[News] A look on the situation and a glimpse of behind the scene (Patreon)

Hello Patrons,

There are many things going in the background and I wanted to write a post to inform you. Even though there wasn't many posts here nor new youtube videos, I'm working really hard on many elements that each require weeks of work. Since I worked alone (until now) and I'm not a big company, my resources and time are very limited.

Right under, you'll find a partial list of the special elements I have to take care of in the following weeks. I really go into the details as transparency and authenticity has always been among my core values. Feel free to participate and share your opinion. I highly value that.

The objective is to explain why I may be a bit silent here sometimes, and also why it should get better soon (if things turn out as I hope). In all cases, it should be inconsequential on the quantity of content I share here. It's just unequally distributed over time. 

Logo and graphical identity

I have commissioned an artist to rework my graphical identify (logo, color palette, etc.), see below. However, I'm not much pleased by the colors. I do like the logo itself  though. I'm currently discussing with another artist to rework that logo and rework my whole graphical identity (again).

This is a very important element. If you give a look at my Patreon, YouTube, Bandcamp and website pages, the colors don't match and the look could be much better and modern. Once the new style is available, I'll finally be able to rework all the pages (I counted 23 different illustration formats, on 10+ websites).

Licenses for creators

I've been thinking about allowing other D&D content creators to use my work in their FoundryVTT modules. This is a pretty big topic, so I won't get into the details right now, but in short : for a certain Patreon tier, creators will be allowed to use some of my ambiences to go with their maps, products, etc.

I'm currently writing the licenses and speaking with different creators to offer a mutually beneficial deal. Also to avoid having my whole library uploaded in a single module :D

Animated videos and YouTube

Many among you discovered my work through YouTube. That platform is very hard to grow and market on, especially as an ambiences composer. The platform is cluttered with junk and noise. You can even pay 50$ on Fiverr to have some guy create a random 'meditation ambiences channel' with 10 videos. Many people fall into that trap, thinking they will create some cash cow videos that easily.

Spoiler alert : it doesn't work.

In that regard, the only way I have to protect myself is to have better videos (not even better sound, which is sad). Since I have no skill for 3D and animation, I've been looking for people to work with. Sadly, my search has been fruitless so far ; the people I tried to work with were unreliable at best.

However, I still have hope and a few ideas in my bag.

Hiring a marketer

Another big timetrap for me is promotion. Not only I hate doing that, but I'm also quite bad at it and it really sucks up my time on composition. In that regard, you maybe saw on YouTube or Discord that I've been looking to hire someone to take care of that. Among the applications I received, I've been discussing with two different people 

However, this process takes time and it's risky. These people may end up representing me directly, and since my reputation is very good in the TTRPG community, I have to be really cautious to keep it that way. I have to explain to them in details how to do the job, but also to make them understand my core values and what exactly I'm doing.

I thought about hiring a marketing company, but it's way out of the budget.

It's really hard for me to 'let go' some responsibility on a personal project. It's weird, I've worked as a Project Manager in cybersecurity for years, taking care of projects worth several millions at age 28 and it was quite easy, but allowing someone else to take care of the promotion of my work is very stressful.

Hiring another composer

This is kinda special. I'd like to offer more MUSIC on this patreon. Since it's hard for me to find additional time to compose one song per week (Guardians), I wanted to work with one or several composers to take care of that.

I would stick to ambiences (that's my jam, I love it so much) and the same amount of music from times to times, and let other composers offer additional music. The idea would be to give you enough content to think : "I have the Michael Ghelfi audio library, I don't need anything else", but both for ambiences AND music.

This is an idea that ran through my mind for weeks and weeks, and the more I think about it, the more I believe it could be great for everyone.

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If you read until now, I'm quite impressed and I thank you sincerely. I hope the english wasn't too bad :) Your opinion is much welcome, as usual.

I'll share new ambiences very soon!

Michael