Category: Blog

Well, lets try this again, as my previous post seems to have been wiped out when the phone went kaput.

Been working on producing a new album, with about 15-20 songs in various stages of completion. Some need mixing, some don’t feel complete. And the producer/engineer hats I wear to finish things up keep on being interrupted by new musical ideas. So I need to apply myself to finishing the album up.

I’ve been recommending Qobuz as a source for music rather than Apple Music and especially Spotify, which I call Shittify, as Daniel Ek’s terrorist company never stops finding ways to not compensate artists. Proudly, the recommendation seems to have worked, albeit slowly, as my Shittify streams are almost at zero, and Qobuz reports some serious plays, to the tune of a combined 4 month total of about $175. Yeah, they finally got around to reporting sales which took place in December 2025, which ain’t a good sign. But that’s still better than Facebook’s 9 month delay in reporting their measly $.0000002 payout per song.

Best of all, Qobuz pays a heafy $.01728+ per stream, at least according to March 2026 numbers. This is in line with numbers reported by YouTube Red and better than Amazon’s $.013+ payout, and Apple’s measly .00427+. Best thing about Apple and Amazon is that you can actually buy a track rather than stream it, and I get a pretty decent payout from Apple of $.49 for a $.69 song. So if you find a tune that you really like, buying the song is a great way to reward the artist.

I love getting screwed over by my phone which won’t even accept a charge, despite being connected to a charger for better than 3 hours. The charge icon showed 12% charge in the beginning, and the phone just shut down with 1% showing just now. Heat related? as it’s over 100F with pretty disgusting humidity.

Here are some of my latest creations, photo taken at night with not the greatest light quality. I need to shoot these pictures in the daylight, as acrylic paints tend to darken as they dry, and I haven’t gotten the hang of the right amount of lightness to counteract that tendency.

Soundcloud displays the general industry trend of enshittification. Back years ago, Soundcloud was one of the places where non-name artists and music hobbyists could display their wares. Later, Soundcloud came up with the idea that they could extract money from the artists that create their product. The idea was, you (the artist) pay us to store your music, and in turn, we’ll promote your music to our subscribers. We’ll also allow you unlimited upload space. And we’ll monetize your plays.

Well, in the beginning that worked. Music I uploaded 6 years ago would get an immediate spike of 300-500 plays. But soon, that number started to drop until the play spike was less than 100 plays. And there was a payola scheme in there because as soon as I terminated my Artist Pro account because they never paid me a dime for my monetized songs and plays were getting less and less, plays got even lower.

Now, I don’t even advertise that Soundcloud is a platform with my music, same as Shittify, the champion of enshittification.

But still no releases. Lately, as in the past few months,the musical urges have solely directed towards creating music, either whole tunes, or pieces I might be able to put together into a song.

Gotta go back into the vault of at least the pat several months to see if there’s enough material for an album. Unlike in the past, releasing singles doesn’t seem to be the way it’s done in the platforms I’m releasing to now. Platforms like Mirlo.space and jam.coop.

So until I can put on my producer and engineer hats on, they’ll be no progress.

I ‘ve been on it a while, and sometimes there’s an interesting exchange. Here’s the site: https://the.socialmusic.network/. It’s a relatively new site and it started out slow, but the subscribers have made it a place that I check out a couple of times a month. There’s a fairly large European component, if that means anything, so not a US bias, for sure.

Here’s a mostly finished painting that I previewed as a work in progress a while back. Still trying to get used to working in acrylic paint, as my preferred medium is oil paint.

Anyway, here it is:

The photo here is taken at night under incandescent lighting. The colors seem to be realistic and the glare is sort of useful, as it shows the characteristic shine of acrylic. The painting is approximately 16×20 inches, metric of course, since the canvas on cardboard is from Temu, although from a stateside shipper.

I also paint on real canvas, mostly on commission, as expenses are higher.

More paintings and other work forthcoming.

Speaking of stats, here’s some stats from Jetpack for this web site. Lots of countries have checked in, which gives me hope that running this web site isn’t a total waste of time.

Here’s hoping for better results in the next twelve months.

Here’s some links for you to peruse:

https://linktr.ee/jaypeach53 – this site has links mostly to streaming sites, although there are sites like Bandcamp and Mirlo where you can listen to some of my catalog. Maybe even purchase some music.

Here’s direct links to the abovementioned sites:

https://mirlo.space/jaypeach53/releases.  

https://jaypeach.bandcamp.com 

I’ve been getting more plays in more regions on Apple Music lately. Here’s a sample from Apple Music of my reach. The stats from Apple Music supposedly got an upgrade, something I don’t see.

As you can see, I’m now getting listens in 7 countries, so Apple’s been successful in extending their reach outside the US.

And this is a sample of Apple stats for a single release:

Small progress, but progress just the same. And I guess the stats from Apple have improved slightly.

Like I said in the last post:

Well, I had a productive March, with some paintings worked on, some music moved along in the production process, along with some music recorded .

This post will go into more detail about the progress, even though the weather lately hasn’t been conducive to working outdoors. Today we had a wind advisory, meaning 20-30 mph winds, just enough to get the dirt and dust flying if I felt adventurous enough to try painting when it was in the sixties temperature-wise. It’s hard enough painting when the bugs try to kamakaze themselves into the acrylic paint that I usually paint with. Dunno if the oil paints I recently bought will have the same attraction to bugs.

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I got a copy of Henry Dreyfuss’ “Symbol Sourcebook” as I’ve been unsuccessful at locating to copy I bought probably 30 years ago. And that being the second copy I’ve purchased. I include those symbols I think are relevant in my paintings. Just another odd way I have of distinguishing my work from others. Though, I don’t think I’m unique in that respect as I think I read that Jean-Michel Basquiat also had a copy of that book.

“Symbol Sourcebook” is a rather primitive compendium of symbols that Dreyfus’s collected in his endeavors. Originally published in the early 1970s, print quality has either degraded through numerous reprints, or the quality wasn’t great to begin with. But this is no concern to me as I just freehand the symbols in the book, to the extent that the symbols in my works only have a fleeting resemblance of the “original” image.

The sourcebook was an offbeat production even back in the ‘70s, collecting a foreword by Bucky Fuller, which is probably how I got introduced to the book.