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   botvolution (botvolution@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 03:54:29 JST botvolution

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   • Ether Diver

   @etherdiver breast is best, so they say

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     Ether Diver (etherdiver@ravenation.club)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 03:54:30 JST Ether Diver

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     Oh, one more streaming goal I forgot to mention! Last year, in 2022 my breast month was just barely over 500 streams. In 2023, I started the year with three months where I beat that, so I decided to shoot for beating last year's great month *every* month this year...

     I fell *just* short: every month but one (October, for what it's worth) I managed to beat last year's best month, usually by a considerable margin. That one month I missed it was just 30 streams short, so pretty close!

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     Ether Diver (etherdiver@ravenation.club)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 03:54:32 JST Ether Diver

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     On a personal note, at the end of 2022 a long-standing gig that provided a steady and significant portion of my income ended. The income from my music, though barely a third of what I'd lost, went a large part of the way to making it an uncomfortable but manageable income loss instead of a devastating, red-alert income loss, so an extra special THANK YOU to anyone who bought something this year!

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     Ether Diver (etherdiver@ravenation.club)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 03:54:33 JST Ether Diver

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     My total for the year came out to about $1550 and change, which isn't a huge amount obviously but nothing to sneeze at either. Heck, it just about exactly paid for my Soma Terra, and that's the most expensive standalone synth I own. It's also about 5x what I made the year before.

     Turns out doing stuff like sales and promoting to a willing and appreciative listener base who believes in supporting art makes a difference.

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     Ether Diver (etherdiver@ravenation.club)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 03:54:34 JST Ether Diver

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     Sales wise I didn't start the year with any goal because I didn't expect to make much money (and it's not what's motivating me to make music) but I was inspired by a friend of mine, and an impressive number of sales early in the year, to add it as a goal.

     And you know, I think having a sales goal *definitely* helped me sell more albums! I set a goal of $100 a month from music sales and I hit that goal all but three months this year, and my average is *well* above $100/month.

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     Ether Diver (etherdiver@ravenation.club)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 03:54:35 JST Ether Diver

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     I think that's partly that Psychedelic Ghost Stories was a big step up from my previous work on multiple levels, and partly due the fact that Mastodon has been a much better platform for finding an audience than anything else I'd tried previously. (Thanks, Mastodon!)

     Here's that album, if you haven't heard it:

     https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/album/psychedelic-ghost-stories

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     Ether Diver (etherdiver@ravenation.club)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 03:54:36 JST Ether Diver

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     And second, continuing my streak of continuous days with at least one "new" stream every day for a full year (the streak started Nov. 28, 2022) or longer.

     And I accomplished both! My streak of days with a stream is still ongoing and I hit 10k in September!

     My average streams per month for 2023 was ~710, with a mean of ~540. Interestingly I had almost exactly three times as many streams this year as last!

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     Ether Diver (etherdiver@ravenation.club)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 03:54:37 JST Ether Diver

     I started 2023 with a handful of simple goals for my music, and as I accomplished them (or hit very close) I added a few more "stretch" goals to keep me engaged.
     (Gotta gamify those tasks that aren't inherently rewarding or I'll never do them.)

     Let's start with streams! I started the year with about 3,200 streams lifetime for the project, all but a few hundred from 2022. I had two goals regarding streams for the year: first, hitting 10,000 streams overall ...