Friendly and honest advice for those seeking careers in music. Ideas for music jobs for music makers and music producers.

I’m going to start this by unashamedly talking about myself, because for over 25 years I’ve enjoyed some highly profitable careers in music. Music has bought me a nice lifestyle, a house, a Porsche, holidays - well, everything I’ve got really, and if I add up the income that’s poured in over the years then, without any exaggeration at all, it’s literally been millions of dollars.

I’m not telling you all this to show off or impress you, but rather to prove to you that it can be done. You can carve out careers in music.

There are many ways to make money from music these days, and later in this section I will discuss a number of them for you, but first, I want to tell you how I created my careers in music, because there’s a VERY good chance that you could copy me and be successful too, especially if you’re a music maker.

The way I’ve made a regular, growing income for my family and I over all these years isn’t particularly glamorous or exciting as a career in music, but it is absolutely reliable, dependable and solid. It has been through music teaching.

I started off in back bedroom teaching rock guitar, bass and drums and keyboards (I could play a few instruments and had been in bands and so on, but was no virtuoso).

From these humble business beginnings, I’ve developed a music teaching empire that stretches right across the UK, with over 60 teaching schools, hundreds of staff and thousands and thousands of customers. It’s called Clive’s Easylearn Pop Music Schools, and it’s an award-winning (HSBC award for Enterprise 2007) franchise network. If you’re a music maker you could take a similar route.

So, a career in music from teaching can be achieved. But how? Where do you start? Well, if you’d like to develop some careers in music and are willing to consider teaching as an option, (and because I KNOW that it can give you that solid career in music, income and the cool lifestyle that you are probably looking for), then I recommend that you visit my own membership site called www.teachmusicforprofit.com It will take you step-by-step through the process of setting up your very own music teaching business, and put you firmly on the road to some successful, long-term careers in music.

Not convinced? Still here? Well, if so I must confess to being a little bit disappointed, but I do recognize that teaching music (however profitable it is) is not for absolutely everyone, and so, in the rest of this section, I’ll try to present to you some alternatives. Starting with...

How to form a band

In my time, I’ve been in a number of bands like this and, with regular gigs, perhaps two or three times a week, then an income can be made and careers in music developed. The money does, of course, need to be split between all the members of the band, (so a guitar, bass, drums outfit with the guitarist or bassist singing is a good financial option - or even a duo) but nevertheless, it can mount up, and, if the band are good, can result in repeat bookings, which (in the same way as with my music teaching) is the key to rapid growth and stable profits if you’re a music maker.

Getting a band together and successfully being able to get gigs is a fairly huge subject, and so I’ve put together all the information that you need in lots of depth. Just follow this link to my www.howtoformaband.com site. Everything you need is right there and it’s completely free for you. Here's the link... www.howtoformaband.com
The strategy that I recommend is to combine rock music teaching with being in a band. Here’s the link out to my www.teachmusicforprofit.com site again... www.teachmusicforprofit.com I make no apologies for pushing it so hard - remember how well this music job strategy worked for me. It’s the best way that I personally know to developing long-term careers in music. However, there are others. let’s move on to look at some of them now...

I’ll start with ones that require you to have playing skills, (being a music maker) and then finally move on to music jobs where just a healthy interest in music may be enough.

The smart way to get into the music business - Music Internships

Usually when you apply for a music job, (and see further down the page below for a TON of opportunities updated daily) the employer will want to know that you have some sort of experience in the music industry. The absolute hands-down best way to get that experience is to have done an "internship" or two with a relevant company in the music world.

A music internship is a work-related learning experience (usually unpaid) for individuals who want to develop hands on-work experience for careers in music. Most internships are temporary assignments that last approximately three months and up to a year.

You see, music employers are always on the look-out for people who are self-confident and knowledgeable, and the successful completion of a music internship will really develop characteristics which are desired by companies posting music jobs in the real business world. It could well be your first big step if you're looking for careers in music.

Quite simply, a music internship is an excellent way to determine if the music industry is the best career option for you to pursue. Music interns not only gain practical work experience in a field that they intend to pursue, but also build really valuable experience for future careers in music.

But best of all, sometimes a music internship may present a potential for an offer of full-time employment. Work experience is the most beneficial advantage that can be acquired by completing a music internship. If you're looking for careers in music and you're a student, or fresh graduate for example, having music work experience on your resume can be the best way to get your foot in the door. This can result in more music job offers as compared to individuals who lack such hard-to-find work experience.

