Defining Musical Success
Do you view your music as an avenue to make a living? Or is it more like a church calling, where you put in a lot of time and effort without regard for any financial payoff?

These are questions you may have asked yourself during your musical endeavors. Every musician at some point comes to terms with his or her potential to make money or simply to make a difference. Your success depends on your talent, your motivation, your discipline, and yes, a little bit of luck - ok, a lot of luck!

But how you define success will determine your level of satisfaction with your music. When placed in dollar terms, success is easily measured because it is quantifiable. But if you define success in terms of the quality of your music, or in terms of how your music touches the lives of others, this is more difficult to determine. Of course, if your music is instrumental in the conversion of one person to the church, you may consider the payoff to be of more value than if you had sold a million copies of the song.

While most LDS musicians fall somewhere between the two extreme views of "my music should be only for the purpose of making money" and "I should shun the idea of making money with my music", here are some points to consider on each side of the issue.

Points to consider about making your music available for free
Efforts to make money will take time away from focussing on the quality and spiritual value of my music
Let's face it, trying to make money as a musician takes time. As if perfecting your talent wasn't time-consuming enough, now you've got the demo submissions, the performances, the endless promotional techniques, trying to make contacts in the music industry - and the list goes on. There's something very liberating in the decision to expect no monetary benefit from your music. Now you're free to focus on the quality of your music and touching the lives of others with the message your music conveys.

Musical talents are like church callings
The scriptures teach us that spiritual gifts come from our Father in Heaven, and our musical talents can certainly be considered among those gifts. Many patriarchal blessings make reference to these gifts and specifically state that we should use them to bless the lives of others. We never expect a monetary benefit from our church callings, because we consider our work in this capacity as a service. If we view our music in the same way, we avoid the expectation of compensation and free ourselves to anticipate only the spiritual benefits of our talents.

Trying to sell music will limit the size of the listening audience
There's no question that more people will listen to your music if they can get it for free. Couple this with the accessibility the internet provides, and the potential listening audience seems limitless. If the underlying goal is to get your music heard by as many people as possible, then free distribution makes good sense.

Points to consider about pursuing monetary benefits from your music
It costs money to make good music
Making a good sound recording not only requires a lot of time and talent, it costs money. If musicians are able to make money from that music, this allows more music to be made. We ought to be able to expect to cover the costs of making a CD, and even make some additional money to compensate for the time and work involved.

Musical talents are like a profession
In our market-oriented society, people do work and they get paid for it. Musical works are no different. Even the spiritual component should not dissuade musicians from receiving compensation for their songs. Many examples exist of church-oriented material which is bought and sold. These commercial transactions do not diminish the spiritual value of the material itself.

People expect to pay for music
Most people view music as intellectual property. They see value in it, recognize the efforts and talents behind its creation, and they expect to pay for it. Giving away good music for free trivializes the value of the work and suggests that musicians should not be compensated for their efforts. Intellectual property rights have been challenged in recent years from the likes of Napster and its clones. We should work to preserve these rights and the just compensation of musicians for their hard work.

LDS Music World asked Julie de Azevedo: How do you define musical success?
Everyone has to find his or her own definition of musical success, and I think my definition keeps evolving. My overall goal is simply to find joy in music. I want to enjoy every step of the process of writing, recording, and performing my own songs, and inspire and move the listener. It is so amazing to me that people care to listen to these little songs that take shape in my heart and mind.

Success to me, at this point in my life specifically, is having enough people care to listen that I get to continue doing what I love on a professional level. Success is also being able to have a "real life" too, to have meaningful family relationships. Another element of success to me is being able to work with great people who share a similar spiritual perspective about life.