2025 was an exciting year for me! Outside of work, I started playing guitar again after some years without playing. Naturally, I started observing a few things guitars, technology, and how things have changed, and I ended up drafting a few articles for this site under a new "guitar" topic. The problem is, I did not feel closer to finishing something the more I wrote. It felt like I was just opening up more questions.
And I'm not the kind of guy to say no to opening up more questions when there is space to explore them fully. So I decided to create that space for myself with Tubesandcode.studio, my new website for publishing tech-oriented articles and perspectives about the guitar universe.
When I jump into "hobbies," I don't commit halfway. I build the infrastructure to get the most out of them so I can push myself to learn. And of course, that pattern has been playing out for me as a guitarist. I was never going to be content to just "start practicing guitar again." It was inevitable that I was going to build infrastructure for sharing art, like this music player page I added to this personal site.
Since my initial article that started all of this, I have already published a number of articles, validating that it was a good decision to build a place to let myself do even more writing. And dots are definitely connecting in my head in terms of different parts of my career, so I wanted to jot down some thoughts about the experience so far. Maybe it will help someone else that wants to build a niche, passion-project website with monetization potential.
Statamic as a founder/owner, not just a developer
I've used Statamic extensively for both my day job and here on Kraieski.dev, and my love for it is continuing in this context where I'm ultimately responsible for far more than just technical decisions. It is an awesome CMS!
Of course as a developer, I want to work in ecosystems that are fun and productive and let me bend systems to whatever is required. That doesn't change with something like Tubesandcode.studio, but I have to be aware that this flexibility is just that, flexibility. After the initial building phase of my site, I've been able to get to the point where I can focus on content without having to worry about just "build, build, build." But the power of Statamic and Laravel is always there for when I will want/need to build powerful new features.
The point isn't to build the world's (or even my own) most technically advanced website, it is to advance my own content publishing goals.
Statamic's control panel UI is great and I am glad that I am using it to manage my new site!
Also, selling a starter kit on the Statamic marketplace seems like a cool way to ship an app in a "packaged" format where people can pay you through plumbing that is managed by someone else. Sweet deal!
Regarding hosting, I was briefly considering hosting the main site on Laravel Cloud (a managed/serverless platform I'm less familiar with), but ended up launching on a standard server on Laravel Forge. Marty Friedel, another friendly, talented Statamic developer, was kind enough to offer his perspective when I asked other developers how they would host something like this for themselves.
Could be an experiment to try given it is all pay as you go... but I feel there are too many compromises for how Statamic works that takes away the Statamic-ness of it.
— Marty Friedel (@marty.friedel.au) December 18, 2025 at 1:58 AM
This was regarding Laravel Cloud, and it's exactly this reasoning I landed on. There's all sorts of cool Statamic stuff I do on Laravel Forge without having to overthink things, so why lose that?
Learn in public
This is definitely the kind of project where one has to let go of the imposter syndrome. "I'm not a professional guitarist, what do I have to say here?" Well, that's the kind of thinking gatekeepers want to apply.
The truth is that non-professional musicians make up most of the market for musical gear, subsidizing the market for those that make a living by playing guitar (a category which I think is actually broadening with the rise of Youtube influencer/celebrity guitarists). The idea that gear reviews need to be by professional players for professionals limits the whole ecosystem. A gigging guitarist has different needs and priorities from a hardcore home studio guitarist. Yet gear reviews risk catching flak in the comments if there are any flaws in the performance.
For a project like Tubesandcode.studio, I am embracing that I am learning in public. My relevant expertise has nothing to do with guitar, ultimately, and everything to do with composing technologies. I think that is the primary skill that has let me earn a living, and electric guitar is inherently a modular, composable technology. I hope this ethos comes across properly in my writing and is appreciated by my readers!
Navigating an AI-influenced world
I can't launch this kind of content website in 2026 and pretend that LLMs will have no impact.
I've decided to commit very strongly to never using AI to generate text for Tubesandcode.studio. The whole point of a project like this is to populate the digital universe with real human artistic experiences, perspectives, and taste. If I choose to shovel AI slop articles at all point, I've lost the plot and I'm no longer even attempting to do what I set out to do: share my voice and knowledge.
Monetization: avoid putting all eggs in one basket
I don't want to hate on any human being trying to make a living as a musician or with a music-related career, but the monetization environment around guitar-related content is so aggressive that it can cause you to lose hope in getting any straight information from anyone.