The problem is, where the heck do you find music internships? Well, up to now, it's been downright impossible! But not any more... entrepreneurbeginner.com have solved that problem for you, and I'm delighted that, through a partnership I've forged with an organization who absolutely specializes in hunting down these rare opportunities. I can now bring a ton of these opportunities to you, all updated DAILY.

All you have to do is click on the link and follow the simple sign-up instructions. The company charge a small fee of less than $8/month to feed you all these rare opportunities, but quite frankly, it's an absolute no-brainer to sign up. Where else could you EVER find out about this back-door way into experience in the music industry?

The sign-up form is so simple, but it's REALLY clever and well thought-out too. First off, you can select the category of music internship you're after. They have opportunities in things like artist manager internships, audio engineer internships, music education internships, music executive internships, music festival internships, record label internships, legal internships, music marketing internships, musician internships, radio internships, recording studio internships, music video internships and summer music internships - and it's a simple drop-down box choice.

Wow, that's an absolutely stellar selection I'm sure you'd agree! But it just gets better and better because you can also select which State and even which city you'd like to find a music internship opportunity in.

You'll kick yourself forever for not investing a measly eight bucks to start to change your life and set yourself up for careers in music, so I seriously do recommend you click the link right now. Here it is again...

Your source for real music jobs - updated daily!

You can choose from a whole bunch of categories and also input your current experience so that you get stuff that's customized exactly right for you - brilliant!

The jobs are updated daily and you'll get regular emails providing you with all the red hot opportunities if you want. It all adds up to the very best music jobs source on the planet.

The mechanism is provided by the same partner organization as the music internship one that I introduced you to above, and thus carries the same very, very low cost access opportunity and my personal recommendation. If you want music jobs, then this is it - just click the link below and get the unique inside scoop on what's available to help you follow your dream and really change your life...

Writing music for TV commercials

I found my opportunities initially through a nearby video production company who didn’t have any links to a music composer, and so, when a music job came up that demanding something more specific than available “library music”, then I was occasionally called in.

Library music is actually your main “competitor” in these situations. Most production companies have a library of CD’s of ready-made music, arranged in a variety of different styles. When a production company needs a bit of music quickly, the first thing they normally turn to is their library of special CD’s. If they find something suitable, they complete the paperwork supplied, and pay the library a fee for the use of the music.

These libraries also employ musicians to compose music for it, of course, and so that is occasionally also another potential opening and another one of those potential careers in music.

Your own recording studio

When I first started getting involved in music in the late 1970’s, there was very little technology available to enable you to record at home. Simple four-track reel-to-reel recorders were available, and gradually eight and even some sixteen track machines appeared. But the process was still very costly, especially by the time you had bought huge amounts of necessary outboard equipment such as reverb units, compressors and so on and so forth - and that’s even before you started buying instruments and acoustically treating a room to record them in.

In my career in music I went down this route and ended up with 20’ x 10’ recording studio in the back garden of a house I was living in many years ago with a recording area, control room with a triple-glazed window, vocal booth and eight-track reel to reel recorder.

I used it for my rock music teaching too, but for recording it was really never quite enough.

In short, home recording was complicated for music producers back then and, most of the time, the results were not comparable to work produced in a professional studio and thus could not usually be used as finished masters on a commercial job.

Today however, things have changed for music producers, and if you’re a beginner entrepreneur seeking careers in music in the production area, you can have the most wonderful tools, instruments and recording studio you could ever imagine available to you - and all tucked inside the tiny confines of a laptop computer - and a much better chance of securing music jobs.

The arrival of digital recording has made all this possible. No more fighting against the hiss of tape - even novices can create pristine-sounding audio recordings that rival those made in top studios.

There are several software systems to run these “virtual recording studios”. I started with something called Cubase VST (the VST being short for Virtual Studio Technology). Other well-known names are Protools and Logic, the latter which I now use on an Apple Mac computer. They are perfect for music producers.

Apple Logic gives me absolutely everything I need. There are virtual synthesizers that I can play and record by simply using a connected piano keyboard; unlimited individual tracks to enable me to create a composition on my own piece-by-piece, and pretty much every sort of top-quality audio effect that I could ever want, all brought together with an on-screen mixing desk.

For someone like me brought up on the earlier technology, this is a marvelous leap forward, and for the beginner entrepreneur and music producer interested in careers in music, it is perfect and enables professional music production to be handled from from almost anywhere.

If you like the sound of these virtual studios, then here are links to where you can buy some of the top ones. (LINK COMING SOON).

