Surviving as a musician

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I think it is a safe bet that most of us on this website are musicians to some extent. Composers, performers, producers, sound designers etc. Many people want to do music for a living, but I think many of them don't really think it over completely. As I discovered, composing music full-time would be very boring. Plus, there are no benefits and the pay is highly variable; that is, if there is any pay at all.

Which is why most of us must do something else to be able to afford to eat. Right now I do all the inventory stuff for an RV company, but in May I go to write my high-school equivalence test as I had to leave school around age 17. After that I plan to work security for a bit and then take on the Police application process. I have already begun preparing for the physical part of the application process. It's not gonna be easy.

So what do YOU do to support your music hobby? Any other career path/goals you are pursuing aside from music? Do you like your day job or hate the hell out of it? Would you WANT to do music full-time?

Those few of you that have managed to make music and audio-related things into a full-time job, what do you love about it and what do you hate about it?

[DusK]

As I discovered, composing music full-time would be very boring.

For you. I'm sure many composers would disagree.

It's always a good idea to have a plan B. I don't expect to make any money off of my music in the near future, so working other jobs keeps me afloat. I'm also studying computer science because there's a much greater likelihood of scoring a decent-paying job than if I went to school for something like music composition.

[Dissidia]

I'm thinking of webprograming/designing on the side.

[Frederic Petitpas]

I work at the guitar shop while studying electrical engineering; I figured I could build my own house and design my studio with the big money and also learn interesting stuff about electricity that translate into music and gears like hertz stuff, analog gears and like design my guitar pedals and amps and that kind of stuff. Oh I had my share of peanut butter, have nothing to eat, play in various bands, believed utopias like living because of my music. But still, I play in a death metal band and we're guys with other jobs like one is gonna be teacher in like politics or something, one dude is boss for a construction company, another works at shows doing the sound for the artists and another one is about to become some kind of "metal" engineer (while being a metal head with long hair, it wasn't metal enough he went study minerals). We gonna play in a 2-days "brutal" metal fest in a few weeks and we have no idea if we'll get paid more than simply "free beers"... but like, that's why we do it, right ? For the fun and the people head-banging I guess, not so much for the big income. I know a lot of great and well known bands that don't rely on their music to eat but rather take their vacations according to their Tours and have a real job the rest of the year, they just don't tell you in interviews and stuff (and interviewers never ask lol). And I know that with a little bit of courage and perseverance in school wil get you a lot more money than what you would do even in a successful band. I wish I had realized much earlier that in order to get alllll the stuff you need you need a good job and a lot of money. Because you do need a lot of money if you want to have a real studio of your own. Sorry for the roman.

[PROTO·DOME]

As a music student who's just about to leave uni and has no idea what he's going to do, please lock this thread and make it go away forever.

[zircon]

How is this off topic in any way? Moved to Community.

[Benjamin Briggs]

my big step forward this year is purchasing a laptop and learning how to DJ

performing live is simply the only option if I want any kind of "career" out of my music :]

[Meteo Xavier]

Quick question to participating posters here.

I started a related topic in Workshop thread, Music Marketing Online and Getting a Fanbase, with the hopes of taking what's being learned and posted and turning it into a forum guide for how to market yourself and survive as a musician.

My question is, would anyone be ok with me using anything posted here that would be helpful and contributing it to this guide I'm interested in building?

I hope that doesn't come off as asinine as it sounds.

[SenPi]

Well, my first passion was Compsci. While in highschool I started doing the music thing, and got *really* into it during university. I'm graduated now, and work as a.. sort of everything kind of guy (as far as comp sci goes).

So now I do music during most of my spare time, and I have a career that funds it. 2 Years ago, I bought some DJ gear, and I spin at clubs/Anime Cons/etc here and there whenever I get a gig.

I'd love to make music/DJ as a living. But until I got really well known it definitely wouldn't pay as well as my current job, and that kinda sucks, but that's the industry, and there isn't too much you can do about it.

[Mak Eightman]

I get to engineering academy right after the school at 16.

At 21 a get my automobile-engineer diploma(with London IEAS(or something)sertificate).

And the best job i found is a semi-legal car fixxer, mostly I have to deal with paints and lot of toxic stuff:mrgreen: I work from 9am to 5pm(sometimes to 9pm)and have only sunday to rest. But I like my job.

Music? I don't have any thoughts about fame or tones of money, cause I live on Earth in Russia:< I just love music and now i have a feeling that music starting to love me. I have no idea what will happen with my hobby or with me, so i just live.

But yes, at some level I'll contact some ppl with some offer.

[DrumUltimA]

I'm finishing grad school right now, which will be my second degree in music. Both of my parents are full time musicians, and on my dad's side, both of his parents were full time musicians.

