How Risky Is It To Try And "Make It" In The Music Industry These Days?

Here's a question I think a lot of young musicians/music enthusiasts have, and I'll give a list of my personal reasons for being at least a bit worried about the career decision:





1) Its been portrayed as a rich-or-poor profession with nothing in the middle. Either you're famous or you're on the streets dying.


2) The music industry is shrinking, or at the very least changing.


3) If you're over the age of 25 and haven't "made it", you may as well give up. This has a direct implication on my view of where education and a backup plan fit in. If I'm 19 now and go to school for 3-4 years, this logic gives me 2 years to succeed. So does education come after? Or is the risk so great that I should get my piece of paper before even thinking of trying to succeed?


4) I live in Ottawa, Canada, and there's really not much of a scene here. The idea of leaving here to go to another city means burning a lot of bridges with family and having next to no money to live on.





I really want to believe that these things are all false except to those who dive into it with no plan at all. Speaking of which, what makes a good plan? What kind of person does it take to make it in this field? I'm a pretty talented musician and would probably be able to step into most bands, but at the same time I realize there's a lifetime of learning and adapting ahead of me. Like many, I do share the dream of being able to live off of music and spend 10 months of the year touring, but at least in my world its portrayed as something that is impossible to achieve. I don't believe it myself, but I'm not secure enough with my thoughts to throw what I do have away.





I'm at that tipping point where I need to hear some real advice from people with life experience with the subject.





Thanks a lot.|||I put a link to the forums from the indie music survival guide website since I don't know but think you might find the site useful and I liked Beatnik Turtle's Song of the Day project.


Jonathon Coulton has an interview you might like but I think he is the exception not the rule


http://emusician.com/interviews/industry鈥?/a>





you should finish school like Coulton and you can always tour the three months of the year that aren't winter in Canada ;-)


Could you get a job at a bar or club helping other musicians set up and see if they are making a living?|||The bottom line is: if you really want to try it, you'll try it. It's always been risky and never a "sensible" career choice (I mean, performers, like actors and such, have been looked down on by respectable types for hundreds of years).