Taking your music stuff full-time

[evil madmen]

diversify yourself as a musician/dj/artist and live in an area that you can actually make money entertaining, working in a studio, etc.

hustle hustle hustle.

This is what im hoping to do. Im going to school for graphic design, hopefully Ill learn some coding as well so I can build websites. I figure that DJing (and maybe producing, it will take me awhile to make anything worthwhile) and designing will mesh together nicely as long as im in the right place. Monsta is a pretty good example, I think Jeekoos does design stuff for dubfront too.

Same here, I study illustration and graphic design and hope to pursue that along with producing. Ideally, il go on to study music production after my last year at university.Im not sure why really, maybe it will help build contacts with similiar interests.
Everyone says london is the place to go.... is it though? if everyones going.....

Well im in the states, so I cant really say. But London has a pretty rad design scene from what I hear, and obviously the music is big as well.

[knivez]

i wish i could keep my job and still dj every once and a while. I'm diligently working on my production as of late to see if i can set up some nights where i can through my own stuff as well as all the other vinyl's Ive acquired as of late that would be my ream to dj at the very least two nights a week. it would take the monotony out of the 9 to 5er ive been stuck with for the last 6 years although the money is decent

[ruckus49]

Hard to tell really. I doubt I'll be making "the jump" yet - but maybe the alternative is to look for a full-time job within the industry, instead of going it effectively self employed.

well youre gonna be working all day on other peoples shitty music. i have a degree in audio production and interned at two studios. its a lot of hours and long tedious work, working as a tracking and mixing engineer. 'doing what you love' for me does not equate to recording and mixing bands who want to sound like 50 cent or the foo fighters. I'd much rather work on my shit on my own time.

plus, another big reason i dont want to go the audio engineering route is that you will sit in front of a computer all day. besides the long and repetitive hours, i dont think I would want to go home and make my own computer music after staring at a monitor all day. I dont need to be watching a glowing rectangle my entire waking life.

for these reasons, ive decided to go to tech school for electronics engineering now. i have a strong interest in electronics and its much more practical and has a lot more career possibilities.

maybe im a little off here but from my experience, engineers arent great musicians. if your passion is creating the music in your vision and not helping someone else realize their vision, i dont think audio engineering is a good path for an aspiring musician.

if you still want to be in the industry there is a thread on this forum called "careers in the music industry" which lists most of the options available. you could go into publishing, promoting, and other corporate cock sucking music careers. from what ive seen so far, my opinion, is that the record label side of the work is full of dirtbags trying to be famous and be around famous people. its just like the movie industry. i'd rather do my own thing and see if i can good enough. enough so that my tunes stand on their own and i dont need any shallow "connections" to get my sound respected.