[Aside to moderators: apologies if this has been discussed before, but I can’t see a thread? Also, if you think it would be better placed in a different category, move as appropriate.]
I have, quite long ago, at least in the sense that I was able to survive for a few years with no other source of income. I’ve been in two ‘serious’ original bands in the past, in the sense that we were actively trying to build a following and get a record contract (in the days when that was the only route to significant money).
In one of them we did come up with some stuff that (IMHO, obviously) didn’t quite sound like anyone else.
Though still rock music, but with interesting chords & lyrics etc… sort of ‘son of Steely Dan’…
Often wonder if we had stayed together a year or two longer and kept plugging away, whether we might have built up enough momentum to become a cult indie band making at least a decent living?
A bit later there were a bunch of us in a house where I had an 8-track studio (in the days when that meant something!), and a 2KW PA which we hired out as well as using for our own gigs. We all did hired-hand gigs, plus our band wore two hats as an original band and a function/wedding band to pay the bills.
But as in ‘Summer of 69’… Joe quit, and Chris got married…
Ultimately we all ended up in ‘real’ jobs…
Around 1999 or 2000 I made a home demo recording of 11 of my original songs, using a professional singer and pianist. Then I sent it out to dozens of music publishers, hoping to get a publishing contract.
How cool would that be? Just go to the mailbox and pick up royalty checks. No going on the road, staying in motels, schlepping equipment, etc.
Sometime later, I got a midnight phone call from a guy on the West Coast. He loved the stuff! He said, no one writes songs like this anymore. This guy had been a producer and manager for people like T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson and was now doing music publishing. So I was pretty excited.
He told me, the publishing contract was ‘in the mail.’ I’m still waiting… (He died in 2007).
Well. I’m a bit surprised. In a community like this, I’d have expected at least a few of us to have at least dabbled in the shallows of the music industry, in our youth anyway.
Oh well, if there’s no more activity for a month or two, may as well close the topic?
If you count singing as being a “musician” my daughter-in-law, after years of grooming pets and teaching at the School of Rock, finally latched on as the lead singer with one of those groups that plays at large wedding receptions and corporate events. Then she became music director for the group as well as singer, and the two paychecks would be enough for a modest lifestyle for a single person, and a decent second income for her and my son. Of course there are no benefits, no insurance, and no income if the group doesn’t get booked. But at least their business bounced back after Covid.
I’ve made my living in the industry, but not the performing end of it—does that count? I’ve performed, been signed to a label and all that, but it was more for fun than as a living.
Professionally, I’ve been involved in the audio production, music software and/or music instrument manufacturing spaces for 30-some years, in a variety of technical and marketing roles.
Most of my income comes from teaching voice, primarily in a university setting (with a few private students here and there), with the rest coming from a variety of singing gigs, mostly professional ensemble work, but an occasional freelance solo gig as well. I generally consider myself a full-time professional musician. Certainly all my professional activities are musical.
For about 2 years in my 30s I made my full income from music, but it was 99% teaching. I was good at it and the pay wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t very fulfilling work for me and I got very tired of no vacation leave, no sick leave, paying all my own FICA taxes, and the constant hustle.
Most of my family are or were professional musicians in one way or another. My grandparents were university professors (Grandma also took in home students), widowed aunts were piano and violin teachers, one step-parent a studio musician, another a songwriter, another a producer. (I guess musicians tend to marry each other and have musical offspring.) My cousin is a passionate symphony violinist and travels a multi-state region playing for small-town orchestras, but the pay is shocking and she has to take in quite a few students too. It’s a good career if you hit the big time, or have a spouse with a day job, but otherwise there’s no point in doing it without devotion and passion. Mine dried up, sadly, so I got a real job.
Then of course there’s the saying: what is a rock band? Ans: three or four musicians and a drummer.
Sorry. We probably should not go off into musician jokes…
Yeah, that’s odd to me. There’s singers; there’s instrumentalists. Both are musicians.
