This is my favorite email to receive:

(Image description/Alt-Text: a screenshot of an email from PayPal with subject line "You've got money from Bandcamp")

As long as I can remember, I've always loved music.

When I was really young, I had a Walkman and cassette tapes I would carry around with me pretty much everywhere.

I remember having The Lion King soundtrack (Elton John) and another Disney tape that was hip hop songs but "covered" by Disney characters and...Whoopi Goldberg.

My first "rock" cassette was The Adventures Pete & Pete soundtrack by Polaris. Those songs are still stuck in my head, today.

Embarrassing Story #1:

There was this tape player I had from Fisher Price that also had a microphone. I used to pretend I had an "All Hanson All The Time" radio show. I would hit play and it would do a Hanson song and then I would hit pause, talk and introduce the next song, repeat.

(The beginning of Approaching Utopia Radio?)

Hanson were considered a "boy band" but they played instruments (and were produced by Dust Brotrhers!) so I disagree. They were a pop-rock band.

But genres are stupid anyway and I digress.

Embarrassing Story #2:

Despite earlier being really into Elton John (rock), Hanson (pop-rock), and Polaris (indie-rock), I got really into boy bands for a period of time.

CDs became the norm around this time and, still in elementary school, I was especially into Backstreet Boys (I'm more of an N'Sync guy now, though).

I didn't have a CD player yet other than my Playstation but I still fondly remember singing along to Backstreet's Back with my cousins Tyler and Shelbi, and later on planning to start a boy band with one of my two best friends at the time, Alex.

So, I knew I wanted to be a musician since I was very young.

Particularly a singer, but...I dunno that's another story for another time (you already got two today!).

Time goes on.

• Tastes changed (I'm into heavier stuff now),
• Motivations changed (I have a mortgage now),
• Hair color changed (it's grey now)...

...it's 30 years later and I'm finally getting to do what I love, a little bit, on a weekly basis.

But it's not even close to full time.

That's why this is my favorite email to receive:

(Image description/Alt-Text: a screenshot of an email from PayPal that says I was sent $2.33 USD from Bandcamp)

It's not life-changing money but every little bit counts. Someone values my music enough to pay directly for it instead of streaming it.

By the way, I get about $0.0014 per stream. So, to make $2.33 from Spotify et al. I would need 1665 streams.

I'm not giving up yet (I almost did...yet another story for another time) and I'm hyper-focused on this now.

After the day-job ends each day I head straight for music stuff.

Marketing, producing, practicing, learning. Whatever needs done that day.

Every time you buy music from Bandcamp you're helping an artist get closer to achieving their dreams.

Tomorrow (Friday, March 7th), Bandcamp is waiving their fee which means I'll get a few more cents for each dollar you spend.

I'll send another email w/ a link tomorrow; just wanted to give you a heads up (and share an embarrassing story).

See you tomorrow,

Garrett // megabyteGhost

P.S. If you must stream it does help! A little. Please follow my profile page on your favorite streaming service. Here are a few:

• Spotify
• Apple Music
• YouTube Music (this is different from my YouTube video/social account)
• Tidal

They all have some sort of "Follow" option.

If you use something different, hit reply and let me know so I can add it to my list.