When you first buy a software virtual recording studio, you may find the learning curve a bit steep. For the sake of a small additional investment in an online course, you can get the learning out of the way and get on with actually creating music and developing your careers in music.

Here are the online courses that I recommend. They are fairly inexpensive and use lots of videos to show exactly how to press all the right buttons and get your software to do what you need it to. (LINKS COMING SOON)

This company provide online training courses in pretty much any computer program you’ll come across - not just music ones, but everything! I think they’re great, especially as a lot of the instruction is shown using videos on-screen, which I think is the fastest and most straightforward way to learn software. It’s always worked for me.

Writing music for films and video games

The musical skills most useful in this arena are keyboard ones, as, once you can compose and create on the keyboard, you can use it with the technology that I’ve been presenting to be able to produce almost anything - the keyboard can become almost any instrument that you care to think of. If, on the other hand, your only instrument is a guitar then your sonic palette will be much more limited as a music maker.

So, I’d advise you to develop some keyboard skills if you’re a beginner entrepreneur wanting to move into composition with a view to beginning to carve out some careers in music in that direction as a music producer.

I should warn you that getting work in this field is very hard. There are many music producers seeking to break into the marketplace which, especially now that home recording has come of age, has become even more crowded than it ever was before (and it was hard enough back then!).

However, the media world has changed too, and there are also more opportunities for music jobs than there ever were before - such as the requirement for music in video games, and the huge expansion of television channels needing material, plus a tremendous growth in small lower-budget independent film-making and production companies all seeking some sort of music or another sometimes, so it’s not all bad news for people looking for music jobs or careers in music.

Further down the page you'll find a link to the course I recommend you consider taking if you want to get into to writing music for films and video games. Over 50% of the students that have taken it have found work, and you can do the course from anywhere in the world! But first, let me explain what the lifestyle is about and how you can experience it...

The world of the freelance

A freelancer is someone who works independently, is not tied to a particular company, and takes jobs as and when they wish to - an entrepreneur in all but name really.

elance.com is ebay for people seeking to buy creative services. It’s an amazing resource for beginner entrepreneurs seeking music jobs, either as music producers or music makers.

It’s split into two parts - people advertising their creative services - from music composers, through writers to web-designers on the one hand, and people offering jobs on the other.

The concept is straightforward. You register as a provider of a creative service such as a music producer, fill in a profile about yourself, and upload you information and some links to samples of your work ideally.

You then browse the elance.com site regularly looking for one-off jobs that have been posted on the site (and there are thousands at any one time). You then bid for the work and the the buyer selects one of the bidders. It’s a great way to kick-start some careers in music.

The financial elements are handled through the site itself in a similar way to that used on ebay, with elance.com taking a percentage of the price of the job.

It’s a tremendous system in my opinion, and one which could enable you, over time, to offer your musical services to eager buyers and begin some careers in music as a music producer.

Music for the Media - the online course that I recommend to you

Critiques and guidance about what you send in, in response to these briefs is given back to you, usually via mp3 audio, by the tutors, all of which are well-known media composers. Towards the end of the course, there are units to teach you how to “pitch” for work too - and some students have apparently been successful in developing careers in music within the media industry and getting music jobs.

Becoming a session musician

For the right music maker and beginner entrepreneur hoping to develop careers in music, there is also work in the theater industry in orchestras “in the pit” - the place low down in front of the stage where orchestras and bands play live music for performances.

To be considered for this sort of work, you’ll need to be a music maker able to read music very well, and also have a versatile outlook to music in general - one week you could be playing comedic pantomime music, the next you could be playing an orchestral suite for a ballet. There are many careers in music within this sub-genre.

The BBC provide a very good overview on what a session musician is, who hires them, what you need and so on, and also some useful stuff about other music industry roles. You can reach that guidance from here. It’s honest and truthful and “tells it like it is”: BBC Guide to Music Industry Jobs Of course, you could also be a beginner entrepreneur embarking on some careers in music without ever playing an instrument at all. Here are a couple of possible route in this direction...

Become a luthier and make
musical instruments to sell

You will most likely need to take a local course in this sort of work, as it is rather specialist. I’ve never done anything like this, but it sounds like a very pleasant way to earn an income as an entrepreneur. A different route to music jobs.

It seems to me that the most successful luthiers these days are those that establish themselves in a niche - something that I keep on recommending throughout entrepreneurbeginner.com.

