiably agreed to speak to me over the phone about his struggles with record labels, the costs that go into self-financing, and why going on reality shows can be a good career move.

You started off on a record label and now you’re self-financing. Why make the switch?

In terms of budgeting for records and how they were allocating what they were spending on the record, it was sort of being mismanaged. There was a lot of turnover. And when there were so many different people coming and going, nobody got all that familiar with the stuff that I was doing. It was either a waste of money, or money wasn’t being well spent in other places where it should’ve been. We had an amicable split over a year ago. As much as I love the president of the label—she’s unbelievable, she’s been such a huge supporter of mine—it just wasn’t working. And I was getting frustrated not being able to control the decision making as far as where the money was being spent and how much we were spending. So that’s why, once I went completely independent, I was excited to try self-financing my new album.

How did you come up with the $10,000 figure then for your Kickstarter? Can you give me a breakdown of what costs go into making an album and why you picked that amount?

Sure. I started with $10,000 because with the Kickstarter thing, it’s not like you’re necessarily selling yourself short, but you set a realistic goal for something that you know that you can get. You obviously want to make more than that. So in my mind, the magic number was hopefully actually going to be $15,000. We set it at $10,000 because the last record that I made through [my label], Rykodisc, was somewhere around the $7,000-$10,000 range. After years and years of playing music I’ve established relationships with engineers and producers and mixers. There are people who are interested and wanting to work, in general, for a lot cheaper than they usually would. I know that we can do the same quality product for less. We’re not going to exceed $10,000 to make a record, but we could probably keep it somewhere in the $6,000-$7,000 range. Kickstarter takes a percentage off the top of whatever you make, so you have to keep those things in mind too.

But after that, it’s making sure that there’s a little bit of money to be able to pump out merchandise, including the physical product itself. It’s going to be different for me this time because I get charged a lot for my back catalog, because of how much the record labels take per copy of the record. This time around, it’s going to be exponentially less, which is great. The money leftover, a lot of that is post-production, advertising, speaking to people about radio, finding somebody to do press. Once the record’s finished, you want a window of two or three months to be able to get all the good press out.  You also want to make sure that you have a little bit of a safety net, a little bit of extra money, just in case you hit snags. So those are the very nebulous metrics of what it is that we’re going to be doing.

Are you planning on having it all being funded by the Kickstarter or do you think that anything might end up coming out of your pocket?

I would be naïve to say that I think it could all be accomplished through the money that we get from the Kickstarter—I’m hopeful that we can. The management team that I have and myself, we’ve got a plan in place. We all know what happens to best-laid plans. However, as long as all the right people are in place to do it, we can do it for what we’ve got. I’m prepared to still spend a little bit more out of my own pocket if I have to. That really won’t be the end of the world for me. I feel a lot better in my life at this moment, to spend a little bit of my own money to make this happen as opposed to having the strange bureaucracy of the record label industry manage that and dictate what they’re going to do for me.

All the costs that you were talking about, the nebulous costs, those would be covered by a record label if you were on one, right?

Yeah. They would be covered and ultimately they would be rigged through all the millions and billions of records that I would have sold. It’s all, like, liquid. That’s part of the problem, too. Here’s the difference between myself and the business side of the record label: I’m strapped. You know what I mean? I work very hard. We’re going to be penny pinching [making this next record]. And that’s a good thing. It’s going to put under a microscope absolutely every move we make in order to have this record be as successful as humanly possible.

At the label they can look at old models and plans that they had dating back even as far as the ’80s and say, “Well we threw this much money at this and that worked before, so it must work again. Once we throw all that money, ultimately the artist is going to be responsible for paying at least half of that back, so we don’t necessarily need to talk about how much it is we’re spending, but it’ll come out of his pocket anyway.”

Again, as much as I loved the people that I was working with, it’s irresponsible. And it sucks. However, it’s sort of like shame on musicians sometimes for signing these contracts. You go in with the high hope that they will be able to manage it a lot better than they ultimately do.

That’s something I wanted to ask you too, because I don’t know. How does compensation work when you get a record deal?

