I have only my  individual viewpoint so sometimes it’s not that easy to see the bigger picture what are the biggest challenges. My own challenges are most of the times connected to the quality of my latest releases and so on.

I think the biggest change for me has been the income drop from albums. I used to get nice royalties from record labels, but since early 2000’s this income has pretty much disappeared. It’s getting really hard to record music with any kind of a budget. What I’ve been reading is that I’m not alone with this problem. And to be honest I don’t see how record labels could be making much money these days. The album sales are dwindling, LP printing costs are really high and it’s hard to make any reasonable money from streaming. From music publishing side I can still make decent money.

The situation with live music is getting harder of course. I don’t know if the situation is the same in Germany, but in Finland the small live clubs are suffering simply because the audience don’t drink as much as before. Many times it’s the beer sales that the club gets and the door goes to the band.

Some people say that the cost of touring is much higher than before. I haven’t noticed that to be honest. But I think this is due to the scale of touring that I do. I don’t do tours with nightliners these days or with loads of backline and technical personnel. Perhaps the wages of the technical personnel have risen..but I have no hard data on that.

… yes, I do a lot of different types of gigs. When I play solo I might play in DJ clubs and larger festivals during the summer. I don’t DJ myself and many timeds I’m the only live act in those events. I feel a bit out of place there, but those events are popular and almost always on weekends.

But most of my shows are in typical live venues. When I play with my band the venues can be quite small. Then I also do some projects with big bands and larger orchestras. In those cases the venues are much bigger. Concert halls and auditoriums. And as one might guess the pay is much better in these shows when I’m a guest soloist with a large ensemble.

I don’t actually know if it’s good or bad that I have worked in different scenes. I have simply followed my instincts and also chance has a lot to do with everything. I think financially it would be much better to stick to one style and one genre. But I’m a restless soul and I want to see the world!

I would have hoped  that I wasn’t a largely unknown artist in Germany. If I was a bit more known I could make more guest soloist gigs with the big bands. Like NDR big band and so on. I do have several big band albums that I have done with the Finnishs national big band UMO, so the repertoire is there.

Of course my diversity has been an asset when I have done music for films. I play all kinds of exotic instruments and they are very useful when making soundtracks. I’m a huge film fan. In recent years me and my wife have watched all the Kurosawa films and loads of films from Japan between 1955-1985.  There is some fantastic music in those films. For example all music by Masaru Sato is great!