17 Indie Artists on Their Oddest Odd Jobs That Pay the Bills When Music Doesn’t (not a poll)

It didn't, so can we stop talking about the cost of the second Razorlight album?

facts aside i would like to point out that i was otm in this thread

Young musicians without a rich family should expect their unheard music to remain unheard regardless of its quality. Otherwise, expect the time/cost/effort/thought/creativity/travel/etc invested into the work to be a complete waste.

sad but true

expect the time/cost/effort/thought/creativity/travel/etc invested into the work to be a complete waste.

yr a complete waste

making music is fun!

Beats working for a living, er....

I would estimate that the vast majority of musicians that do manage to make money use PR, or have a label that does. This is another expensive stumbling block that you probably need to get wide coverage in the age of musical saturation.

https://www.ludwig-van.com/toronto/2019/04/09/liszts-ten-composers-who-had-day-jobs/

Classical version. The John Cage one is kind of interesting I think.

Indeed, especially as Cornelius Cardew also worked as a graphic designer.

the idea that making music is a "waste" if it doesn't make money or even if it's never heard is so wrong to me, playing music with people is a joy, especially playing with people and improvising, moments that aren't documented or meant to be....

it's such a sad, joyless way to view life, if you spent an afternoon painting and it was never sold was that a waste?

I don’t work much with rock acts as there isn’t that much to pick from in my city and travelling costs for bands always send the budgets to the moon but I do work with djs and electronic producers and I can tell you it’s very profitable at least on those music genres over here. I don’t know about the culture in the US but at least in Europe and Latinamerica almost every decent dj I know is constantly touring, even the lesser known ones have a fee of 1k + flights and acommodation per night and they don’t split the money with anyone else. I’ve paid 25k for djs (at those levels they do split money with their booking agency) that are booked for practically every weekend of the year and they even charge more on bigger venues.

Since they’re constantly touring they don’t waste much money and there’s no need to be paying rent in a stupidly expensive city like New York. It’s better to just buy an apartment or a house in a less expensive city to go relax to on your downtime.

The Eric Whitacre one is perfect.

it's such a sad, joyless way to view life, if you spent an afternoon painting and it was never sold was that a waste?

No. But what if no one ever looks at it? Is that a waste? I guess it depends on why you're painting.

Indeed. If a painting is commissioned and not sold or even looked at, then it has been a waste in the long term, no matter how enjoyable the process of creating the work was in the first place. If the work wasn't commissioned, then I suppose the artist gets the self-indulgent thrill of creating something, but only in the short term. Of course, lack of recognition and lack of financial success can be demoralising and lead to apathy and a "what's the point?" attitude.

Fwiw, when a band/artist is under a recording contract, all albums can be considered commissioned regardless of how much or how little creative freedom the artist has. They are commissioned as products to be sold and to be heard. If they are not heard and not sold, then it has all been a waste of time, regardless of how much or how little the artist has enjoyed making the record.

Don't even know where to start with that pile of garbage tbh.

carly rae jepsen is a tax-avoidance scheme CONFIRMED

? arli$$ and bible black (bizarro gazzara)

michael nesmith's first solo album was a tax avoidance scheme, it's pretty good though i do like magnetic south better

don joyce isn't stealing any food from anybody's mouths, he's been dead since 2015

the captain beefheart poverty stories i know are the ones from "the real frank zappa book" were zappa talks about him and don living on giant jars of peanut butter, and also going to a local diner for chili and spending more money on the jukebox than on the chili

bob dylan, of course, got his start as a folk-singer by stealing the record collection of everybody in the village, maybe that's a romantic myth too, i don't know. avoiding that simple truth probably had a lot to do with dylan becoming such a good storyteller, at least.

that website didn't want me to read about how classical composers made money because they aren't making money from my reading that

has anybody come right out and said that capitalism is bad and we should get rid of it? because that's what this thread seems to mostly be dancing around

'Politician' is the ultimate side hustle.

