Finances 2024

Below are all the finances of Composuary laid bare. I believe firmly in complete transparency in finances. I have asked to profit from the work of other and want to make sure they understand what I am asking for and why. Where and how I spend money to operate this community is not secret.

Table of Contents

• 2024 Expenses
• 2025
  • Objective and Priorities
  • Budget

Expenses

The following budget and expense reports have both CAD and USD. This is because Composuary was initially started in the United States but I have since moved to Canada and brought it with me. Many of my contacts are in the US and I still have US based accounts. This makes budgeting and financial planning fun and exciting! For that reason though, the budget for future years shows both currencies as I have a subtle expectation of both spending and earning in both currencies.

2024 Expenses

2025

Objectives and Priorities

Below I've laid out the 2025 budget for Composuary. The budget is set as a number of priorities which act as funding tranches; I can personally fund priority #1 of my own accord. Priorities #2-#4 can only be achieved through financial support: purchases of 2024 CDs, direct donations, and grant awards. I suspect, given the size of the current pool of participants, that funding for 2025 will likely not fill tranche #2. Either way, I am one to over plan, so I've laid out how I imagine this budget would be distributed over 2025.

For the 2025 year, there are a few main objectives I'm hoping to achieve:

1. Get 50 active participants: I've had a fantastic time running Composuary and would love to see this project grow a little bigger. To make that happen, this next year I'm looking to do more advertising to try growing the awareness of this project. This quickly becomes and expensive proposition.
2. Live Performance During Gala: One of my biggest objectives for Composuary is to make the Gala more exciting and I'd love to be able to hire session musician to play some of the pieces made during Composuary.
3. Incorporate Composuary: Now that Composuary has run for a number of years, making the project "official" is becoming a rather important thing to do. As an individual person, it is challenging to file for the types of grants that Composuary would qualifies for, banking and other financial matters have to move through my personal accounts, and the lack of legal separation can be rather concerning given the long and litigious history of the music industry. Creating a separate corporate entity helps to alleviate a lot of these problems, but comes at a rather hefty cost.
4. Upgrade the Website: While the current website has been functional, it was never meant to be long lasting. It is currently built with a templating engine called mdBook (highlighted in Organizations of Importance). While effective, the theme and formatting don't feel like they fit particularly well with how I want Composuary to look and feel. While I dream of a website that acts as a small social media site which could handle all the music formats that people use (as well as bridge the connection to the major social media sites) the main goal for the coming year would be migrating off of a template based website in favor of something custom built to feel a bit more "homey".
5. Create Educational Video Content: I've spoken to many people about Composuary and a common refrain is "I'd love to do that but I don't know where to start". I'd love to put together some simple starter videos for Composuary, looking at how to make some of your first songs from the perspective of a song writer, a composer, and a DJ approaching musical problems from the harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic perspective.

I expect to make some of these priorities happen with the budget list below, but most of this effort will be "off-book" as I find time throughout the year to work on these various projects in my spare time. What money I'm able to find will help accelerate much of this effort, so thank you to the music makers that allow me to sell your work and to those that contribute directly to making this happen.

Budget