I recorded and toured back in 2002 and 2003 with a Hungarian band that played around Europe (highlights for me include playing clubs in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, Prague, Ljubljana) in addition to local shows. Now, it was not a living for any of us at the time, but since then, at least some members of the band (like the singer/principal songwriter) have been able to make enough money so self-sustain their careers there, as far as I know, recording eight albums so far (the one right after the album I recorded with them was produced by Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins, which seemed pretty cool.) They also get the occasional cultural grant from the Hungarian government (for example, they were sponsored by the government to play at SXSW back in 2004 or 2005. I also know the singer got to go to Japan to perform there, as well, sponsored.)
But that’s as close as I got – I was just along for the ride and having some fun. The serious musicians who were the creative force were the singer/songwriter and bassist. And now that singer has like at least three different musical projects he works on.
I have never met a professional singer who didn’t end a sentence with “so my voice is my instrument” multiple times. People don’t seem to get that of course singers are musicians.
A lot of it has to do with persistence and just hanging in there, I think.
Many bands struggled in obscurity playing small clubs 7 nights a week for years before having any success.
The meme of being spotted young by a famous producer and rocketing to instant stardom is very much fantasy, though I suppose it may have happened once or twice?
I do wonder if one of my bands had held together for another few years we might have been able to become a minor established indie cult brand…
But it’s a hard row to hoe, and for every band that reaches any level of commercial success, there are probably hundreds who really tried but never got anywhere…
I certainly had no intention of making a living at it. Just wanted to tour in a van in Europe to say I did so and get an idea of what it was like. It was fun and extremely tiring and stressful. No way would I like to live a life like that for more than a couple years in my 20s. But it was something to do when I didn’t have much else to do. (I had some photography jobs here and there keeping me afloat.) The founder of the band was 100% the go-getter, publicist, networker, creative force, etc. Being a rock star is all he ever wanted to be and, doggoneit, he was going to find a way to make it happen or die trying. I just had to show up with my keyboard, make the practices, help schlep stuff around, occasionally drive the van, and didn’t have to worry about any of the logisitics.
Now, we did used to have a poster here that was more professionally connected with the industry. Was it a-ha or am I just thinking of that username because it’s the name of a band? I feel like it was somebody who was somehow connected to a European band, but the memory is very vague right now. I’m sure someone else knows who I’m talking about.
I guess I was a bit more serious about it, in the day. I was one of the principal songwriters of the band, and involved in most aspects (hassling gigs etc). Also had to be the technician since I have an EE degree, so I was responsible for all the gear and PA etc.
But of course a band is like a marriage in many ways: you’re necessarily in close proximity to other people with their ideosyncracies and egos. Given how many marriages end up in divorce, it’s rather surprising that any bands survive long enough to make it at all?
And to be honest: I wasn’t ‘hungry’ enough.
I always knew that I could get a good paying job as an engineer, and eventually I just caved in and bowed to the inevitable…
Yeah, we definiteily had two cliques within the band. There was me and the drummer (who had major label exeperience with Epic/Frontier records back in the day – he was extremely weary and wary of the music industry–they got screwed in terms of being underpromoted and a bunch of other stuff), and there was the rest of the band who just hung out separately. It worked out fine for the time we were together in that incarnation, but I bet one more album and we would’ve had some fabulous rows.
Because I know F.U. Shakespeare, I can say that he worked as a musician for a few years, then worked in an ordinary office job for a few decades, and then returned to working as a musician once he’d worked in that office job long enough to get a pension from it. This is typical of artists in many fields. I can’t find a reliable source on this, but it appears that somewhere between 1% and 5% of all people who published novels make a living on it. To give an example of someone who eventually made a huge amount of money on writing a novel despite spending a long time in another job, J. R. R. Tolkien worked an average career as a university professor, despite publishing a book that’s very close to being the most copies sold of all time.
