Q: I'm getting into the music biz because it's so lucrative...

... I'm in my early 20s and in the United Kingdom.

A: I can't speak to conditions for musicians in the UK, but here in the states, the music biz is lucrative for the few -- not the many.

Most musicians I know -- folks with a number of albums under their belts and continuing contracts who go out on tour -- have to work day jobs of varying kinds when they're not out on tour.

One pal has three bands, two of which regularly tour the US and Europe, where he just got back from a month or two ago. His biggest band often plays to crowds in the tens of thousands. But more than half the year he's back at the trendy used clothing shop, selling 'new old stock' (marked up through the roof -- but he's just an employee so he doesn't see any of that).

Another friend finally was able to quit the record store he'd been working in for years because the major headlining act he's been part of since their beginning is finally paying enough that he could give it up. He finally even bought a car. A used car, but a car. But he worked at the record store up through their third album. (This band is definitely one you've heard of. Maybe even seen, if your taste runs to the arty/progressive side of things. They came out of the ashes of another very popular modern rock band.)

At that record store, he worked along side one of the hippest producing DJs in LA, a guy who has been flown around the world to spin parties, but who also produces for some of LAs better rappers. He still has a couple of dayjobs, and fills in at the record store.


The music biz is very lucrative for one sector -- the people dedicated to making money off wannabes and dreamers.

Sometimes it's legitimate-enough services or products (whether they are needed or worthwhile or not); more often it's stuff cooked up simply to separate wannabes from their dough.

A prime example: the recording/music production diploma mills that have sprung up in the US and around the world. Here in the US, they work by lining up huge student loans so that students -- with little or no entrance qualification -- end up with huge loans (that, here in the US, due to changes in bankruptcy law, they probably would not even be able to escape in personal bankruptcy, the debt following them into their 'new' post-bankruptcy life). The education may be OK -- but many graduates report very mixed satisfaction with the education and many end up working as unpaid interns or for a pittance under the table (black market, as it were) simply because there are so MANY people just like them who thought they could be 'smart' making it in the music biz by trying to work the technical side -- only to discover that half of everyone else with a small studio has also hung out his shingle.

Big, once busy and prosperous studios are folding -- sometimes when they're still busy because they've had to lower block rates so deeply to stay competitive that it's simply cheaper to sell off the gear and close up.

Q: I've got some well-written songs -- what are my chances of making a living as a songwriter?

A: Let's just put it this way, my standard advice to everyone is to keep the day job.

There are folks who make a living off songwriting but they are few and very far between and tend to be both extremely disciplined, extremely dedicated to making a living rather than any sort of artistic impulse, and very well connected.

People think that it may be easier to get somewhere as a songwriter than as an entertainer -- but, perhaps ironically, it may well be easier to get somewhere as an entertainer. For some. The business is very much oriented to marketing.

It cares very little for artistic merit; it views craftsmanship through a very narrow lens, basically just as something that may help assure financial success, which trumps all other concerns.

The music business is absolutely filled with vampires, conmen, scammers, and victimizers and, to the extent they are successful, they are lauded with praise. If not, they're typically tolerated. Why? Because so many people in the biz know that they are only a few steps away.

The number of people with creative talent in show business is very, very small. But the number of people employed in the business, or making money off the business and those creative people are legion. So, in a sense, many or maybe most folks in the biz are dependent on the skill or talent of the few.

The music business has a much larger shadow industry which is dedicated to preserving the myth that you, too, can make it in the biz. Music superstore chains do not get by on the money spent by actual working musicians -- it's all about the wannabes.

Ditto many/most recording studios: they sell dreams, castles in the air. (One of the reasons I don't run a project studio, any more.)



If that sounds jaded or cynical, maybe. It's just that I've been paying attention to what I've heard from friends and acquaintances since the late 60s, even before I played or wrote music.

Yes, I do know some people who have done OK, even pretty well in the biz. (Mostly because I know a lot of people.) But, overwhelmingly, most folks who pursue getting over get shafted.

There is one very good reason to make music.

Because you love it.


Creating music can be one of the most rewarding of human endeavors, it seems to me. But I've known a lot of folks who walked away from music in bitterness -- some people who were very good at doing what they were doing -- because what they wanted was not something music itself could give them.

Me, I finally decided I loved making music too much to let my creative spirit be drained or twisted by the music biz.

I went back to my day job. It didn't hurt that I could charge more for my dayjob services than I could have charged for a studio with five times as much gear, mind you. But, really, it was just getting depressing dealing with people's cockeyed dreams of fame and success.