One of the main reasons for working in a niche as a luthier is that these days musical instruments in general have become more plentiful and cheap - especially with imports from China and the far east flooding into the market.

To compete with that trade on price when making one-off musical instruments would be impossible. However, there are still niches for the luthier. Let me give you a couple of personal examples.

A few years back, I decided to extend my fretted instrument playing skills a little further - I’ve always enjoyed trying to master playing interesting musical instruments.

I started looking around for a lute, something that was all the rage in the 14th and 15th centuries, but rare now.

Because the market for a lute is so small, they are never mass produced, and so I bought mine directly from the maker - the luthier. In fact, I haven’t checked, but I have a feeling the word luthier actually originally comes from “lute”.

Anyway, it was expensive at well over $1000 (and this was back in 1995). The luthier was working in a high-value niche, and these days the Internet allows luthiers to promote their specialist products to a worldwide market and develop music jobs.

More recently I decided to explore the sound of the hammered dulcimer, another ancient instrument that had almost died out completely (and was the forerunner of the piano). Again I found that the purchase was not an easy task, as these instruments were also not mass produced, but instead made one a time, in small workshops by knowledgeable luthiers, who were making a good little career in music in their small niche.

So, if making instruments rather than playing them is something that you have a feel for, then why not consider training as a luthier to start some new careers in music? There are music jobs to be had in small niches, and the Internet can give you a worldwide potential market for your work.

Run a local music shop - or partner with iTunes and run one online

If you’re a beginner entrepreneur, then a music shop or even a record shop could be just the right music job for you. However, careers in music of this type traditionally have required that you invest in a premises, stock and staff. More recently though, it has become possible to run “virtual” music and record shops.

On the Internet, I have come across many music shops which advertise lots of equipment. Some of the smaller ones work on the basis that, when someone places an order, the shop then simultaneously places an order from their supplier and then ships the item to you.

The key point here is that the virtual music shop doesn’t have to hold stock, and without the necessity of a premises and staff either, can often undercut larger stores, by taking less profit on the sale of the musical item.

Success with such an operation is based on two things in my opinion. The first is that the “store” owner has developed good relationships with reliable suppliers who are able to deliver fast within an agreed timescale.

The second is that the customer service between store owner and customer is really good. The mistake that many of these stores seem to make, is to pretend or imply that an item is in stock when it isn’t.

I think it’s far better to explain to the customer on the website exactly how the trading system works and promise a fast delivery date - or a further discount perhaps if it is not met. That way customer expectations are met.

Virtual record shops are also now possible as another option for non-musician beginner entrepreneurs seeking careers in music, and it’s possible to work in association with Apple’s iTunes to create your own online record store, selling absolutely ANYTHING you want to without having to choose what to stock. This is particularly useful in a fast-moving music market where today’s “stars” are often tomorrow’s “bargain bin” records.

The iTunes concept is quite simple. The iTunes affiliate program allows you to put links on your website to the US iTunes store. These can be links to songs, albums, artists, TV shows, music videos, audiobooks, podcasts and more.

When someone clicks on your link and buys a product, you earn a commission on the sale. Typically it’s 5% of every qualifying sale.

It’s a great way to build a media store without having to buy or deliver any stock, or have any staff or premises. Before you know it you could have a music job and the first of your careers in music!

To learn more, follow this link iTunes Affiliate Partnership Opportunity

Become a performance DJ

The role of the DJ has changed dramatically from the role of someone just playing tunes from records and latterly CD’s, and chatting in between about them, to someone who is a performance artist in their own right - a performance DJ.

If you are interested in this branch of careers in music, then you’ll need to learn a few retro-technology skills, as performance dj’s often use vinyl discs.

This provides the opportunity to create mixes between two tunes - inter-cutting from one turntable to another - using a variety of interesting techniques such as beat-matching, where one disc is sped up or slowed down slightly to match the tempo of the other one, and the two discs blended together.

A performance dj will “work a crowd” in much the same way as a rock band does, developing excitement at certain parts of the set to fever pitch and then sometimes, slowing things down to more of a “chill out” groove, all the while mixing different flavours of tunes together, sometimes with additional equipment such as drum machines or “Grooveboxes” -devices that the Roland Corporation developed from 1997 and that you can find more information about here (LINK COMING SOON).

You can get some insider information on being a performance dj right here: BBC performance dj information

Music jobs and careers in music - SUMMARY

Here’s to success for you in developing your careers in music, whatever you choose to do, whether it’s as a teacher, a music producer or music maker.