I just typed about 1000 words but I decided against posting it. Summarized:

- most countries aside from the US and UK offer subsidies for their musicians, either directly or in the form of employment opportunities (funding venues and festivals)
- 3% of musicians don't need any help and they're just Grimes or Robyn and it just works, they roll up and people will pay anything to see them do anything, it's not hype, it's just talent and star-power
- 22% of musicians do need the help and the hype, you have to tell people that Lucky Dragons are coming to town and that it's really important and worthwhile to go see them, etc
- it totally fucking sucks to be part of that 22% and to be out on tour and find that the promoter has just opted not to invest the time and take a loss on the show, and you drove three hours to play to six people, the show just isn't listed in the papers or even at the venue, this happens to people all the time
- 75% of musicians simply do not have a long-term viable career available to them
- 75% of musicians make music that is fine but is also inessential; it doesn't fulfill a baseline requirement of being worth the listener's investment of time and/or money
- 75% of musicians, when faced with this reality, try and find other ways of making their music work. Sometimes this means developing a magnetic Twitter presence which attracts more listeners than the music itself justifies. Sometimes this means revamping your sound over and over again until you figure out the right way to do it (Dev Hynes, i.e.) Sometimes this means going online and shit-talking other musicians bitterly, tweeting shit like "Porches is a pedophile" because the US is still Kissinger Country, creating chaos in the lives of your "competitors" is surely profitable (or at least pleasurable to American brains). Sometimes people in this 75% bracket will do interviews with Vulture and blame falling revenues as a result for why they simply can't turn a profit anymore (and they're right, but lamenting this fact doesn't turn you a profit.) Sometimes people just decide to go whole-hog and embrace Patreon and Kickstarter-- in many ways, I have to respect Amanda Palmer for being the most quintessentially American musician for, somehow, turning a monstrous profit with such little talent or personal magnetism.
- Or sometimes this just means embracing the fact that your music is your hobby, or a part-time job-- just because you don't have a career-in-music available to you does not mean that your music isn't valuable and worthwhile and necessary. I've stated here and likely elsewhere that all my favourite musicians in my city have day-jobs. My favourite songwriter is a stonemason. My favourite pianist works in telecom. My favourite guitarist.. is a guitarist, but he primarily does side-man work.
- lastly, I don't know how it is for other people, but I write songs to impress my boyfriend, to express anger about a shitty thing that happened, to respond to something, like, to correct an error, and for other reasons, but at the heart of this creative impulse is an endgame fantasy: I will get paid, and I will be applauded. Might be $10 and "an appreciative thing spoken by a friend", or it might be $10k and a standing O from a packed house, but the endgame is always part of the creative impulse.

If they are not heard and not sold, then it has all been a waste of time, regardless of how much or how little the artist has enjoyed making the record.

this is objectively wrong btw

ums otm in this thread, permaban Turrican

If they are not heard and not sold, then it has all been a waste of time, regardless of how much or how little the artist has enjoyed making the record.

These days it's almost impossible to remain completely unheard. At least one advantage with the current way is that you can always get a couple of hundred of people to hear your music anyway even with minimal promotion.

Selling records is more of a challenge though. T think the trick is you have to be a regular presence on social media, which is a shame in some ways but necessary if you want to sell records in 2019, unless you can enlist someone else to do this stuff.

These 'Ban Turrican' posts are getting tiresome tbh. I don't agree with his points either but nothing he's said itt is even remotely beyond the pale so far.

It's entirely possible to be completely unheard, particularly now where everything is available all at once on the same platform. In that sort of climate of oversaturation, the bigger and more established artists will always have the edge. I get what you're saying, though. However, while you may be able to promote your fare to a couple of hundred of your mates, most artists would prefer for their music to gain traction beyond that. In a pedantic way, your close family and friends hearing you record counts as "heard", but in the big wide world it doesn't.

(x-post)

*your

speaking of the 90s, the thing that's most "odd" to me about the jobs listed here, is that none of them are strippers / sex workers -- that was way more common in the 90s.

I had that thought too.

Also no call centres. I did telephone surveys or telemarketing for a while, including the whole year I was in Montreal 01-02, when the centre was packed with musicians and artists. It was a 'good' gig in that the hours were extremely flexible. A longtime friend who's a mid-sized noise-rock name has been doing it for about 20 years now. (We met doing another telemarketing gig, actually.)

Enjoying the idea that "music teacher" is a crazy day job for an indie musician.

These 'Ban Turrican' posts are getting tiresome tbh. I don't agree with his points either but nothing he's said itt is even remotely beyond the pale so far.

Not beyond the pale, just the usual blowhard nonsense coming from a place of abject ignorance.

fgti otm

(xp) Not a banning offence tbf.

(xp) Lost me in the middle section there tbh.

These days it's almost impossible to remain completely unheard. At least one advantage with the current way is that you can always get a couple of hundred of people to hear your music anyway even with minimal promotion.

― mirostones

man there are whole programs written simply to play music that has never been heard, show videos that have never been seen. there are a lot of them.

permaban capitalism

The likes of Tusk, The Dark Side of the Moon, Abbey Road, Low, Avalon or any impeccably produced album you could care to name would not have been anywhere near the same without the financial backing of the band/artists record company.

