there seems to be no money made in music nowadays.

[Numanoid]

When you say "making money playing music", do you mean that you now support yourself entirely from "playing music?"

Is that a requirement? Lots of "regular" people have to get by working more than one job, why should life be different for performing musicians?

[bbreakz]

If you're only creating 'art' for money, you should look to just get a 'proper' job. Why should you be different from all those hard working individuals who go to work every day and don't rely on copyright or repeat sales to bring in money as if it was earned ?

If you strongly believe people should give you money, the answer is the same as for everyone else - *YOU* go out there and persuade them. Marketing is something that was (and still is largely) done by record companies and publishers and all we used to hear was "there seems to be no easy way to get signed to a record company nowadays". The answer then was the same - go out and *MAKE IT HAPPEN*.

If you think you can just put your music on a few sites, and have people magically find you and raise you up on that altar, you're living in a dreamworld.

There are millions of people making a living from music or painting or writing etc... They're just not sitting around waiting for the world to come to them.

Pre-Internet, would you just put your music on tapes on a table outside your house and hope you became famous ?

What you call 'noise' is what the rest of the working world would call 'competition'. If you consider this your income, you need to damn well work for it - that doesn't just mean writing pretty tunes.

There is an audience for everyone - for every type of music. YOU have to find it though, or pay someone else to do it for you. Don't rely on being the 'one-in-a-billion' lucky find.

Keep making your music - don't stop. Just find your audience instead of waiting for them to find you.

-- Here ends your motivational speech for the day

gonna read this daily... luv it

[Numanoid]

What you call 'noise' is what the rest of the working world would call 'competition'. If you consider this your income, you need to damn well work for it - that doesn't just mean writing pretty tunes.

+1

[RunBeerRun]

There are insane opportunities right now for music, you have to make the public want to see you.

I had recurring dreams for a while about winning the lottery, having a top 10 song, buying a huge house because everyone hated me, (don't ask), but frankly it was just boring.

[ghettosynth]

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permali ... 09/25/lies

Well, it seems at least like the author is making hay:

Paul Resnikoff is the founder and publisher of Digital Music News (digitalmusicnews.com), a premier industry source for news, information, and analysis. Digital Music News has quickly grown from its humble roots as a small, executive news service to the most widely read information source in the field.

Digital Music News is the premier news and information authority for music industry and technology executives worldwide. Our audience is comprised of highly-targeted decision-makers from every segment of the business, spanning major labels to artists to garage start-ups. We are also widely read throughout the day on RSS, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

So obviously somebody must be making some dosh out of this racket

No doubt, but blogging != making music, amiright?

[koalaboy]

No doubt, but blogging != making music, amiright?

Write your music and blog about it perhaps ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Coulton

[Arglebargle]

No doubt, but blogging != making music, amiright?

Write your music and blog about it perhaps ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Coulton

No! You can have one or the other, not both.

[Numanoid]

"the billion-dollar live-music business" they say:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/j ... live-music

But there seems to be no money made in music nowadays right? So how can it be a billion dollar live music business, I dontz geddit

[fmr]

"the billion-dollar live-music business" they say:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/j ... live-music

But there seems to be no money made in music nowadays right? So how can it be a billion dollar live music business, I dontz geddit

The last paragraph seems to contradict the (sensacionalist) headline: "There are so many bands on tour that you'd think there'd be more work, but in truth, it's much more streamlined now," said Nowell. He adds with a sigh that sums up the state of the music business: "It's expensive to tour."
Question is: How much remains of the multi-million dollar business for the musicians, after all expenses, fees and taxes paid?

[Numanoid]

Question is: How much remains of the multi-million dollar business for the musicians, after all expenses, fees and taxes paid?

So it is like a Sherlock Holmes mystery, if there is a billion dollar live music industry, but musicians are not getting the billions, who is it that gets the money?

[fmr]

Question is: How much remains of the multi-million dollar business for the musicians, after all expenses, fees and taxes paid?

So it is like a Sherlock Holmes mystery, if there is a billion dollar live music industry, but musicians are not getting the billions, who is it that gets the money?

I know who isn't

Now seriously, it can be like agriculture, or fishering. Those who work hard in the fields to produce the goods have to support all the expenses, do the hard work, take the risks, and then sell for just a small profit to a long chain of intermediaries who carrie the goods to the final customer and take their own profits (sometimes much more) for just "distributing".

I am not saying that is the case, since I am in no possesion of the figures, I'm just taking an educated guess.

[Harry_HH]

Indeed. Though, like trying to make money from music, selling your soul for music ain't what it used to be in the 70s, either. See here: http://drboli.com/2011/09/28/celebrity-gossip-9/

Sell soul-music.

