Maintaining a healthy balance between being a family/business man and being a creative but yet effective artist can come at a heavy cost these days. From managing time with growing children that need our undivided attention to making sure bills are paid and the family stays together. It leaves little to no time for the creative juices to start flowing, let alone develop solid projects that fans will appreciate.
Fujin Phelps (who is an artist and creative director from Jacksonville, FL) expresses that his days, weeks and months have to be carefully planned out so with that in mind, he focuses on time management and is extremely punctual when it comes to being on time for things. “It may be due to my military background, I just make sure that I follow through with my word and make things happen” he says.
Common issues also arise for most artists when it comes to scaling the success of a song that fans like. Many people do not realize the time and budget that a major label has to dedicate towards a newly signed talent, it could cost anywhere between 100,000 and upwards of 1 million dollars to promote a single song, even after the artist is known.
We reached out to Fujin Phelps via Instagram for comments on this topic and he expressed that “Typically it is very hard to be a independent artist, especially when it comes to consecutiveness. With every move you must play chess and not checkers, every move you must make something shake or else you’ll be forgotten due to someone else making more of a critical or dynamic impact. Each action has to be bigger than the last or they will say your boring or not taking things serious enough. The challenges come from knowing when, where and how to spend your funds and being able to maintain your brand identity and hope that everybody accepts you for you. It’s imperative to be creative on all ends to compete in the industry.”