What does a career in the music industry look like these days?
What kinds of jobs are there?
How can I make decent money in the music industry?
What if I love music, but don’t want to perform music for my job?
These are all questions that me and many, many musicians have had. Maybe you’ve asked some yourself.
Maybe you’re studying music in high school or at a university somewhere and you know you love music, and want to work in that industry but you’re not sure where to go or what to do.
If I’m being totally honest and blunt, our music education system (In the U.S. of A specifically) generally fails to prepare musicians for anything other than a handful of careers.
And it’s debatable whether most programs really prepare you to get the job that you want, or even prepare you to know what options there are and what you might be interested in.
Some people just know what they want, and that’s great, but there’s a reason why many university trained musicians get jobs in other industries after they graduate, and I don’t believe it’s because you can’t make a decent living in music (even though many of us probably believe that).
I know that I would have liked to know what options were available to me when I was studying music. I wish I had had more reliable and accessible information available to me about those careers when I was younger.
That’s what we’re going to start exploring here, now.
This is the beginning of a series where we’re going to explore what career options are out there for people interested in working in the music industry.
Today we’re only a covering a broad overview, and we’ll go into more detail about specific careers in future installments. So, keep those eyes peeled for what’s coming next!
The Industry
First, we need to talk about the industry.
The music industry is an interesting one.
It is so much more than orchestras, bands, record labels and recording studios.
There are tech companies, retail stores, unions, music education in various forms, composition and arranging, marketing and promotion, distribution, music therapy, research, history, even the military employs musicians, and so much more.
It’s a massive industry with room for people of many different disciplines to work and make money.
But it’s also a unique industry in that many, many of the jobs in this industry are not salaried full-time jobs with benefits.
A huge portion of the music industry (especially in the live performance world) is made up of freelancers who either do music part-time, or do multiple music-related jobs simultaneously to attain the equivalent of a full-time income.
A lot of people think of music performance as the job in the music industry. And, it’s true that it’s the main job that the music industry revolves around, but there are a lot of different things that need to happen in order to make music performances happen, and a lot of jobs that go into making those performances go over well.
What it Takes to Put on a Show
Let’s just look at some of the things that need to be in place before a performance can even happen, and the jobs involved in those performances to get an idea of what’s out there.
We’ll say, for the sake of this example, that you are a musician wanting to get your music performance career going. You know you love music, and that you want to become a successful performing musician. But for the examples to follow, we will be talking about all of the careers that exist that make that music performance career possible.
Music Education
Before you perform anything, you need to have learned how to play music in the first place.
Music education is a massive industry with lots of jobs. Some pay well, some don’t, but there are a lot of them.
You’ve got public and private schools, college and university programs, private educators, online courses, after-school programs, specialty schools and other places to learn.
There are many jobs involved in learning to play music, and you can’t play a show if you don’t learn how to play.
It’s not the most lucrative career most of the time, but is one of the more important and rewarding ones for those who love teaching and helping people.
And to all you music educators out there, you are true heroes, keep it up!
Songwriting and Composition
After you get an education and learn your craft, before you can do any performing, you have to have something to perform.
Someone has to write that music. I use the word “write” loosely here to denote the creation of music, as a lot of music “written” these days is not actually literally written on paper.
You’re not having a show without music, though. Unless you’re playing John Cage, or something.
You may write your own music, but there are also professionals who focus on writing, composing, and arranging music for a variety of different settings. Many big artists rely on these talented writers to write music for them.
Just look at the credited writers on Beyonce’s Renaissance album as an example. A lot of writers helped make that album happen.
Not all music is written by the people who perform it, there are opportunities for those who know how to write to market those skills in the world of music.
Venues
After you’ve got some music, you need a place to play the music.
Army Band Article 15 performing getting the crowd into the music.
That could be a stadium, an auditorium, a park, a garage, a studio, someone’s basement, a livestream, whatever.
You’ve got to perform somewhere, and someone has to provide that venue, which is its own source of jobs, some of which we’ll discuss here in a bit.
Marketing and Promotion
Once you’ve got your skills, music and your venue, you need to tell people about that concert. And, depending on how big your act gets you might need a good way of selling tickets to your concerts, which is a whole segment of the music business with its own jobs as well.
Your marketing could be flyers you taped to a light pole, or as simple as a social media post all the way to a full-blown, year-long, multi-faceted marketing campaign to sell albums, merchandise and concert tickets.
All of this might involve promoters, marketers, publicists, ticketing companies, and even graphic designers.
You gotta put the word out there somehow, and eventually all dedicated musicians outgrow the taping-things-to-light-poles phase and move onto bigger things.
Music acts that tend to do the best and have the longest careers are ones that do the best marketing and promotion. There are many amazing musicians who’s careers don’t go anywhere, and this (somewhat) comes down to a lack of good marketing or a preponderance of bad marketing.
