We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Martin Collazo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Martin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
I would like to be able to make a living from music so that I could dedicate full time to this
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
‘My artist name is “DJ Dream214” I have always been musically inclined playing drums since I was a kid. When I was in high school I used to listen to music on my ipod and always wondered how can I some day make a song of my own ? and so I set out to do just that downloading different programs and self teaching myself how to use them. Today I have been creating music in both spanish and english for a handful of years and have earned a decent amount of money from it but I have never been able to live off of that income and it would be a dream come true to some day be able to make this my full time profession. Over the years I also taught myself how to record and edit music videos and has lead me to meet a lot of talented artists hopefully some day I can make a living off of this so that I can dedicate full time as of now I treat it as a type of hobby and in my real occupation I am a tow truck operator now.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I wish someone would have taught me at an earlier age how to monetize content and how to use different programs. It gives people a better chance of success the younger they start and I never was able to really begin until I fully learned the different programs for creating content. If someone would have taught me what took me years to learn I could have began making money since I was still in school and increase my chances of success later in life.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
We need artists to be able to sell more directly to the people. Right now we make fractions of a penny per stream. We need people to actually buy or rent the content and if its directly through the artist then that will allow him/her to be better off financially and able to create more even better content down the road. A lot of people have asked me to drop more of a specific type of content but I have to leverage that between having to hold down a day job because creating art is very hard to make a living from.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/djdream214/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Djdream214
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DJDR3AM1
- Other: https://rumble.com/c/c-2778234 https://soundcloud.com/deejaydream-fanbase
Image Credits
Photos Taken By Cflo Montana