05/10/2023
This is so important... Life and music
‘One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.’ Bob Marley
If you google ‘Thea Gilmore net worth’ it says:
‘As of January 9th 2023, Thea Gilmore’s net worth is $5 Million.’
$5 Million!
It’s not.
Who knows where that figure comes from.
I am lucky though. I have a (mortgaged) roof over my head. I have a car (2015 Nissan). I have saved enough to know that if my boiler broke down, I could get about halfway to replacing it.. the rest would have to go on credit cards. I have no pension, no trust fund.
I’ve been a musician since 1996 and it has been a real privilege to be able to work at something that I love. I never take that for granted.
But the reality of my life is that I am a single mum of two with virtually no savings, no pension. I live month to month. Without my Patreon family, I would not be able to continue making music. I have thought, many times, about turning away from music for good.
Let's be clear: the music industry isn't what it once was. Streaming changed the game. It took albums from being potential profit-makers to costly marketing tools.
Recording, mixing, pressing, and promoting an album costs over £25,000. Spotify pays around £0.004 per stream. To break even on a £25,000 album, I'd need over 6 million streams. Physical media is dwindling, touring isn't what it once was.
I’m one of the lucky ones who can still just make touring work, but I am still fighting for my life in music. I know new artists who struggle to draw an audience despite having thousands of monthly Spotify listeners.
All this while music is becoming secondary to personal branding. More and more of an artists time is taken up with self marketing. The pressure to be marketers and influencers overshadowing the music itself. Though there’s still no income at the end of that rainbow.
It's not just about the money, though.
We need art. It is not a disposable commodity. It is at the very core of our humanity. It is the thread that binds us together.
We are storytellers, it’s how we make sense of our world. It is where God begins. It’s where science lives. It is the lifeblood of civilisation.
Artists deliver that medicine. We need our artists just as much as we need our doctors, scientists, teachers.
But gradually, stealthily, from generation to generation, we are eroding this core part of what makes us human.
My net worth??
It’s over 400 songs and countless human connections.
It’s thousands of gigs. Hours of building a tiny, temporary families each night.
It’s every note ever played, every word ever sung.
$5 million?
It’s so much more…
‘Life is short, the art long’ Hippocrates
‘Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.’ George Bernard Shaw
‘One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.’ Bob Marley
https://orcd.co/theagilmore-thea-gilmore
