The music industry is HARD. I have so much respect for everyone who chooses to be in music, full-time or part-time because it takes so much hard work just to find how to truly express yourself.
Plus it doesn’t happen in weeks, months, or even years – who you are as an artist changes all the time simply because you’re always changing as a person.
Of course there are hugely successful musicians, but the sick twist is that success doesn’t guarantee lasting success: music careers have notoriously short lifespans, and history is littered with one-hit wonders, bands who never overcame the sophomore slump, and pop stars who lost it all.
Typing all of this just made me realize how much of an understatement my opener really is, especially in today’s 0.0001/stream royalty payout landscape and dwindling attention spans. I’m willing to bet in 2034 (possibly sooner) a 30-sec TikTok will be considered “long form”. Yikes.
So it really is a wonder that anyone still is in the music industry. Which brings me to my first point: those of us who are in it are in it because we chose to be in it.
It’s highly unlikely one’s parents forced them to be a musician (they’d rather you have a “safe” career), and no one accidentally becomes a lifelong career musician – it’s all too easy to quit music and just do something else that actually brings in some kind of dependable monetary gain. Or if you’re like most of us, you have a day job that takes care of the bills and leaves just a bit of cash to get you to and from a gig.
Which brings me to my next point: the longer you stay in music, the more fulfilling it becomes. It seems common sense at first blush, but it’s complicated. The truth is that being a musician means the financial odds are stacked against you. You don’t get health care and sick leaves. There are no tax breaks. You don’t even get to be paid minimum wage (I don’t think I’ve ever been paid for a Halik Ni Gringo gig).
And so you learn how to deal with all of these things little by little, year after year. The longer you stay in music, the more sacrifices you have to make. You learn to appreciate when you play a good show to a great crowd, and you also learn to respect yourself after you play bad shows or are faced with not-so-great crowds.
It’s all par for the course – the unfortunate reality is that this is the nature of the music industry. I consider it to be the ultimate irony (or proof of God’s twisted sense of humor) that the artist tends to be the one standing at the very bottom of a financial ladder erected by multinational conglomerates looking for the next viral star to monetize. And even this could disappear soon because of AI (eg fast, cheap, infinite music made by an LLM that never complains).
Making a living in the arts is hard enough as it is, and I feel like it’s going to get even harder in the years to come. So if you’ve decided to go down this road, and especially if you’ve tried to stay away from it but you kept getting pulled back in anyway, it will be tough – but you’re not alone. And it’ll be all worth it if it means fulfilling your purpose and doing what you are meant to do.
Being OK with the unknown in 2024
On a personal note, I’ve got a lot of big changes coming my way: I’m getting married in a few weeks’ time, and I’m moving to an entirely new city and country shortly after that. How will things work out? Will they even work out? I don’t know, but I’ve tried my best to increase the chances of a favorable outcome.
Like with a lot of things in life, the only way to find out is to do it.
I want to say a big THANK YOU to all the artists, bands, and musicians I worked with in 2023. And I have a plan for how we’ll keep on making music together well into 2024 and beyond.