I don’t like it when people tell me that you can’t make a career out of being a musician, or from working in the music industry. It’s utter bullshit is what it is.
You actually can. The people that tell me you can’t don’t know about music. They are stuck in the mindset that a career is something that you make money from, but what a career means is something you choose as a profession. Obviously, my to-be-profession is to work in the music industry. Just because it’s my profession doesn’t necessarily mean I have to make money from it. I also don’t like it when people tell me that, because since they told me that in the first place, they assume that I’m silly and naive, and don’t have a grip on reality. Yes, I do realise that money exists, and I do realise that becoming famous and making millions is a very hard thing to do.
However, what they say is partly true – at first, you’re not going to be able live off just live-gigging and selling CDs. But who said I wanted to live off from just making music? Who said I wanted to make money from gigging and selling CDs? Maybe I want to work in the music industry because I just like it? This is what they fail to understand – that music is not just an everyday office job. Music is so much more – it’s a bit hard to explain actually.
When someone clocks in to work, they go about it, not thinking why they are actually clocking in to work in the first place. Do you actually like what they do? I have a job and I only do it because my mum gets the shits when I have to spend her money. Musos on the other hand, they yearn for something more than a little bit of that satisfaction from the greens. While I don’t get a “reward” (read: money) for it, I get so much satisfaction and a sense of self-development from it rather than getting my check at the end of week. Yeah, getting money is satisfying at first, but it fades soon after. When I play a song with other musicians, it fills me up like a good meal and it stays there. It stays there so much that it makes me want more. I feel sorry for the people out there who have their minds so trained on getting money in their pockets. Unfortunately, my mum’s one of those people. While I do think about money like my mother sometimes (unfortunately. That’s what you get for growing up in a capitalist society), I feel that music is the only thing that stops me from becoming the money-infatuated robot my mother is. Sounds corny and cliche, but it’s true.
It was interesting, because I had a Tafe assignment to do, and we had to interview someone who had worked in the music industry. From my interview, and everyones’ interviews in the class, I found out that you don’t make a lot of money from working as a musician or in the music industry. The person I interviewed, she told me that she was the head of an indie record label and while she did make money, it was just enough to keep the record label running. Any money going towards the wages were non-existent. You don’t really work for an indie record label; it’s more of a volunteering thing, except you still need to send resumes and everything. She told me that she would rate her worst experience in the music industry as a five out of ten, and her best experience as a ten out of ten. She then averaged it out as a 7.5 out of ten. And she didn’t even make a cent out of running a record label. Ask someone during morning peak hour when everyone’s off to work how they would rate their job out of ten. I would give mine a four. I wonder what other people would rate their work as? I’m willing to bet that they would rate it around the middle as well. In another interview, one person said they would rate their work as an eleven out of ten.
And this is what they don’t get – that I take part in music because I like it. I don’t do it because I want to make money from it. It’s as simple as that, really. I don’t see why it’s so hard for them to see that?
And just out of curiousity, I’m going to test out this poll thing.
Posted by Wendy Voltaire 
Posted by Wendy Voltaire 
Posted by Wendy Voltaire 
