Time Is Our Most Valuable Resource

Speaking not so much as a composer but as a fellow human being, I believe it is safe to say that time is our most valuable resource. What I am about to tell you is so that so that you have context for the paragraphs that follow the next two.

I spent nearly all of 2025 fighting and defeating malignant cancer. The primary weapons used against my tumors were chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

I had been composing up until the therapies began. What I quickly discovered was that fighting cancer took up all the time and energy that I had, leaving none remaining for composing. Winter passed, then spring, and then summer. I finally got my strength back in the autumn of 2025 and resumed composing.

Having worked in the music publishing industry directly and tangentially for thirty plus years, I have learned that life in the digital age means self-promotion. This holds true even for published music for which one’s publisher also provides promotion for one’s music. In the past that was enough, but since the digital age promotion has become a shared responsibility.

 In 2024, I spent a good deal of time promoting my existing catalog of published and unpublished music title-by-title and genre-by-genre. This resulted in more sales and more importantly more performances of my music than in individual years leading to the pandemic. This is true even for my older titles.

After having beaten cancer last year, a fact that I already knew to be true was brought into sharp focus: each day is a gift, so one should spend one’s time doing either good deeds like volunteering one’s time for worthwhile causes, or doing what one loves the most, which in my case is composing. Since cancer entered the picture, I am not as keen on spending a lot of my remaining time on Earth keeping my name in the faces of classical music performers and consumers.

Therefore, I am asking those who enjoy my music and those who are unfamiliar with it to visit my website (stanleymhoffman.com) often for updates, and/or to follow me on other platforms such as ​Facebook (facebook.com/stanleymhoffman), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/stanleymhoffman), TikTok (tiktok.com/@stanthecomposer), and YouTube (youtube.com/@StanleyMHoffman). I will post about new titles as I make them available.

Most importantly, for my published works, visit the publishers’ websites: ECS Publishing Group (https://ecspublishing.com), Oxford University Press (https://global.oup.com/academic/category/arts-and-humanities/music), and Fatrock Ink (https://sheetmusicbyfatrock.com). For my unpublished works, visit my distributor’s websites: Sheet Music Plus (https://sheetmusicplus.com), Sheet Music direct (https://sheetmusicdirect.com), and oySongs (https://oysongs.com).

The same holds true for all other living composers. I think it is safe to state that we would all prefer spending our time composing rather than marketing. I know that your time is as valuable to you as mine is to me, dear reader, so please do what you can to help. Thank you for your consideration.