As per my deal, as it stood before I left, they had me for a number of records and after that they had a couple of options. It’s up to them whether they want to keep me or not, but obviously you can sit down and renegotiate. Every record that I’ve made, the advances got a little bit bigger. Were they substantial numbers? Sure. But in my case, too, because of how small the label was, we ended up having to restructure to try to make things work. My advances went down, actually, significantly. That was part of the decision-making process that I was a part of and I was willing to forgo X amount of dollars off the advance to try to make this work and pump that money back into the record.

When it comes to mechanical royalties, I get a small percentage of the sales in terms of the records sold, songs sold on iTunes and things like that. The records that I made from 2011 dated backwards, they have control of those records for maybe another seven plus years or so. There’s a record that I had that I think is owned in perpetuity actually, by a student-run record label. Which is kind of a drag, but when you’re 19 years old, you’re not exactly thinking of business economics.

So, the royalties are a little small, the advances can be big, but ultimately, it’s still money that you will be paying off. Depending on what kind of percentages they are taking from you, you’ve got to be very smart with how you’re investing that kind of money. If it’s not going right back into the record making process, you better be putting it somewhere, because that might be all you get. If you’re an unsigned artist in your development mode, you have to be very very very very very careful about what you sign. Mine fell in the middle between a good deal and a bad deal.

Were you able to live on that, on your advances?

Oh, no. No. Absolutely not. Oh God, no. [Laughs]

I don’t know if you saw that Grizzly Bear article a few weeks ago. The Internet was all in a tizzy about it for a while because they’re a relatively big name, playing Radio City, whatever, but some of them still don’t even have health insurance.

Being a signed artist to a label, or just being a musician in general is not an easy road to follow. You don’t think about these things, because the dreamers that we are, as artists and musicians, our hopes are so high for every record. Your expectations are so great that things are going to work out exactly the way you think they can: “I’m going to work hard, this record is going to be fucking incredible, people are going to love it, I know that I can find my voice and exactly where I need to go.”

Then when you start thinking that way, when you start thinking with your heart instead of your head, these deals are a lot easier to scribble and autograph your name to, and then you are left with these really shitty advances, and you’re left with really bad percentages. You get a check maybe once every six or seven months because they’re behind on their accounting, or because they don’t necessarily need to get you a quarterly check. I completely feel for them. Because you can be in a position where you’re playing a really big stage and everybody looks at you and says, “Man, those guys made it,” and in reality you are just kind of scraping by.

The health insurance thing is a bar. There’s a great program called MusiCares, but that’s in the event of really extreme circumstances, like you have hospital bills that you can’t pay. They come in and they try to help you out when you need it, like FEMA. It’s like fucking FEMA for your health.

It’s funny, because I think a lot of us laypeople see it as “oh, you’ve got a record deal, you’ve made it.” Obviously, there are different degrees of making it, but I feel like most people would define it as supporting yourself doing what you want to do. But it seems like signing to a label doesn’t end that struggle at all.

No, and the funny thing is, that if you were privy to conversations between musicians as you’re touring around and you’re palling around with a bunch of artists, when you start to meet other guys and you find out that they’re signed, the conversation is never, like you said, “Oh, you’re signed? That’s incredible!” The conversation is more like, “Oh. What was your deal?” You’re almost like, “Oh no, are you okay? Is everything okay?”

A buddy of mine was just on the show “The Voice,” Tony Lucca. He just signed with Adam’s label [Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Lucca's coach on the show] and he was in a position where he was rolling the dice with the show. If you were to be in the top four, and especially if you were to win the whole thing, Universal Republic could pick him up for a record deal. Because he placed where he did [3rd place] and because he made the connection that he did with Adam, that worked out really well because he didn’t have to do the Universal thing, but he made this incredible connection. Here’s a guy who’s got a lot of clout, as far as the industry is concerned. The dude is sort of a mastermind, he’s got his own label and he’s got the money to be able to finance and promote an artist that he really truly loves, which is Tony. That’s a good situation to be in.

