Money Matters

Money is a subject that affects everyone, everyday. College is a time when money is especially tight for most of us and budgeting is a needed skill in order to get through daily life.I go to school five days a week and I have to make sure I have money for parking, food, gas and school supplies.I spend about 60 dollars a week alone just going to school. Managing my money is something I need to work on if I ever plan on not living paycheck to paycheck, but even without spending money on things I don't "need", living is expensive. I felt that most of Evans info would be more helpful a few years down the road when I have some extra money and want to be smart about investing it. right now I'm struggling to even make rent and don't have any money to spare if I want to live comfortably. I do like the idea of having a budget and keeping track of every penny I spend in a week just to see what I could cut back on and save on. I think a budget would help me realize how much the little stuff adds up. Another piece of advise that I've heard over and over is to to take a percentage of every pay check and put it in a savings account so by the time I'm thirty Ill have a large chunk of money saved and it will keep growing fast. the only hard part is I've ended up needing the money I put in my savings because I can't keep up with expenses or emergencies that come up so it's not really growing.However, I did learn that it's really easy to invest your money and there's a lot of ways to do it. I thought there was a lot more to investing but it's catered to be user friendly and pretty simple.I wasn't aware you could do it all online. when I graduate I feel I'll have a lot more money and won't be so stressed out about it because I'll be working full time. Right now I work in the summers and make a lot of money but when school starts I loose it all because of the expenses it takes to go to school and I get a fraction of the hours I do during the summer.

Some other points I found interesting during the discussion with Evan was the importance of knowing what you can and can't write off or deduct on your taxes as a self employed free lance musician. I see myself having someone, a tax agent or accountant or whatever the title is to help me get everything right. I still feel a little insecure about how to do my taxes right but I think I just have to do them to learn them.I'm willing to pay someone to do them for me too. I learned that a lot of doing my taxes right is really keeping track of expenses throughout the year. I would rather just be responsible for knowing all of my expenses, spending, and keeping receipts, and have someone else organize and figure out deductions so I don't have to work that hard on taxes. Maybe that's lazy but that's how I feel. let someone who went to school for that stuff take care of it for me.

the world of internet media

I feel that all of the different internet and social media leading the world of self promotion and networking are overwhelming. For one, Facebook MURDERED Myspace along time ago in terms of popularity, relevance, function and any category of media you want to share with the world to the point where myspace is obsolete. My hat goes off to the people who capitalized on the new trend and got famous off of myspace exposure and buzz like Soulja Boy, drake, Colby Callet and many others. Don't get me wrong Facebook and myspace are effective tools for social networking but its hard to keep up with the constant change of whats hot or relevant and all the different sites like twitter and blogging. I like the idea of having one website for everything so I don't have to go down the long list of all the different places you can check me out. I want to be able to say "heres my website everything is there." I think the online portfolio with david lewis is an excellent source for that structure and I plan to take full advantage of it. However, Facebook seems to  have all the capabilities that the McNnally profile does and everybody is already on Facebook. you can post videos, pictures, music, messages (blogs) pretty much tweet by updating your status, promote shows and events and even start fan groups. If you put enough effort into having a professional Facebook, you have all the social networks like myspace, twitter, you tube, and your own domain name on the same free site. 


My favorite part of Kareem's presentation was when he had us google ourselves to see what the top hits are for our name or our band were. When I searched my self I wasn't anywhere, but when I searched my band Lazlo Supreme the entire page was filled with our content: images videos and links which is great. our name is very original and it feels good to know that were not hard to find. I like how he explained that the key words for googles top spots are internet real estate and people pay for key words and my band has the prime real estate. Kareem had a lot of interesting sites that can be beneficial for a band or artist but the one that stuck out most to me was www.kickstarter.com where you can set-up an online fundraiser for band projects like touring or recording. It's an effective way to promote yourself and offer prizes/rewards for supporters of your cause and increase the reward depending on how much money they donate. Brilliant!


here are some popular media sharing sites that are useful for musicians and artists

• Photography and art sharing: deviantArt, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug, Zooomr, BetweenCreation
• Video sharing: sevenload, Viddler, Vimeo, YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Nico Nico Douga, Openfilm, TubeMogul
• Live casting: Livestream, OpenCU, Skype, Stickam, Ustream
• Music and audio sharing: ccMixter, Pandora Radio, Last.fm, MySpace Music, ReverbNation.com, ShareTheMusic, The Hype Machine
• Presentation sharing: scribd, SlideShare
• Blogs: Blogger, ExpressionEngine, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, Vox, WordPress, Xanga
• Social networking: ASmallWorld,Cyworld, Facebook, Hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Tagged, XING