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The Unstarving Musician

by Robonzo

I'm a musician and host of The Unstarving Musician podcast. Subscribe for conversations with working musicians, creative pros and industry professionals on the craft and business of sustainable creative careers.

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An open music book of sheet music in the foreground, with piano keys receding into the background at an angle.
Featured Post

The framework for cracking music theory as an adult

Hello and happy Friday! How many times have you looked at a chord chart, seen something like a minor seven flat five, and just skipped it? Or been offered a gig — a theater pit, a last-minute sub call, a wedding band gig — and passed because you knew the charts would be sitting on the stand and you wouldn’t be able to read them? Photo by Sebastian Rivera on Pexels.com Most music theory education is built for nineteen-year-olds in conservatories with four years and nothing else to do. That’s...

6 days ago • 2 min read
Unstarving Musician episode 350 artwork featuring Cory Wade sitting on sofa wearing tinted glasses

Most independent musicians I talk to treat wedding and corporate gig work the same way: as the thing they do until the real career happens. The asterisk on the resume and compromise. Cory Wade has been a vocalist and band leader with Hank Lane Music in New York for eight years. The income from that work funded his home studio, piece by piece. It funds his original music. And somewhere along the way, he stopped calling it a day job. In Episode 350, Cory walked me through the mechanics of how...

20 days ago • 2 min read

What would it take for you to completely abandon club touring? For Shannon Curtis, the answer was a five-month experiment that she didn’t plan — just house concert filler dates on a West Coast club tour, to see if anyone from her email list would host while she was passing through. After comparing the results, the decision was clear. On every measurable metric — revenue, mailing list growth, merchandise sales, social engagement — the house concerts were winning. Comprehensively. She hasn’t...

about 1 month ago • 2 min read

Happy Friday! If you’ve thought about sync licensing as an income stream, there’s a good chance you’re focused on the wrong problem. Chris SD, founder of Sync Songwriter, has spent years building direct relationships with music supervisors — the gatekeepers who decide what music goes into film, TV, and advertising. Two of his students recently had five songs placed in Anora, the film that won multiple Oscars in 2025. Chris SD of Sync Songwriter Three insights from our conversation 1. Sync...

about 2 months ago • 2 min read

Happy Friday! What if the artists selling out Madison Square Garden aren’t the same ones topping the Billboard charts—and what if that gap represents revenue you’re leaving on the table? Thom Skarzynski spent 20 years at Epic Records, Spotify, and Atlantic Music Group before starting Happiness Marketing, a physical-first music strategy consultancy. At Atlantic, he worked on campaigns where Twenty One Pilots’ album Clancy sold 143,000 units in its first week. Streaming alone would have...

2 months ago • 3 min read