However, with that said, you still go in with a little bit of trepidation. There’s always the “hopefully,” like “I hope that Adam is as invested as I think that he is, I hope that it’s going to pan out exactly the way that we think it could.” So we’re always taking a gamble no matter what we do. The business is trying to protect itself from you, the artist, in case you bomb, and you yourself have nothing to protect yourself with, you’re at the mercy of these labels. And that is the way it’s always going to be, unless you’re Bruce Springsteen and you’ve already sold a shit ton of records, and you walk into Columbia and jump up on the desk and say “I want an advance of $60 million, or I’m not signing.”

I was watching The Voice when Tony was on it, and I remembered him from when you two did TFDI together. It’s surprising to see people that you’ve heard of before auditioning, who’ve had record deals and they’re on there saying “I can’t support my family, I need to do this show.”

You’re looking for the next big break. I felt like it should go without saying, but I’ll have to say it because I feel like this has become a bitchfest on my part about how tough it can be, but we’re so lucky because we do still make money. We can survive. You go month to month sometimes, well, a lot of the time, but we still get to play music and we get to do something that we love, which not a lot of people can say that they get to do. Not a lot of people are that fortunate, in fact there’s a lot of people who just don’t have jobs, period.

I don’t blame anybody for wanting to audition for those shows. It’s always worth a shot. If anything, you can at least ensure yourself a little bit of exposure, maybe give yourself a little bit of a kick start. Why wouldn’t you be hopeful that things could be great? That a record label that you had to sign to because you won a TV show could maybe really help you skyrocket? They’re lofty expectations but those are the expectations that they set on that show. So I don’t blame anybody for wanting to do that kind of thing.

But it’s just like we were talking about, everything is changing. The labels aren’t nearly as important anymore. They’re just not. The money is important, to deal with clients and get these things to happen, but if you’re savvy you can do those things yourself without having to give up a whole lot.

When you were on your label, did you ever have conversations with people there about how they could help you earn a living?

Yeah. The woman in charge was so great, and she wanted to see me succeed. She was trying to do everything in her power to get me opportunities and to put me in places where I could be successful. But there were a lot of people in that company, there was a lot of turnover. When she would look down, all of a sudden, every face was different. Another four or five months would go by, she’d look back down and they were all different again. People weren’t familiarized with the record enough. They put her in a precarious situation. We would have a conversation and she would be sympathetic, like, “I know you’re not earning what you deserve to be earning and I know that it’s really tough, but if you could just hang in there, we’ll try to work this out and then hopefully we’ll get that big moment where things are just going to turn around.”

Unfortunately, that’s not good enough for both sides anymore. We can’t afford to do that. I’ve been working odd jobs for the better part of this past decade, trying to supplement income to make sure that I can continue to pursue my dream of playing music. The best part, though, now, is that without the label it is actually a little bit easier. I’ve got more control over what it is financially I get to do. That gives me peace of mind. Maybe that’s something that’s actually worth a little bit, at the end of the day.

What kind of odd jobs have you been doing?

I garden. I love gardening, actually. I used to work other jobs, too, like picture framing, or waiting tables. You do whatever. But this last job I’ve had for the past four years, and it’s worked out nicely. The thing was, with this woman who hired me, I told her, “Listen, the only caveat is that I might need to disappear for long weeks at a time to go on the road, and I don’t know how flexible you are.” She basically just told me right then and there, “Any time you need to leave to go on the road or go record, or do any of that, you can do it. Absolutely. And any time you’re home, there will be work for you to do.” I scored the best job ever. I’m in a good spot where none of that gets in the way of what I want to do. There’s a lot of other people who have a more difficult time being able to manage their time between having to make steadier income to survive while also pursuing music.

Do you have any worries now that you’re striking out on your own? Is there more pressure?

It’s the same anxieties that anybody will get. I’m 27 going on 28, and you hope that you can achieve some kind of consistency, some financial stability. If I was worried about anything, it’s always that the project could fail. But to be honest with you, what outweighs that is that I think it could be really fucking great. And that’s why I keep doing it. I can deal with month to month if I really think that I can make this work. And I do believe that I can achieve something closer to financial stability, that it can be more consistent than it is now. But yeah, like I said, same anxieties as anybody else. Outside of that, I’m in a pretty good spot. I’m happy that I get to take the reins on this.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Matt Duke is a musician in Philadelphia. He likes the smell of cut grass.