How do I survive now? By being a student. I'm employed by the university as a teaching assistant, with two different appointments (so technically, I'm "two" teaching assistants). This work pays not only for school, but provides for me a living stipend. In addition to this, I teach lessons outside of school, take freelance gigs whenever they come up (which isn't often), work for a small sampling company you people should know about if you don't already, and work for 4.5 hours a week in the school computer lab. Right now, all of these things together is just about enough to get by.

Going into music can be a really rewarding experience, but I'll tell you guys the same thing my teachers have told me, and what I tell all of my students: going into music professionally (especially in my field) is an extremely irrational decision. If you want to be a professional musician, you have to be so bat-shit crazy that there's no way you could do anything else. If you could be just as happy in another job, do that. Chances are it will be less work and you'll make more money.

Once I graduate, I don't know what I'm going to do! To find work, I need to know what it is that I want people to know me as, and then capitalize on that. I'll also need to surround myself with my existing network as best I can. Making friends as a musician is important--given you are sufficiently competent, friends will hire you. Friends like working with their friends.

That all being said, I'm not above "moonlighting" (working another job not related to music simultaneously). Most musicians aren't. Waiting tables or working retail or anything like that part time is often a necessary step in the process of building your professional career.

Man I can't wait until I graduate

[Ryan Jobson]

I have been working full time 8:30 - 5 ever since I first started dabbling in music 3 years ago. I have been serious about music production for about 6 months now, doing everything in my spare time on weekends and in the evening; finishing more tracks, working on production skills, watching tutorials, etc. Now I have decided to go take some courses on music and also go from full time to part time work to focus more on music. My day job is marketing, but that will be soon phasing out over the summer.

I would love to compose music for video games, film, documentaries, etc., but I also would enjoy other jobs in the music industry - foley, sound design, field recording, audio engineering. My main plan is to just try and be a total hoss and learn as much about music production as possible while I have the time now, while working part time and taking courses, and eventually get my foot in the door for a job in one of the areas I mentioned above. Also, I'd love to work at ArenaNet one day. Gotta dream big, eh?

Minor details like marketing yourself, going 10,000 miles to gain an inch in the music industry, working on your portfolio, demo reels, intern or take opportunities wherever, etc. - all that stuff I recognize and will include in this "master plan" of mine

It all comes down to one thing in my mind - if you try... if you REALLY try and put a damned good effort in, you WILL see results. No excuses. 7pm - 1am (give or take) is plenty of time to work on what needs to get done in your life for you to move forward.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Some pretty good posts so far.

I know a lot of great and well known bands that don't rely on their music to eat but rather take their vacations according to their Tours and have a real job the rest of the year, they just don't tell you in interviews and stuff (and interviewers never ask lol).

I think I saw an interview with Chuck Billy where he said he's a supervisor for some company...can't remember what. Regardless, the vocalist for Testament would probably be an awesome boss.

[PrototypeRaptor]

my big step forward this year is purchasing a laptop and learning how to DJ

performing live is simply the only option if I want any kind of "career" out of my music :]

QFT!

Live performances are really the only way to survive in the "normal" music business model as we know it, imo.

But with the internet and its total integration with society at this point, I believe there are plenty of new entrepreneurial options out there to try if you stretch your imagination.

EX: I've been toying with/trying to work out the logistics of setting up an "edm studio" where I could have one-on-one lessons via email/skype with interested producers covering not only mixing, but composition techniques - like a hybrid of traditional classical training geared toward writing interesting electronic music aimed at developing an individual's style instead of just HOW TO WOBBLE.

gotta get creative at this point, but I'm probably just crazy

[TheNESimplicity]

Right now I'm a high school sophmore(but I want to major in Mechanical Engineering). I don't really have a day job or anything so besides reading books, I read music. I don't think I want to do music full time, I kinda like being a nobody.

I support my hobby by playing with my brother(he plays guitar while I play bass). I have other friends that I normally talk to about music and what I can do to get better.

[Benjamin Briggs]

QFT!

Live performances are really the only way to survive in the "normal" music business model as we know it, imo.

But with the internet and its total integration with society at this point, I believe there are plenty of new entrepreneurial options out there to try if you stretch your imagination.

EX: I've been toying with/trying to work out the logistics of setting up an "edm studio" where I could have one-on-one lessons via email/skype with interested producers covering not only mixing, but composition techniques - like a hybrid of traditional classical training geared toward writing interesting electronic music aimed at developing an individual's style instead of just HOW TO WOBBLE.

gotta get creative at this point, but I'm probably just crazy

yeah but how do I woble

[Monobrow]

you wub a dub dub

[Level 99]

Edit: I wrote a huge rant on the subject of being a professional musician but decided to not confuse or irritate people too much

I work with a specialized branch of computers and work between 40-65 hours a week, typically. I have a lot of on-call and off-hours responsibilities so music as a hobby, while thankfully affordable by a job I love to do, is hard to squeeze into the sporadic spurts of free time. I'm very fortunate to have a job I am happy with to support a hobby I love doing, and am able to keep my hobby pure without having any kind of monetary pressure on it.

