Your DIY Music Career Could Be Healthy

cultivate a community ecosystem that supports you and your art

without depending on music industry bullshit

TL;DR

What is it:

  • beta program for DIY musicians (12 spots open)

  • focused on healthy income + expression without compromise

  • alternatives to streaming services and social media

  • rolling start dates Nov + Dec 2026

  • application takes 5-ish minutes

I'm offering:

  • 3 hour-long one-on-one career design sessions

  • beginnings of a customized alternative career plan

  • 7-weeks access to creative mapping course library

I'm asking for:

  • $150 total (instead of usual $450)

  • feedback along the way

  • understanding that this offering is still in development

 
Apply for Program (5 min)

Your time is precious.

Your art is priceless.

Your privacy is sacred. Your health is non-negotiable.

Let's tend to a creative ecosystem that honors this without compromise.

As DIY musicians, we're sick of it.

Being beholden to tech like Spotify and Instagram, when they make billions and we are often broke and in debt, despite being the creative lifeblood of their platforms.

"Create content! Post daily! Pre-save campaign! Go viral!"

There's constant pressure, posting all this shit, keeping up with the platforms, 'branding and marketing' is its own part (or full) time job, when we're already being our own publicist, booking agent, tour manager, record label, producer, engineer, songwriter, session musician, and more.

And now on top of it, everything we post is being scraped to train AI-- more tech companies mining our creativity and labor to hoard wealth and resources that benefit a few and impoverish the communal commons.

Something's gotta give. Unfortunately it's usually our physical and mental health.

After my own health gave out on tour 12 years ago, I dedicated my creative efforts to finding a better way. I've built a pretty robust creative career design curriculum.

We need to build parallel systems because the current industry is systematically extracting not only our creative labor, but also our community, our wellbeing, and our possibility of enjoying a humane alternative.

A mentor of mine says "If you don't design your life, someone else

WHAT IS CREATIVE MAPPING

You know those folks (aka me and you) who are brave/crazy enough to try going all in on doing their creative work in the world?

A lot of us just assume that sacrificing our quality of life is just part of the cost of following our creative visions.

Creative Mapping is a set of capacity-building tools to help us both do our unique and important creative work in the world AND feel like our lives are getting healthier year by year.