One time I got about halfway into an engineer's video essay on YouTube about how he regrets decades of his career using the SM57 microphone (an industry standard), and then suddenly he reveals that you should buy the special cab mic from the company sponsoring the video! How can a viewer not feel abused at this point? How can I view that whole video as anything other than a ridiculous infomercial with (algorithmic ragebait) lipstick?
The recent news that Tailwind Labs had to lay off 75% of the engineering team is weighing on just about everyone's minds in the tech world, too. Can software, especially open-source, still be monetized? Is AI going to run over everyone in the tech/engineering world?
The connection between the guitar-influencer environment and Tailwind is that I think both are examples of fragility when your monetization model lacks sufficient diversification (not blaming Tailwind, but he have to try to analyze and understand things that happen in the world instead of just crying about how unfair things are). We paid for a Tailwind UI (now Tailwind Plus) license at my job. I bought their design book, refactoring UI. I've even bought some Tailwind merch to rep my favorite CSS framework in the real world.
A lot of the guitar content you see on youtube and in the "mainstream guitar media" is funded solely through guitar content. And that compromises incentives. For me, that would be unacceptable. I already established that I started this whole site to publish my own voice and thoughts. By contrast, Tubesandcode.studio is monetized with various layers/models that gives me increased optionality on work I've already done or plan to do. My monetization structure currently is as follows:
- Web Design Assets: As soon as LemonSqueezy approves me, sales will go live for my "Instrument Wood Texture Image Pack" at $5. If that sounds goofy to you, designers absolutely pay for that kind of stuff all the time. Would you rather use AI slop generated wood in your designs, or real images of wood taken by a real human photographer making artistic decisions?
- Statamic starter kit for musicians (Banddeck): This is basically like a self-hosted Linktree-inspired landing page, but with a custom music player for musicians that want to stand out and have their own cool spot on the web that goes beyond what major platforms offer! Will go on sale in the Statamic Marketplace following the release of Statamic v6, but is fully ready to build client sites with today (message me if that's something you are interested in)- Demo Site
- Promotion of my 2021 Livecoded EDM EP: This is already available for streaming/sale on Bandcamp
- Affiliate marketing links (w/ proper labeling): 3% commission on Amazon, applications with other brands pending
- The possibility of new, exciting clients for web development/design and social media data analysis: I love thinking about interesting new challenges with awesome people!
So clearly, I have plenty of ways of making some money that. And I'm not desperate. A lot of this is basically just repackaging stuff from my existing projects to be legibly marketable. At this point, it's largely about optionality and publishing ability with material I wanted to produce anyway. And I'm operating with the assumption that everything I'm offering at this first stage is already in a commoditized market.
I will happily sell you an audio interface if you want to get into home recording, but as of today, I'm not going to lose my shirt if I fail in this quest.
There is also coherence between product offerings and content I have already published. For example, I already wrote an article about how guitars can be used to help inspire parts of website designs.
Some people might have a problem with using Amazon links (since we need to support local music businesses), but I see them as just a liquidity tool. I have applications pending to work with music brands directly that I sought out based on alignment. If those applications fall through for whatever reason, I don't need to be too bothered because Amazon isn't choosy. My site is already integrated with this "universal ecomm liquidity layer," which lessens my dependence on brands liking me for moneymaking opportunities.
Do I sound like someone who needs to be afraid to speak my mind and piss off brands? Fuck no! (or at least that's my hope lol)
I might make monetization mistakes here or there, but I am not all in on them.
Check it out or build your own stuff!
One thing I'm seeing (which is already something that I am paid to engineer around at my day job) is that crawling/indexing from search engines is really rapidly becoming a perceivably finite resource that takes time to tap into with new sites. Currently, Tubesandcode.studio is only partially indexed by Google. Therefore, I am reliant on social media and word-of-mouth to generate traffic at scale right now. So, if this whole project sounds like something interesting to you, I invite you to follow Tubesandcode.studio on Bluesky or X and share any content you find worthy. It's always appreciated! But I accept that plenty of people reading this will have zero interest in my new project, and that is part of the reason for splitting it off into a new project.
If you are looking to build any sort of internet business for yourself, I encourage you to think about various versions of what it could look like and what skills you are really bringing to the table. Maybe this article gives you ideas about how different things can be marketed. Things don't have to be all figured out if you give yourself optionality and room to adjust your vision in the future. The world needs more humans publishing, sharing, and connecting, not less!
Thanks for reading! This was initially going to be much shorter (like everything that I try to write lol), but I couldn't help but notice connections to the situation with Tailwind.