A bright future in recording? Maybe not so...
Someone wrote about his difficulties finding a job after completing a course at a commercial recording school. I initially posted this in the thread he started -- but I quickly realized it was pretty much going to be the bummer post of the year for this guy and nuked it. But... for the hardy realists among you, I offer this cautionary mini-essay on recording school and starting a career in commercial audio, c. 2010...
Folks have been warning for years now to not go into debt at a school whose real business model is selling student loans, to keep their options open, keep Plan B not just handy but ready to implement at any time... yes -- even keep the day job.
And for most of that time, there have been a seeming unending supply of people saying things like, Hey, don't rain on my dreams, man, I'm going to make it, I'm not like all those other flakes, I have to record or life won't be worth living... etc, etc, etc.
Even as the population of the commercial recording schools exploded, and as community colleges all added media programs to try to rope in the preterliterate supposed media mavens of the future, even as the bottom fell out of the studio job market, as bedroom and garage studios employing only their own owners popped up like mushrooms after a Seattle rain, even as these forums filled with posts like those above... even as changes in the US bankruptcy law made during the Bush2 era meant that you could no longer get out from under a student loan, even by bankruptcy -- people kept signing up for recording schools, often also signing up for huge loans going far enough into debt that they could have bought a nice little house somewhere instead.
Me, I went back to my day job more than a decade ago and I haven't regretted it. I still have to record, to be sure. But now, I do it for myself, and make money in a field where I'm not working for burger flipper wages. (Mind you, things have been tough all over. I certainly have not been getting rich -- by a long stretch -- lately. But at least I don't have to sweat it out listening to music I've grown to hate for 8 or 12 hours at a time and then do the math and think... damn, I just can't charge enough to make this thing work. Now when I'm recording, I may not be making money -- but I'm making my own music.)
Folks have been warning for years now to not go into debt at a school whose real business model is selling student loans, to keep their options open, keep Plan B not just handy but ready to implement at any time... yes -- even keep the day job.
And for most of that time, there have been a seeming unending supply of people saying things like, Hey, don't rain on my dreams, man, I'm going to make it, I'm not like all those other flakes, I have to record or life won't be worth living... etc, etc, etc.
Even as the population of the commercial recording schools exploded, and as community colleges all added media programs to try to rope in the preterliterate supposed media mavens of the future, even as the bottom fell out of the studio job market, as bedroom and garage studios employing only their own owners popped up like mushrooms after a Seattle rain, even as these forums filled with posts like those above... even as changes in the US bankruptcy law made during the Bush2 era meant that you could no longer get out from under a student loan, even by bankruptcy -- people kept signing up for recording schools, often also signing up for huge loans going far enough into debt that they could have bought a nice little house somewhere instead.
Me, I went back to my day job more than a decade ago and I haven't regretted it. I still have to record, to be sure. But now, I do it for myself, and make money in a field where I'm not working for burger flipper wages. (Mind you, things have been tough all over. I certainly have not been getting rich -- by a long stretch -- lately. But at least I don't have to sweat it out listening to music I've grown to hate for 8 or 12 hours at a time and then do the math and think... damn, I just can't charge enough to make this thing work. Now when I'm recording, I may not be making money -- but I'm making my own music.)
posted by TK Major at
11:13 AM
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