Hello guys! 😊

How are you doing today? I hope you have a great weekend with nice weather and can relax! I decided to make a little bicycle tour after I finished work today. 😃

Today I don´t want to show you my music or art, but I want to talk about the "business" site of being an artist on Hive. This will be a series of blog posts, because it is impossible to put all the possibilities in one post...

I love Hive and it changed my life, and so I want to give you as creatives of any kind - no matter if musician, videographist, artist, writer or whatever else - an overview of all the great tools within this universe, and HOPE and FAITH to just go on with your creative stuff!! No matter how disappointing it might have been in the past for you. Cause our destiny is a tough one and sometimes we need someone to give us hope to keep going. And I hope I can be this for you!

Hive is this hope for me and it opened up so many possibilities for me! That´s why I want to show you all the tools I know and use, cause I am sure they can help you as a creative person. No matter if you are new to Hive or not, I am sure, there are ways and tools which you don´t know yet.

_{I am no financial adviser or adviser in any other form. I will just show up my way of doing things here on the blockchain. If some if this helps you or inspires you, good! 😄}

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#1 Introduction - Personal Background

My way to Hive

Let me tell you a little background story real quick.

I entered Hive when it was reaaally new. I was in a big music community called Atom Collector Records which was not crypto, but a normal community back then. We all found our way into the crypto space through Musicoin back in 2017 or 2018 (not sure anymore), and shortly after that, everyone was so infected by the crypto virus, that we were looking for other crypto sites and platforms. This was how we found our way into Steemit back then. Which was a blogging platform in its core, like Hive.

Well, things were not handled really well over at Steemit. We were not the only ones having this feeling, and so some people founded Hive. We were moving over with all our blogging stuff as soon as Hive was there. And I am pretty sure that I speak for many people of our community when I say: This was the best thing that happened for many of us!

Hive became my home

I love Hive. It is the best platform I could have imagined as a creative. I always thought I might hate blogging, and that I am not good at writing stuff. But I experienced, I was very wrong about this.

As soon as I started writing, I had so much fun. And I experienced, that it had SOOOO many possibilities for me as an artist and musician. And I actually earned with it?!

In the beginning I was like: Wait, no way. It cannot be that easy to earn something just because I wrote the backstory to one of my songs. And people really seemed to listen to my song and even comment on my post? I am a suspicious person when it comes to something like this. So I was cautious at first if this was all just "luck" or "fake".

Let me explain that.

I think, I am just a little prejudiced and biased because of what I experienced in the "normal", non-crypto world with my music and art. I think I am not telling any secret and you creative people all might agree, when I say that the non-crypto world is a tough one for creatives and you just want to give up from time to time because the frustration overwhelms you. At least that´s what I experienced many times.

I work my ass of to make a quality product - you guys know, I am a perfectionist, and I don´t give up until everything on my songs is "right". The mixing must be good, the mastering perfect, every voice chop needs to be perfectly in time, every drum sound needs to fit into the whole beat perfectly. Sometimes it takes me months to finish one song and that´s ok! Because this is just the way I am.

But the "normal" world does not have any sense for that or appreciates true art that comes from a hard working person.

I spent weeks and weeks promoting my songs, spending my last pennies on payed promotion. Wrote 100 messages each week to DJs, Communities, Radiostations and whatever else. Even put my music on professional CDs and sent them out for promotion.

I changed my job to a parttime job to be able to have more time for my music and promotion. I lived as quite a "poor" person for years, just in the hopes to get my music out there. I had barely money left for food at the end of the month. And I couldn´t afford mastering cost for a long time. Sometimes a song was done but I haven´t been able to master it, cause the money was missing. So I was collecting all of my empty bottles (in Germany you have to pay between 8-25 cents mortgage on bottles and you get this money back when you bring back the bottles - no clue if other countries have that) and saved this money for month until I was able to afford 80 Euros of Mastering costs.

I am doing this for 8 years now, and got barely my mastering and distribution costs back, no need to talk about all the promotion costs... Needing 1Million plays on Spotify for earning around 1000 Dollars, and Spotify is paying better than most other platforms. How should a small musician get 1Million plays? And you can´t live from 1000 Dollars either. 😂 I think I don´t need to explain any more.

This all got me sooo frustrated! I was at the point of giving up for many times. Cause I thought. Why the hell am I doing all this?

Working my ass off for not having food to eat, for getting shit comments and raging on my songs? Yeah, no! But I believe my destiny is beeing an artist! I cannot do anything else. I tried so often, and I was really good at other things, normal jobs. But I got so frustrated and depressed that I always came back to my art. This is just what I am meant to be: RAVEN.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I think many of you can relate to this frustration and need hope!

Hive (and crypto in general) really gave me the hope I needed at the right time. It showed me a way out of my misery. And that is great! It changed my life. And this is what I want to show you in my next posts. If it only helps one person, then I am happy and achieved my goal!
Sorry for this long backstory here in the beginning of this blog post series, but I think it is important to get a feeling of what I am really talking about.

In part #2 of the series I will talk about your chances of using Hive as a blogging platform.

RAVEN 🐦