"There is a great weight on artists' shoulders, one that isn’t easily lifted."

The ultra-talented Milwaukee-born, Minneapolis-based multi-instrumentalist Nelson Devereaux is one of the hardest working musicians around. In this post, Nelson shares his views on some of the toughest challenges facing independent musicians today and how he stays focused on moving forward, always believing his best work is yet to come.

One of the most interesting challenges to me is the having to appeal to an algorithm rather than to individual taste. Producing content rather than letting your artistic freedom run wild. This way leads to a very derivative style of music making where everything is based off of someone else’s sound. Of course this has always been the case for pop music, but today we are seeing it in virtually every style. 

Just as the streaming platforms for film and TV continually pump out the same stories that are re-wrapped and packaged nicely for the audience, we see the same in music. And of course the elephant in the room is the way the current music system works. 

You will only get exposure if you provide content that you have to finance yourself and MAYBE you’ll get some clicks if you post at the right time of day, engage with the platform a certain amount of times AND if people aren’t burned out by following you. The posts that really make it appear as if you are "trying" tend to push people away, so you have to somehow make it look like music isn’t a 24-hour / 7 day a week grind that just pummels you with self doubt: and over time as you step further down the path that separates you from family and friends as they work their 9-5s, build up their 401k, buy cars, have kids, go on vacation, sit back in the rocking chair at the end of the night and you’re still playing clubs until midnight and hustling every day to try to get 1,000 streams on Spotify to make $4 off of a project that you used thousands of dollars of equipment to produce. So you have to lie a bit and make it seem like it’s all good. Lie to yourself and to others on the timeline. Of course it’s not all lies, but behind closed doors that stuff is super calculated, and has to be. That’s my whole point.

Ageism is also rampant. Always the new best thing, the big young talent. Timing is everything and that clock keeps ticking. Digital gatekeepers opening and closing doors. If the door is open, how long before it closes yet again? Companies getting younger, less experienced artists to do things for free, for exposure, for clicks. Discarding yesterdays posts. It’s this type of mentality that generally speaking I believe is pushing people to not try as hard writing, recording, and producing music. If you can blow up off of a six-second tik tok video and book whole tours (I have seen this quite a lot), why write a song over three minutes. Just don’t. Make it short, sweet, snappy and just like something else! It’s not a bad thing, it’s actually smart. But also really weird to have these types of guidelines surrounding an art form. 

(Aside: Of course different artists are going to have different answers but mine are coming from someone who has played to 3 people and 30,000 people and everywhere in between.)

My method has always been to outlast and stick it out. To push through. The sisyphean task of getting up everyday and trying to make the best of the scenario you have built for yourself. At this point it’s almost in spite of everything else going on in the industry around me. (And of course because I believe my best work is ahead of me always, not behind.)

Overall though, it’s money. 

That is the greatest challenge. 

Straight up. 

People don’t make money off of indie projects. You need substantial financial backing or you need to be INCREDIBLY lucky. You might get a label to put out your record or split profits and “pitch” your music but people aren’t making money off of this stuff. At this point it’s crazy unsustainable. That’s why the truly insane keep it up and the people who aren’t all in will stop. 

Of course art is a lifelong journey so anything can happen, but these are my thoughts at the moment. I’ve been on what I thought were successful tours where there are people in the audience every night and the band still lost money. 

I feel that I am as critical as ever, and yet still out here fighting and I won’t stop until I die. 

Just got my first solo record contract that hasn’t even been announced yet and I still feel this way. 

There is a great weight on artists' shoulders, one that isn’t easily lifted. Perhaps it’s just always shifting.

I think often about something that I heard Damian Lillard say, something to the effect of you don’t know how far away you are from something, but you also don’t know how close you might be.

The precipice of the big break might ultimately be the artist's curse that guides the rest.