Exactly! I'm probably commenting more deeply in this thread than is helpful, but my wife is a successful composer and DIY just. doesn't. scale. Even if you're n

Exactly! I'm probably commenting more deeply in this thread than is helpful, but my wife is a successful composer and DIY just. doesn't. scale. Even if you're not just coasting on some variation of financial inheritance, you can absolutely hustle - and if you get to a certain level of popularity, before you know it, you're spending most of your week answering emails and phone calls. For my wife, it was the pandemic, of all things, that pulled her out of this problem, because she got a PPP loan from the federal government, which gave her enough margin to finally hire a part-time personal assistant. Which in turn helped her get even more work. It's been real wild to watch. I still think that if you scramble, you should take on as much work as you (or your group) can handle DIY, so that you have leverage when the publishers and the record labels start paying attention. But if you want to be able to continue to make music after seeing some of that success, you'll start to understand why 'the industry' exists.