[StreetFlare]

I'm hoping to do a professional music production and performance degree next year, if all goes well with my final year of high school. Who knows, I might have stuff ready for posting LONG before then....(in my damn dreams!)

[ad.mixx]

ATM I'm just a student, but I really want to live off my music. I'm hoping to move far away from Georgia and the south in general and try to compose music professionally for a living for film scores or games. Even indie stuff. That's the dream at least.

I'd love to work as some sort of computer tech until I can actually start making money off of it though. Maybe even some kind of good paying retail (anything but food please). It's not like I'm getting married or anything like that anytime soon, so I'm totally cool with anything that can support me - I'm not necessarily looking for anything too fancy right when I get out of school. Just as long as I'm not living in the ghetto or with my parents.

But other than that, I'm trying to network as much as possible atm, get people to know me, and basically chasing opportunities as they come so I can get my resume started. Anything that will help me further down the road. I'm only 19 at the moment, so I feel like I have a long time to squeeze myself into the industry. But I'm definitely not just going to screw around either.

[Nabeel Ansari]

I'm hoping to do a professional music production and performance degree next year, if all goes well with my final year of high school. Who knows, I might have stuff ready for posting LONG before then....(in my damn dreams!)

It's not nearly as impossible as you may think it is.

As for my plans, I'm a high school junior right now, but I've been pretty convinced that I want to do a double major with Music Industry and Computer Science.

The music industry will help provide me some sort of setting for what I really want to do (vgm composing) while the computer science will help open doors for me to get a dayjob.

The reason for this is that unless you're zircon with 9 different musical incomes between albums, sample libraries, licensing, and vgm, surviving on music alone just doesn't seem practical to me. I plan to do lots of different musical stuff other than vgm like synths/sample libraries as I listed above, but I might not be nearly as successful (still a kid).

[Diodes]

Well I got a computer science degree in college (with a minor in music technology) because my plan was to work a stable 9-5 job and work on my music on the side. This plan didn't work out so well because I hated my job so much that it made me depressed, and too emotionally/mentally drained to really make the many hours I had outside of work useful for any creative things.

So I quit my job about 5 years ago to explore my other options, and stumbled into music teaching. I am now a private teacher of musical instruments at a studio, teaching mostly kids during after school hours on weekdays. I work roughly 25 hours/week, and make enough money and have enough time to support myself and my creative projects. (When I say my "creative projects," I mean my own personal projects outside of teaching, such as writing music and performing.) I also sometimes perform live and make some extra money doing that, but by far my bread and butter comes from teaching.

It's nice that I work in the music field for my day job, because working with other musicians has helped me grow as a musician myself, and has had the added benefit of expanding my network of other musicians. However, I have many interests and believe there are many different jobs I could have done that I would be happy to do, and could still work on my music in my spare time. There are probably even software jobs out there I would have been happy to do too, that might have still allowed me enough spare time (and sanity) to work on music, but this works out for me, so whatev.

[Nabeel Ansari]

QFT!

Live performances are really the only way to survive in the "normal" music business model as we know it, imo.

But with the internet and its total integration with society at this point, I believe there are plenty of new entrepreneurial options out there to try if you stretch your imagination.

EX: I've been toying with/trying to work out the logistics of setting up an "edm studio" where I could have one-on-one lessons via email/skype with interested producers covering not only mixing, but composition techniques - like a hybrid of traditional classical training geared toward writing interesting electronic music aimed at developing an individual's style instead of just HOW TO WOBBLE.

gotta get creative at this point, but I'm probably just crazy

Please do so. I would love to have a chance to learn from you.

[Xenon Odyssey]

I have a degree in Music Composition!

I now live with my parents while trying to find a stable non-music job that will help me pay off the giant debt I dug myself into because that's how cool I am.

Also doesn't help that I won't be able to use music to support myself because I'm a lazy shit, although I'm still trying to figure out if I'm truly the problem or if other factors are involved (i.e. environment).

[ectogemia]

I'm very fortunate to have a job I am happy with to support a hobby I love doing, and am able to keep my hobby pure without having any kind of monetary pressure on it.

That's the route I'm taking. I think I'm "too old to begin the training" to become a viable composer. Instead, I'm front-loading the effort now to become a dentist so that I can have enough money and then some to indulge in my hobby without any kind of monetary pressure on it. I want to take it a step further even and take a dip into entrepreneurial dentistry and hopefully establish a passive income stream that will take the monetary pressure off of working, too Ain't that the dream?