The Lucrative Artist

The Lucrative Artist

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The Lucrative Voice Essays

June 2025

"You're Not Working": The Lie Used to Control Artists, Builders, and Innovators
A manifesto for anyone whose economic power was framed as delusion by the people it threatened—yet they’re building a better world anyway.
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Brian Witkowski
2
Structure // Hype: Why Most Music Business Workshops Won’t Save You—And What Might
🎛️ “Financial Freedom” always comes with a funnel. But what happens when the music staff spells SCALE and FUNNEL instead of Do Re ME? Or when your…
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Brian Witkowski
The Erl King’s Da Capo: Structure Without Seduction—and Systems That Hold
Why an Earlier Setting of Goethe’s Poem Reveals the Key to Structural Sanity—in Music, in Business, and in the Way We Weather the Unknown
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Brian Witkowski
2
The Erl King Returns: When Coaching Becomes the New Pipeline for Artists
A Sequel to Erl King Economics — From BM Degrees to DM Sales Pitches: How One Performance Economy Feeds Another
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Brian Witkowski
Not ONE Referral
When Visibility Becomes Currency, Silence Becomes Complicity
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Brian Witkowski
1

May 2025

The Referral List I Wish School Had Given You
Mentors who meet the standard most don’t even know exists.
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Brian Witkowski
4
Curriculum Will Never Set You Free
Real income power can’t be graded, credentialed, or contained.
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Brian Witkowski
Erl King Economics: When Your Voice Becomes the Price of Validation
How artists were trained to think of money like it's a dance with the Erl King.
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Brian Witkowski
5
Passaggio Economics
Why You Can’t Earn in a Higher Range with Lower-Range Behavior
Published on The Lucrative Voice • 
The Cost of Institutional “Starving Artist” Programming on Real Careers
What conservatories, coaches, and cultural gatekeepers still don’t understand about financial sustainability
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Brian Witkowski
14
© 2025 Brian Witkowski, DMA
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