Hey Reader,

Do you remember your senior year of high school when you had to balance getting decent grades, applying for colleges, a sport, and an evening/weekend job, too?

In 2005 when I was starting my senior year, they assigned us one more thing.

They called it the "Senior Project." And it was required to graduate.

The TL;DR is that we had to do "something new" that would take (most of) the year, and then we had to present the process, what we learned, and how it turned out.

We presented to local business owners and other volunteers.

I had business owners, and that could be because of my senior project (getting to that).

Some examples of senior projects: one friend set out to record an album (actually ended up with three by the end of the year, IIRC), and another friend built a gaming computer from scratch.

Anyway, mine was starting a record label.

Then I graduated, life happened, and I almost immediately lost sight of my dream.

Now I'm turning 35 and thinking, "Life's 1/3 of the way over; time to get back to it."

So, here I am, getting back to following that dream.

About the label:

These days, almost all of us are creating media and sharing it online.

One problem is finding good music that doesn't infringe on copyrights.

Even if you're not trying to monetize your creations, platforms like YouTube and Twitch will put ads on anything you create that uses copyrighted music.

I hear some podcast hosts are doing this now, too.

Maybe you don't need music for a project, but you've run into this issue: stuff gets removed from the platforms you bought it on.

In 2006 I bought some music on iTunes that isn't there anymore.

I bought the music for full price, and now I can't access it.

That's not fair.

Once someone has paid for something, they should be able to put it on as many devices as they want and always have access to it.

I'm starting a record label that only provides DRM Free and Creative Commons music.

1. You go to the website, choose a genre you like and listen to some music.
2. Then you buy the albums you like or even just individual songs.
3. It's immediately available for download, and you can then put them in whatever creations you want. You own the music forever.

Don't worry about Twitch and YouTube demonetizing your videos.

With our DRM-Free Creative Commons music, you can use your music as you please, on any device you want.

On May 1st, 2023, I'll be closing down my current ConvertKit account and switching to a music-focused platform that handles all aspects of marketing in one place.

I've got over 400 people on this email list, and I could export from here and import there, but I thought I'd start from "scratch" instead.

The reason is: people on here have come from many places based on all of the disparate projects I've pursued over the years:

• Game Design
• Music
• Writing
• Music again
• Game Design again
• Web3 crap
• etc

And then there's Mom, Travis, JT, Matt, and others who don't care what I'm doing; they follow along because they care about me.

I'm giving all of you a chance to get free without clicking Unsubscribe.

So the plan, for now, is that there will be two email lists as we advance:

1. The label's (Approaching Utopia, LLC) email list.
2. My personal email list.

The label's email list will be about our releases and other things related to the industry, especially Creative Commons and DRM.

My email list will be about the personal side of things, including business, marketing, audio engineering, and music production.

The label email signup still needs to be ready, so stick around a week or two while that's getting set up.

I'll send you another email with a link.

But you can sign up for my new personal email list here: https://sendfox.com/lp/mpvd7l​

Thanks for sticking with me all this time, and I hope to see you there.

-Garrett aka G aka megabyteGhost aka the beatMage aka Prefecture.Audio aka Toxoplasma Ghandi aka G66LOL

P.S. Of course, if you don't want to be a part of either, you can click the Unsubscribe button below, and you won't receive any more emails about this.