Music is the spice of life. That’s a saying that has long since become somewhat of a cliché, mostly because of how the world has evolved around the production of and consumption of music. I’m going to ask you a simple question which I don’t want you to respond to me directly about, but rather respond honestly to yourself. Do you download the music you listen to for free on the internet, copy it from your friends, colleagues and other acquaintances, or do you actually buy it?

I suppose you can already tell that this isn’t necessarily a post about music and the music industry itself and it’s certainly not about piracy. Rather, it’s about making use of a living example that forms part of all our realities to extract some valuable personal growth and development lessons, which include the all-important economic aspect of modern-day life.

Music is indeed the spice of life and so is humour. I preach the limited use of social media if that deployment is of a mindless nature, but I’m also human and I’m not immune to some of the cunning contained in some of the memes which do the rounds in the social media circuits. One such meme that really got me was how someone proclaimed that he doesn’t feel a shred of guilt for downloading music for free online, simply because he has seen how these artists live through his engaging in another time wasting exercise, which is watching MTV Cribs.

Sure, I mean you can learn a lot from watching some of those informative and special interest TV channels and the shows they air, but something like watching MTC Cribs can make for a huge motivational factor. I mean let’s face it here – would you rather live in noisy, city apartment which drains more than 40% of your monthly salary in rent and utilities or would you rather live it up like the very musicians whose music you download online for free and yet somehow they still manage to live it up in those unreal houses?

So there’s nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from these celebs, but as with pretty much everything else under the sun, you definitely shouldn’t overdo it.

What I’m ultimately getting at though is that despite the piracy threat and the subsequent challenges which come with the increasingly digital age we’re living in, our favourite musicians still find a way to make loads and loads of money off of their God-given talents. The moral of the story is that you should find something which you’re really good at to dedicate your life to, because passion does indeed quite naturally follow talent. You will have a natural love for something you’re good at and if you keep working at it and you persist, even if for very long periods of time you don’t get any financial remuneration out of it, one day things will change for you in a huge way.

In this modern age people will pay stupid money to feature the two-cents of a figure they consider to be an expert or some kind of authority.