Dónal Donohoe

Having played music almost everyday this year so far putting the final touches to some new songs and playing through some old ones that I had not played for a while, reminded me again why I love music so much. Few things in this world can be as uplifting as listening to or playing the music you like. What a pity then that musicians need to eat, stay warm in winter and pay all the bills that everyone else has to, for if it were not the case then this really would be a perfect world and the whole debate raging presently about whether or not musicians should be paid for their music would be redundant. But alas, musicians do need to eat and this debate will in my opinion continue for some time as none of the many business models put forward so far to provide a solution have stood the test of time or shown that they would be suitable for anything more than a small group of already established acts. That many of these proposals come from people who have never in their life stood on a stage and performed music in front of an audience or tried to write a song or compose a piece of music comes as no surprise, but when I hear people telling musicians that what they better be able to sell is intimacy, then I think something is being misunderstood. The most intimate thing a musician has to offer to an audience or anyone else is their music.