In my experience the equation gets particularly difficult for musicians who are in fairly successful bands but don’t write a lot of the band’s music. Actually, scratch that, those are facts from 10 years ago (before streaming became the norm), even though record sales were already nosediving hard.
Being a successful semi-professional musician the way @crypticresonance defined it is not easy, even if we forget about actually earning money with the music. Writing, producing and recording your music like a pro? Fine, I’ll do it. Doing everything else like a pro that entails being a semipro artist while getting nothing in the way of financial gain (or compensation)? That’s a harder pill to swallow.
It is possible to make additional profit with DJing, my neighbor gets profitable with jobs on marriage party´s but thats not underground play your music - its tailored for the guests, and plays shitty pop songs, and later at night 3,4 dance tracks maybe if the couple is younger. Its not what i would like doing during a weekend but oh well, one night pays 1000+ Euro, that is a lot more than you would get as underground dj playing a 2h set.
I agree. I have to work a day job as well as taking music seriously. It’s not hard to find time for the actually-making-music part; but everything secondary to that that actually sells the music - social media and label stuff and press releases - every time I think about doing that stuff I want to die.
I have an IT job and work remote most of the time (even before Covid). There’s definitely downtime/ in-between project time, and some of the management works east coast, so the day never goes past 3pm. Even so, without a commitment or a track/plan, you may meander since there’s no one holding you accountable (as opposed to if it were a job). Lately, I’ve been making a more concerted effort to spending time with music, learning music tech, working on the home studio, or doing music-related projects.
When i graduated from my art academy masters i banded together with a dozen friends i made there to start a collective with the intention to share the drudgery work, and join forces to organize shows, bookings etc. We re now 7 years in and managed to obtain structural funding for the next 4 years, and hired 2 assistants to professionalize the agency work, in other words to do the PR work of making connections with curators etc.
My message here is: if some of the work is too much for someone alone, it might be a good idea to join or create a group that s heading in the same direction.
Yeah, I did this about 2 years ago. I work in digital communication and went from a 5 day work week to 4 and if I don’t have to I’m never going back to 5 days. That extra day off makes such a difference. I’m spending way more time on my music and I’m taking it more seriously. I’m not making enough from the music to do it full time, but if things keep going like they are now I hope I get to cut another day and go to a 3 day work week somewhere later this year. That would be perfect I think.
Sounds maybe odd - but going for an album, with a project plan. I.e. write some story, collect sounds, arrange a track, make your own deadline. This is at least how our project driven IT world functions.
I know its hard to do it with something that should be fun, but i think that is the difference between casual and pro and the difference between making money from something what is done as a hobby. Maybe talent means less work - i have seen successful DJ´s /Producer having someone in the background as mentor - but that is not what everybody gets. Beeing your own mentor means spending time learning things the hard way.
A lot of musicians do sound design for film tv or games on the side, even the pro’s.
Finishing and presenting a project is perhaps more rewarding than any kind of monetary return.
But out there in the real world things can be cut throat and you have to have a hard shell.
Life is a confluence of energies and relationships that you have to take advantage of when they present themselves, it’s easy to miss the boat. Momentum is everything. I think every successful musician you see seized momentum at the first opportunity and never let go of it.
Me personally, I work in live audio-visual production. It seemed easy enough to get into, a lot of musicians work in the field so there’s that, and it’s close enough to my passions that I’m regularly around the tech that interests me. I shot for more of an academic career at one point, but struggled to keep a hold of it. Maybe something I’ll come back to at some stage but for me the AV stuff has always been too easy to fall back on.
I run my own (tech) consulting company, and I’ve been thinking for a while that I need to steer all my clients toward four day weeks. Feels like it would be a huge quality of live improvement.
for me teenage goals are also still valid: hanging around with cool people, improving my chances to get laid, visiting various fancy places (almost for free), etc etc. all these things still improve overall quality of life.
My other life is as a tech entrepreneur. I’ve gone through phases where music was my career and sole source of income, and phases where I didn’t do much music at all but for the occasional fill-in gig.
These days I have some freedom to create my own life balance because I own my own home outright, no mortgage, and I’m sitting on a nice six-figure nest egg of cash, plus other assets.
So both my tech work and music endeavors are now more about passion projects on my own schedule and not necessary for survival.
Admittedly, live performances over the past year have been almost non-existent, but I have been doing writing, arranging, producing my own music as well as music for other artists when I feel like it, so I still feel like I have a good balance between my tech work and music.
Sorry for my english lvl, there would be some mistakes.
I don’t want to discourage you with your art attitude, with your inner voice to make stuff. I’m fully support of @MattLxx point of view. Reason is, that to become semi-pro in field like art or sport, or maybe any field that require your attention, where you need to master something - these fields of interests strive to have your determination, willing to be not semi-pro or midlvl (mediocre) - be the best or among the bests, and then there would be higher chance to success, imo.
I saw in my life full time painters. That field is demanding for sure. I bet to make in music is as hard. Maybe world don’t need another ‘fillers’, imo, no negative.
tldr: If you at ease with your mind, happy and floating throu life and sounds as John Cage - I bet you wouldn’t ask that question.
Also, yeah, I know some guys like you describe. One of these work in Costumer Service and do music and labels for decade. Idk how happy he is, but he manage it somehow.
p.s. GBV was in their 30+ almost all band, Pollard working as a teacher and as a band they are manage to pull their stuff to major labels even.
I use to work as a cataloger in a library after I graduated college and that was one of the few times I had to actually focus on making music. It was a cool job to work having all the holidays off.
Yeah, it’s a great job if you’re not after like an impressive career trajectory but just want a steady job that pays the bills with lots of free time and flexibility. There’s a lot of (failed) musicians working at the library, hah!
Yeah, it was pretty chill there. The head librarian was always trying to push me to get a master’s in library science as there was/are very few males in the field.
Yeah, my boss tried to push me towards a master at first. I didn’t really feel like sacrificing that much time for a minimal pay raise, and thankfully as years went on my skills in IT and technology in general became invaluable and they hired me full time. Now, besides traditional library work I get to work with 3D printers, simple robotics and coding lessons for kids, even synthesizer lessons with iPads. It’s great and I can’t believe I got this lucky. Worst part of the job is that it gets a bit boring on quiet days, hah!
Summer were usually the slowest for me. I looked at the wages and salaries and noped out of that career path and eventually joined the military and became a MLT. Now I’m testing people for C19 and doing viral extractions.
I know some artists that occasionally do sound design or filmmusic stuff aside, but most of the really successfull ones (in the sense of somehow renowned ones) actually have their self-marketing as a fulltime job or some kind of label that they do music for but earn the real cash with, again, doing some marketing events or promotional stuff for that label.
Me myself: I am a freelance motion- and graphics designer, mainly for television, and do some audiovisual art performances, which keeps enough money coming in, but I also would not call my stuff musical, definitely more on the experimental artsy side of sound
).