[kelvyn]

Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with what Koalaboy wrote... there is another side to the business of making music that is comparable to what interns in other occupations are facing these days... unethical conditions of employment that take advantage of the fact that there are just too many people for too few jobs.
Musicians whose income doesn't come from making and selling their own music - in either a recorded or live form - and by that I mean those of us who make a living by making music in the ad, games, tv or film branch are these days often confronted with job offers where we are either pitching (unpaid) in contest with between 3 to 10 other composers or being told that there will be no upfront fees but will instead receive residuals from clients who have created their own publishing companies in order to take 50% of the mechanical rights that you have just been promised in lieu of payment. Not to mention the fact that most private TV channels like RTL in Europe just pay a lump sum each year.. so nobody gets any individual mechanical fees from those stations anyway. Not so long ago if a client called up and said you were in a pitch with another composer or composers you would be paid... not so much anymore. It's like being an intern in an architect, ad agency, lawyers office... you work a gazillion hours a week on a promise and in the end they just let you go and find another intern. That's what has happened to the workplace and that's what's happening to the music business.
Even live music is becoming more a question of pay first and maybe you can make some money on the door or by selling CD's and/or merchandise. I have a few friends who are in relatively successful bands.. Hell! You probably know who some of the bands are. But none of them are making enough money to live on. Fact! It costs a lot of money to do even a small tour these days and recuperating the initial outlay gets harder and harder and with less people paying for music on the internet it's simply become very difficult to make money.
Making music is not about making money to me but if someone profits from my endeavors then I want to be paid. I got rent and food to take care of like everyone else.

[debra1rlo]

I've just started making money playing music. It's cool and I've gotten some great opportunities. But I told my bandmates I would have played with them even without pay, I'm having so much fun and really pushing the limits of my abilities and growing musically. Honestly I sort of stumbled into this situation, it wasn't anything I got by "promoting myself."

When you say "making money playing music", do you mean that you now support yourself entirely from "playing music?" Also, are you playing original music? I'm trying to get a sense of what you're talking about. I've played in cover bands and made enough money from it that it affected my taxes and I viewed it as a part time job. I've never made enough money from playing music, however, that I reasonably believed that I could do only that. FWIW, I also lost my interest in it when it became a job and after a few years, I switched to doing just original stuff where I found it much more challenging to find gigs that payed decently.

1 of my original projects and 1 of my cover projects are paid gigs now. Just started getting paid, so not making enough money from it myself to quit my day job yet. But one of the musicians I'm working with is pretty well known locally (he does make his living entirely from music & painting) and we have discussed working together producing other bands, so there's a small possibility it grow beyond just a part time gig for me. And if not, looks like I'm going to get to play in Chicago this summer and Europe next spring so that will be a great experience, and that's really all I'm in this for is the experience.

[datroof]

Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with what Koalaboy wrote... there is another side to the business of making music that is comparable to what interns in other occupations are facing these days... unethical conditions of employment that take advantage of the fact that there are just too many people for too few jobs.
Musicians whose income doesn't come from making and selling their own music - in either a recorded or live form - and by that I mean those of us who make a living by making music in the ad, games, tv or film branch are these days often confronted with job offers where we are either pitching (unpaid) in contest with between 3 to 10 other composers or being told that there will be no upfront fees but will instead receive residuals from clients who have created their own publishing companies in order to take 50% of the mechanical rights that you have just been promised in lieu of payment. Not to mention the fact that most private TV channels like RTL in Europe just pay a lump sum each year.. so nobody gets any individual mechanical fees from those stations anyway. Not so long ago if a client called up and said you were in a pitch with another composer or composers you would be paid... not so much anymore. It's like being an intern in an architect, ad agency, lawyers office... you work a gazillion hours a week on a promise and in the end they just let you go and find another intern. That's what has happened to the workplace and that's what's happening to the music business.
Even live music is becoming more a question of pay first and maybe you can make some money on the door or by selling CD's and/or merchandise. I have a few friends who are in relatively successful bands.. Hell! You probably know who some of the bands are. But none of them are making enough money to live on. Fact! It costs a lot of money to do even a small tour these days and recuperating the initial outlay gets harder and harder and with less people paying for music on the internet it's simply become very difficult to make money.
Making music is not about making money to me but if someone profits from my endeavors then I want to be paid. I got rent and food to take care of like everyone else.

+1. Yeah, pep talks are great and all, but this whole "you just have to go out there and make it happen" mentality is what I call "bootstrap". "You just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps", right? The problem is, everyone's getting the bootstrap speech right now. These are tough times for labor - we're currently in an extremely anti-labor climate. Then on top of that, anyone who's been in the music business for a few years knows that what you're saying is true: the music business - which never has been particularly labor-friendly - is currently more labor-hostile than most other industries. It's pretty bad. Of course, part of the problem is that musicians have never been good at organizing/unionizing, etc., let alone seeing the big picture. So, it's hard to imagine the situation getting much better any time soon.