Quote:
Originally Posted by Khazul
For alot of us - we aint after the loads-of-bling scenario, however some of us are after the give up your day job and earn an equivelent living from music full time - for me that means an income that can match my IT job so I can still pay the mortgage etc and ideally in a more enjoyable way - so not an easy jump to make without some industry help at the right level.
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+1
I've never really been one of those people who desperately wanted to be a full time musician above all else, or considered not being one any type of failure, but of course, I've had moments where I've considered the possibility. I made a decision about 5 years back that whilst I could probably scrape a living doing music, I'd end up having to do things I hated- like making tracks in genres of music I really dislike, DJ at weddings, etc. to make ends meet. In a way, choosing to keep music as something I only do
exactly what
I want to seems to have more artistic integrity than the alternative. My music is definately improving over the years, but I'm progressing well in my career (probably faster than in my music, comparatively), so the amount I'd have to earn in music as a "starting wage" becomes more and more unrealistic as time wears on.
That's before you start looking at real world practicalities; my gf is a full time self employed writer and mortgage/insurance people only really tolerate that because of the comparative stability of my job. If I became self employed too and had patchy income (not even that much less, just coming in unpredictable dribs and drabs), we'd really struggle to be able to keep our house come mortgage renewal time. It's not even like my "day job" is something I loathe doing, or even "just a job" to me, I really enjoy it and would do it anyway as a hobby, even if I was independantly wealthy, so this makes it even less palatable to jack it in if doing so involves any appreciable paycut, loss of security, etc.
Ultimately, any money I make from music just goes towards making a dent (and that's all it is), in the cost all the gear and records has had over the years. My dream situation would be to make enough money from music that it just negated all the costs associated with it, so it was effectively a "free" hobby. Thereby freeing up money for my other great passion, motorcycles.