Audio and Lighting
Once you’ve got the venue and marketing under way, you also have to think about your audio and lighting at the venue.
How are people going to hear and see your performance?
Do you have your own PA and plan to handle the sound on your own, or will the event be big enough to hire an audio production company to set up a whole system to bring down the roof?
Does the venue have good lighting installed, or do you need to provide your own? Are we going regular fluorescents in the hall, or are we bringing stage lighting, lasers, fog machines, and a disco ball?
There is an entire industry surrounding live sound and lighting production and plenty of jobs to support that. It’s not just audio and lighting engineers either, there are all kinds of technicians that support performing groups and venues.
There are opportunities to work full-time in this segment of the industry, part-time as a contractor for various companies, or even freelance. Or a mix of all three.
Recording and Post-Production
Recording
Alright, so, you’ve put on some good shows, your audience is growing and maybe it’s time to start thinking about recording your music.
Well, guess what, there’s a whole industry there too (shocker!).
Someone has to have a studio, whether that’s in someone’s basement, spare bedroom or a professional studio, you need somewhere to record.
You also need people who are skilled at recording, mixing and mastering music. It’s something that many people can do on their own nowadays with modern technology, but there are many people who specialize in this field.
There are those people behind the recording console, but also a whole slew of other roles that make a studio work, like: producers, audio technicians, acoustic treatment specialists, engineers that install and tune speaker systems, as well as other office staff that make the logistics happen behind the scenes.
Distribution
After you’ve recorded your music, you need to think about how that recording is going to get out there to people so they can listen to it.
It could just be self-published to music streaming platforms, YouTube and other places, but there are also record labels, publishing companies for written music, and distribution companies for both physical and digital music.
Management
As you get your recordings out there and play more gigs, you might also need a manager to help you manage your budding career so you can focus on the music, as well as a touring manager to organize your tours.
You might even need a lawyer that specializes in music law before you get too far — music lawyers are a thing —, copyright law and recording contracts are complicated in our digital world, and you wanna get it right, just ask The Beatles, they didn’t manage their intellectual property well and it haunted them for a long time.
The logistics of managing a performance career can be daunting (as is evidenced by all the things that we’ve listed so far), and many musicians do not enjoy doing that work (after a while, setting up gear and wrapping cables, and dealing with venues can get pretty old), sometimes hiring someone else to do it for you is the only way that a musician can grow their career past a certain point.
Retail
There is yet another aspect of the industry that we haven’t talked about yet, but is one of the bigger and more prevalent segments of the industry.
Concerts and albums don’t happen without the skills, of course, but they also don’t happen without the gear.
Musicians need instruments. Venues and studios need microphones, mixers, monitors, stands; and everyone needs cables (so many cables!).
Cover band The Civilians performing in a park pavilion.
Frankly, music is one of those industries that just requires a lot of gear, and there are lots of jobs to go along with that.
There are plenty of jobs in retail that sell that gear to musicians, but also jobs at the companies that make that gear. Just look at any of the music gear you have lying around. Somebody designed, built and sold that, why couldn’t you be part of that?
Also, as you use your gear, it can get a little worse for wear. You will eventually need an instrument repair specialist, luthier, piano tuner, or general support from the company that sold you the gear.
It’s always good to learn how to maintain your own gear, but sometimes the best thing to do is hire a professional so you can make sure things get fixed right.
Summary
As you can see, it’s a big industry with lots of money and lots of different types of jobs at a wide variety of places.
We haven’t even talked about opportunities for entrepreneurship within the industry, software companies or community and government arts jobs.
I know that many people just want to play or write music for their job.
That’s the dream, right? And that’s fine if that’s your dream. Who am I to stop you from pursuing your dreams.
But the reality is that making a full-time income as a gigging musician can be very difficult (even for extremely talented musicians), and very often requires that we hold down other jobs or find ways to diversify our income streams while we pursue our passions.
Having a successful performance career requires more than just being good at our instruments. Also, having a successful performance career isn’t (and shouldn’t be) everyone’s dream job. And we should stop encouraging everyone in the music industry to chase “the dream”, and start looking at where else we can make contributions in the industry, be happy, and feed our families.
There are a lot of things that go into creating a successful music performance career, and there are people who specialize in each part of that journey. And you know what, those jobs can be really good and valuable jobs. Some of them pay pretty well. Some can even be done part-time while you work on a performance career at the same time.
So, as you’re thinking about careers in the music industry, and as we go through the other parts of this series where we’ll dive deeper into those jobs, keep your mind open to other possibilities in your career. Also keep your mind open to the option of doing multiple part-time jobs as a musician.
There are many opportunities for all kinds of professionals in the world of music, not just those performing on stage. And many of those careers can be very fulfilling, even lucrative.
Let me know what you do in the music industry and what jobs you think are cool. Let’s help each other find those jobs that we’ll love.