Made money or a career from what you’ve learned since getting into music?

The Lounge General Discussion
#21

I’m an illustrator as my dayjob. Spent years doing graphic design, but realized that designing an 80 page booklet for medical students is far from creative work. I started concentrating on illustrating and more importantly I started calling myself an illustrator. Nowadays I get money mainly for drawing pictures. Living the dream. I still have to do the occasional poster and brochure now and then, but mostly I just get to draw.

Making music has opened some professional doors for me too. I got asked to do the sound design for the grand opening ceremony of a new bridge in my hometown. That happened mainly because people knew that I play in Nightsatan and know a lot about synths. I’ve also done some voice recording for a ”radio play” type of project etc. I used to be a very popular local dj for 18 years. I quit that a couple of years back cause I felt too old to spend every weekend staying up until 4AM. (After that they’ve changed the laws and now clubs in Finland are open til 5AM. Phew!)

I still get a lot of invites to play weddings and big birthdays but most of the time I turn them down. I had one gig this summer and I was petrified for a week in advance. Playing for 18 years 2-5 gigs a week was fine but one gig per year is really scary and difficult. Every time I feel that I don’t know how to do this anymore and more importantly I don’t know what tunes to play anymore.

The band has also brought in some money as gig fees, payment from record sales and copyright fees. Once our record company told us to order synths for a 1000 euros each for some licensing fee they had got for our album to be released on Death Waltz records in the UK. Good times!

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#22

I’m a creative, usually with directing responsibilities, and frequently use my amateur-achieved music skills in productions to the extent that they get their own style and as a consequence, gives me new jobs. Musicians in particular seem to enjoy working with someone who gets their skill but has enough sense to realise they should be allowed creative freedom to do what they do best.

From time to time, I produce the music myself, and get paid for it.

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#23

heh, I guess that getting interested in Csound/Cmix and audio coding on unix/Mac back in the early 90’s got me into programming and system admin in higher ed. & ‘creative industries’ through the early days of the WWW. Many musicians I knew made that switch. So that was regular cash for many years.

Now I seem to be unemployable aside from occasional soundtrack or artweb gigs. So the accidental career had a terminal slope as well. It’s been mostly fun though.

#24

Used to DJ a lot years ago. Up to the point i started playing outside Scandinavia as well. Played both commercial music and also with an alias at more underground venues. This was after high school and also during university years. Its funny how much time you have for music if you structure your study time well. Travel was never an issue, or didn’t impact my studies at all. Also lived in Asia and did gigs in there when the local scene started to develop in an interesting direction. Techno and house was not as big as it is now, i still fondly recall entering my local record store on a hot summer day with it blasting the new Trentemoller “sunstroke” 12” and everyone was like - I need that record!!

On the commercial side i started playing some gigs for Ash, a local promoter who invited relatively big names in the commercial house scene (before EDM was EDM). As is the same guy who eventually discovered Tim aka Avicii. Ash wanted to work with me approx 2 years before he met Tim, and aside from the gigs i did, took a genuine interest in my productions. Probably for the better, I said I wanted to keep my options open and didn’t follow up on some discussions we had. Some music i made got picked up by famous commercial djs and radio shows but I never enjoyed or felt too proud of that music, it was simply too soulless - so I quietly let things fizzle out and also started to accept less and less gigs to the point I almost stopped playing in 2011. Did some gigs 2012-2014 but only a handful a year. Took on a job from 2011 which has been far more stimulating that full time music and has expatriated me to other countries. A secret dream would be to someday join a company like Elektron or Teenage engineering to combine both professional merits and interest in music. Perhaps I’ll aim for that some day but my current company is amazingly fun to work for.

Focus now is to build a live set and start hustling for gigs. Some UK people found a secret SoundCloud link I had shared on a small and closed forum, and reached out to set up a release, so that is the most current status. Launched a record label in 2016 releasing 12” via a UK distributor which has been super fun but totally kills my savings :money_with_wings:. As good as I can be with my day job I’ve always sucked at promoting myself in terms of music. I just want things to go as they go and develop organically, but need to create a more focused approach with what I’m doing now for sure. BTW - liveset is only Rytm and Digitone. Boom!

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#25

Enjoyed listening to your work. It immediately transported me back to a holiday I took to Florida 3 years ago. First time I had driven abroad and the radio was always on when hopping over to Disney full of those sort of soundbites!

Got me wondering: you don’t really hear much from that movie trailer guy any more. Googling just now, maybe I’m thinking of Don LaFontaine who passed away a decade or so ago. Had never thought of this being a full time career though!

If you have time, you should check out the show Toast of London. It has the excellent and hilarious Matt Berry in it (who does a lot of UK voice acting actually) as a struggling actor who in one episode has to record some voiceover parts for a TV advert. Crikey, there’s loads of clips of him (haven’t seen the full series yet):

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#26

In my early twenties my love for electronic music (production) collided with IT dev work and academic experimental architecture research, and fused to become my current professional artist career. Electronic sound plays a big role in it.

Along the way I also became assistant, then co-owner of an AV rental and production company (event stage, sound, light, etc). Music tech skills obviously play a role here.

In the 2000’s I played a bunch of live sets for pocket money. Last year I picked it up again and played for some real (or at least better) money. Now in talks with a label for my first EP release.

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#27

Can you recomend some?

#28

You may already know, but Matt Berry’s a synthhead, he does all the Toast music himself and has released a few of his own records.

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#29

I do! I bought his recent album of TV themes. Actually very impressive and who doesn’t love the Rainbow theme?!

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#30

Year of the rabbit, was so good.

#31

Recommend what? More books? That one and Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of power are pretty well regarded.

#32

Oh man that video was hilarious!! I wish I had videos of outtakes of sessions ive been in.

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#33

Nope, and basically don’t know anybody who doesn’t work full-time (other job/career) regardless of how much attention they get.

I get paid once in a while, but it’s just a drop in the bucket :joy:

#34

Techno/dance producers earn the real money from DJ’ing, no?

#35

Theres BIG money in that nowadays. The amount of “underground DJs” wearing AP’s and Pateks on their wrists is getting funny, beyond bizarre.

#36

I’ve made a few bucks releasing music digitally , the occasional remix or some background music / noises for websites , but mainly produce by myself for myself . My main job is in photography , another passion of mine , in which i did succeed to make a living out of it .

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