Unfortunately @Techlobo, my industry is not what it was. Twenty years ago and before that, if someone had a million air plays they would be quite wealthy. In that same period there was a lot of recording studio work.
Now, the unions, Major labels and many Indies and royalty collection agencies got onboard with streaming sites that paid nothing other than hosting and server costs and take as much as 99% of sales. This is also explains why you might read many people asking why all the supposed new music seems to sound the same. Some people still hire but honestly, I have almost become a relic of an older age and paid studio sessions are fewer and far between.

Add to this the advent of agencies that used to hire musicians, composers and writers are now using A.I exclusively. I blame the musicians, composers and writers. They are divided and if they were united, this may have been a completely different scenario.
Now, 10 million airplays on a streaming site might get them if they are lucky, $10,000-$30,000. In the year 2000, a million sales at $10 a pop, it would have earned them $300,000 (3%) at the very least depending on their royalty contract and up to 15% (1.5mill) for publishing.
Cheers

Aye, its a different world now - not necessarily better or worse (although to us 'older generations' it can sometimes feel one way or the other!).

My skills never leant towards the Arts - in fact I was rubbish in that area. My skills (and interests to be honest) were more in the technical space, and it has been interesting to see the advancements / changes in that domain. The internet was a great step forward, but like all tools it changes things, sometimes in unforeseen and not necessarily beneficial ways - although as usual that is down to the wielders and not the tool itself.

Unsurprisingly things get driven by money, normally by the 'Megas' and not always to the benefit of society as a whole.

To be fair some people have been in the right place, at the right time, have seen an opportunity and had the inspiration / fortitude to run with it. Many don't succeed, but some do and those are the 'successes' we hear about - can't fault them for that. I just wish that they would remember where they came from, and be more reasonable to the rest (of society).

There are still outlets for Arts motivated people, although I will never understand the rise of the 'influencers' and game streamers (I did mention that I was 'older generation' ). I understand that there are now degrees being offered in 'Influencing' - presumably a follow on from Media Studies / Business Management.

As I said at the beginning 'its a different world'.

I am no young man either and I completely understand what you are saying.

We all have choices in this life. Some people forget that.

Yes the gamer streamers are a breed of their own. The majority of them are unqualified in any discipline other than gaming and when I first saw a few of them, it seemed liked parasites preying on the lazy who could not be bothered to learn the game for themselves. A better perspective that is less negative is we now live in a world of instant gratification where people believe they are too busy and would rather pay to have someone show them so they can do it straight away. Yes it seems like what I grew up with, which was the best things in life were the ones we worked the hardest at or waited the longest for no longer seems to exist.
Thanks for your insight.

Approaching christmas, I have been relaxing. We watched the entire 6 parts of the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.... which got me thinking...
I read Tolkein's books when I was a teenager well before the films.

So I decided to attempt a wallpaper that was almost 3D. You know like the plaster models where you stick characters onto the 3D board in specific locations of historical relevance etc etc..

Well, great idea and sorry to say my execution was nowhere near what I envisaged. I do not mind sharing. I am not trying to do either story, just the middle earth saga snippets. I overdid it in some parts and I am nowhere near getting it right. The 3D extruded idea was fine but it won't work with colors, clarity or lack of busy cluttering. I got most of the locations right which makes it a shame. Good learning. I found at least ten ways NOT to do it. In the process I worked how some artists who work in games do stuff... they can have it.

I am not in a hurry. That said, the Menu I do like. This I will work out after not touching it for a while. The bg has to go sadly no matter the idea solidity. The idea was to have the characters as modules and hopefully anyone downloading it would know which location they belong in because I had etched in the primary locations into the wallpaper...que sera sera...

Merry Christmas all..

OK.. this is all for now. I have the design better... more when finished... It's still a long way from finishing.
I will have to scale things up and down but I'll worry about that later when I have the time to ensure they do no lose too much quality.
Ciao for now...

& wallpapers later, 6 menu creations, 9 module readjustments later......

For anyone who downloaded the Christmas theme, the additional wallpaper shown on this screenshot is in the Wallpaper section of the gallery.
"Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight."

And the Cartoony Children's version.
Yes I made two of the same theme concept, just different namings and slightly different ideas.

Two of the new coming Disk Meter modules from the Ice Palace theme. Looks like I'll have a fair bit or re-uploading to do when all are done properly. Not too far away. Still have some fine tuning of skills yet. A lot more than other modules. It is far more absolute. In many ways that's a good thing. Not so great for adding auxilliary images but great for functionality.

Thank you, @BassdudeNZ. Well, I was also working professionally.

As for posting some of my photography some day, I'm afraid there's no chance of that. For one thing, I've had stuff ripped off in the past, for another a lot of my stuff is not my copyright - a lot of commercial work has the clients demanding it (but also paying accordingly) so I could only use that on a sort of "showcase" site of my own. Most of my personal work also has restrictions on it due to being represented by a gallery.

That leaves what was supposed to be my "pension", stock photography for picture libraries. That crashed on me as it were when 'digitisation' became common at picture libraries in the late eighties (on 12in. VideoDiscs) - while I had no problem with that as it was basically very low resolution, I did have a problem when they effectively demanded that I allow my stuff to be used for - albeit fairly low res - give-away CDs when CDs came along. I wasn't having that and so I got dropped by the greedy mofos. Again, although that's all mine of course, I wouldn't risk having any of it ripped off. Not that a lot of it would be of general interest anyway.

However, if I can raise some funding one of these days, I might just put up a sort of showcase site again for some of my stuff. Web hosting is expensive though, and everything around it too, and at current prices I'd need at least 2-3 Grand a year guaranteed.

I might argue, 'and a damned fine thing that would be too'. Well, actually, I'd probably go further and say we should have stayed in the trees!