So, here's the big question...is it possible to make a living as a musician?
Without hesitation, my answer is a flat out yes. I have been a full time musician now since 1998 and I have managed to make a middle class living with it. But, this has not come without a price.
First of all, there is the fact that I have next to no social life at all. The reason? I spend so much time either researching opportunities for performances, or actually performing that, when I finally do have some rare free time, all I want to do is either sleep or spend a little time with my family.
Without hesitation, my answer is a flat out yes. I have been a full time musician now since 1998 and I have managed to make a middle class living with it. But, this has not come without a price.
First of all, there is the fact that I have next to no social life at all. The reason? I spend so much time either researching opportunities for performances, or actually performing that, when I finally do have some rare free time, all I want to do is either sleep or spend a little time with my family.
Secondly, there are the rigors that my body must constantly go through. There are many late nights and, with a young daughter to raise, very early mornings. This means that I the average amount of nightly sleep I'm able to get is far below what most people experience (I average about 4 hours to 5 hours of sleep a night). I have little down time because I must constantly be doing things to keep the ball rolling. Not to mention, some of the harsh environmental conditions I have been submitted to...ie, doing high energy outdoor shows in blazing 100 degree weather, with little time to hydrate or even eat because of the lack of time available to set up. The list goes on and on.
Before I go any further, I would like to make PERFECTLY CLEAR that I am NOT complaining. I am simply trying to enlighten those who do not understand what it takes to do this for a living. I lovingly call these folks "civilians".
Now, I would like to get to the point of this blog post, which is to share my thoughts as to what I feel it now takes to have a successful career in music, especially in this new millennium and digital age that we are in. I feel that there are several ingredients or "conditions" that must exist. They are as follows:
Now, I would like to get to the point of this blog post, which is to share my thoughts as to what I feel it now takes to have a successful career in music, especially in this new millennium and digital age that we are in. I feel that there are several ingredients or "conditions" that must exist. They are as follows:
- You must start young - This is true for ANY musical genre. And, it is gravely important in regards to achieving a highly proficient level on your instrument of choice. This is because if you want to be purely a performer, you are going to spend so much time looking for opportunities that you will find time for practicing rapidly being eaten away.
- You must be able to put a team of people around you - In other words, you will need to think in terms of being a small business and find a way to acquire someone to eventually take care of the researching of venues and performance opportunities, someone to handle certain aspects of your marketing, someone to do the actual phone calls to get you booked, etc.
I know a ton of musicians who read this will probably roll their eyes, but they CANNOT deny the simple fact that, as long as you must do EVERYTHING yourself, there will always be a ceiling as to how much money you can ever earn. It's simple math...the more time you must use up trying to handle the "back office" end of things, the less time is left for the actual performance end of things. The less you perform, the less money you can earn through performing or selling merchandise during that performance.
By the way, how do you compensate this team of people I'm suggesting you have? Well, that is somewhere where one must use the creativity that we are born with as artists, because that money isn't going to be there in the beginning. - You must become well established and reach a certain level of success by your late 20's - This is another thing that I think a lot of musicians are going to roll their eyes at me about, but I will hold fast in my opinion. The reason I state this is because, as one gets older, and certainly by their mid to late 20's, one will have more financial responsibilities. That's just a fact of life. There is no one out there that can tell me that their level of expenditures has not changed and gotten to be more expensive between the ages of 16 and 26.
So, when I say you must reach a certain level of success, I mean that you must reach a point in your career where you can pay ALL of your bills and still have something left over after you have done so. If you can't do that, then it is time to look at doing something else with your life before you reach your 30's and start to have to worry about even more complicated things like a significant other, or kids, or a house....you get the point. - You must master time management - I think this one is obvious! Even if you can find other people to take care of some of the other things that you must do, as I mentioned in #2, there are still so many things left to do that you will still have to take care of yourself.
- You must master technology - If you are a musician (or any type of artist) and you don't have a BETTER than average command/knowledge of the internet, computers, social networking, etc. you might as well pack it all in now.
- You must have some sort of game plan - I don't care how many different ways you can say this, but it is simply a fact that if you don't know where you want your destination to be, you can't possibly find a route there!
- You must have a drive that is so strong that it borderlines on fanaticism - This is such an important ingredient! Music and the arts in general are so challenging to make a living at and be successful that I feel that you actually need to be a little bit "crazy" to do it. There are so many factors that are constantly working against you, and you will face so much rejection, and so many people telling you that this or that can't be done (most notably, even some of your closest relatives), that you honestly must have the absolute strongest of convictions to stay the course.
So, certainly I think most of the musicians who read this will think I'm full of it or don't know what I'm talking about. But, as I was careful to mention at the top of all of this, this is MY theory or opinion.
Of course, any of this could be completely offset if one were to get super lucky, be discovered or signed to some sort of big record deal. However, these are simply not likely scenarios. The overwhelming majority of musicians and artists out there are "D.I.Y." (Do It Yourself).
So why am I writing all of this?
I'm not doing this to vent my frustrations...I'm not frustrated! I'm doing this because (A) I think "civilians" need to have a better understanding of those of us out there who are serious about what we are doing as artists and that we are not all flakes, as is commonly perceived, and (B) if a young person should happen to stumble upon this blog, and actually take the time to read all of this, I want them to know the honest truth about what being a musician really means...especially if you want to actually make a living at it.
This is not for everybody and it most certainly is not a game. And even if it were a game, this would be chess, not checkers!
by Shenole Latimer