Likewise, a lot of the smaller acts on - say, Mute - would not have had money invested in them - recording/touring/promotional budgets - without the revenue generated by the bigger selling acts on the roster.

So no, I disagree.

*sigh*

People clunking on Turrican is really annoying, I don't agree with exactly what he's saying but I don't think he's entirely wrong either-- there is a black-and-white discussion here about something that is more complicated

Clunking on "capitalism" is missing the point, also. 75% of music will still be not-worth-the-investment-of-your-time even if capitalism is eliminated, and the musicians creating that music will still be out here lamenting the fact that nobody wants to listen to their music

These 'Ban Turrican' posts are getting tiresome tbh. I don't agree with his points either but nothing he's said itt is even remotely beyond the pale so far.

― pomenitul, Saturday, April 13, 2019 2:54 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thank you :)

I forget some of you can't grasp the concept of enjoying doing something

Clunking on "capitalism" is missing the point, also. 75% of music will still be not-worth-the-investment-of-your-time even if capitalism is eliminated, and the musicians creating that music will still be out here lamenting the fact that nobody wants to listen to their music

― flamboyant goon tie included

ok but that 75% is a completely made up number, first off

i also agree with you that abolishing capitalism will not keep people from complaining that nobody wants to listen to their music, if that's the crux of the issue to you then yes, no answers there

i'm more concerned with people like maggie roche, who isn't one of the made-up 75% nobody will listen to, who literally died due to the failures of american capitalism

man there are whole programs written simply to play music that has never been heard, show videos that have never been seen. there are a lot of them.

― Jaki Liebowitz (rushomancy), Saturday, 13 April 2019 16:09 (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True actually, now that you mention it I remember http://www.forgotify.com

Some of the stuff on there is pretty good.

I will amend what I said slightly, I think it is easy to have at least a couple of hundred people listen as long as you do some promotion. I think the big mistake is to just put stuff up there and hope that's enough.

But that is a long way from making a career out of it of course.

I do agree with Turrican in that I definitely miss the grand money pit records that were made possible by classic rock's imperial period

we'll definitely not see those again, but in the scheme of things it was more a 15 year blip than the norm

@ rush, respectfully I am literally the best person in the room to guesstimate a percentage of musicians who exist who make work that is saleable enough to provide them with an living wage, so, yes it's a made-up number, but it's the best made-up number

I don't know the circumstances of Maggie Roche's death, but if we're talking about Why Americans Die then any conversation with me will always come back to "y'all don't have single payer health care" and "y'all have CCWs" so it is a pretty boring convo the 20th or so go-around

I do agree with Turrican in that I definitely miss the grand money pit records that were made possible by classic rock's imperial period

we'll definitely not see those again, but in the scheme of things it was more a 15 year blip than the norm

The entire record industry as we know it was a blip (or, more accurately, a bubble).

I don't think rushomancy can solely blame the recording industry for the lack of success of The Roches. Some things take off, and some things don't. This was the case back when there was less competition and a lot of money in the industry, and it's even harder now that there's more competition and fuck all money in the industry.

I think not having single payer health care falls under the "failures of American capitalism"

Then you’re using “capitalism” pretty darn loosely.

Key word is 'American'.

As usual.

xp @ ums, oh for sure, I just felt as if rush was attributing Maggie Roche's death as being specifically an issue with the music industry, which I see he wasn't, but I read it as such

Key word is 'American'.

Doesn’t contradict my point, but ok

fgti, oh, certainly, if anybody is going to know what that percentage is it's going to be you - i'm just not sure that number is something that's knowable right now!

and yes, discussing the failures of the us healthcare system is tedious and redundant, but to me it's a significant enough ongoing failure that it makes discussing macro-level political, social, or economic issues an exercise in futility

which i guess explains my avoidance of the political threads and my tendency to, whenever a thread does turn political, to respond with "lol abolish capitalism". it's as much a distraction as shifting the thread to be about one particular strongly disliked long-term poster, but i try not to channel my negative feelings into personal animosity, deserved or no.

mirostones: to me i feel like anybody can make a "success" of themselves if their goals are modest enough and they're comfortable with self-salesmanship, and i guess it's also true that the herbie nicholses of the world will never be truly well-known. it's this absolute requirement, in today's world, that the artist self-promote that i find odious. i sympathize more, in principle, the people who have zero pageviews to the people who constantly promote their music to everyone they know and have 342 pageviews.

honestly, i see the "music industry" and the way it works now as the future of capitalism

The self-promoter formerly known as the artist is indeed a vile phenomenon.