Does music career repay investment?

[PabloLuna]

To become a musician you need to study a lot, buy expensive instruments, pay for software, spend a lot of time practicing and composing.  It is a lot of money you invest.

Does the career of music repay all that money?  How much time it takes to recover the investment?  What are the perspectives during this time of crisis?

[psishock]

To become a musician you wont need almost any of these stuffs. To have a payed musician carrier, well that is a different story.

Lets take it only from business side then. It will become like any other profession. It will depends how good you play your cards. You learn it over time and invest some money to your tools, but if you are good at your job, it can make you a lot more money, than you have invested in studying and the tools. (if you are bad at it, it usually wont make anything... or very small amount, same as with any other professions)

What are the perspectives during this time of crisis?

this is ain't no crisis lol, at least i would never view it from that perspective. This is what you choose and love to do. But one thing is certain, its an undetermined time until you'll able to start making money from all your hard work (who knows, maybe a few years will be enough, maybe a few decades or more will be needed, maybe you will lost determinations and never get there. Usually the third option is happening with most of the people, but every single person is different of course, you will see), so i would advise to take a regular (part time) job to make a living, 'till everything will be ready.

[PabloLuna]

How do you know if you are good? Good for what?
What do you mean with "playing your cards"?  What cards?
For some reason I do not see music as a career, but as a hobbie.

[psishock]

How do you know if you are good? Good for what?

it all depends from your aims. One can be a "good graphic artist" example in lots of different ways too. "Musician" can mean a lot of different professions also.

What do you mean with "playing your cards"? What cards?

It's just a wordplay. What i mean with that, you have to learn how to make business also, besides technical and artistic skills. Jumping into business world without business knowledge can be fatal (unsuccessful). Also you can get a buddy who is experienced on the field, and work together with him, or make a deal with record/game/film studios, who are looking for same type of music that you make. But again, those are just a few examples, it will depend from your profile, and how would you manage to work it out.

No matter what are your primary aims, you have to have a general plan.

For some reason I do not see music as a career, but as a hobbie.

Sure, that can be a choice also. This wont bring you much cash, but your musical life will be much less stressful.

[PabloLuna]

Do you mean that you need to enter the world of corporate politics and think about $ instead of music just to pay the bills?

It sounds a bit like being an airline pilot.  Pilots make less money than a branch manager in McDonald's and their studies are very expensive.  Some of them need to have a second job to make a living.

[psishock]

Do you mean that you need to enter the world of corporate politics and think about $ instead of music just to pay the bills?

you aren't forced to do anything. There are choices that you can take. If you could mix corporate and artist politics together somehow, that would be pure win. The two terms doesn't necessary cancels each other.

It sounds a bit like being an airline pilot. Pilots make less money than a branch manager in McDonald's and their studies are very expensive. Some of them need to have a second job to make a living.

Being an airline pilot or a McDonald's employee pays you by hour, so you cannot really measure this type of professions with them. You are getting payed here after fully finishing your job/product and successfully selling it.

How successful you'll become and when? That is totally up to you and your aims, plans. Some musicians have the idea of painting themselves to blue and hammering some rain pipes on the stage for fame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOL8-qIYemg

[PPH]

The answer is, obviously, it depends. Some people will recover the money spent. Some won't.

In my case, all this is an expense. I like making music and have spent some money in order to do it, the same way I spend money in movie tickets and in books. I don't intent to make money out of my music. But even if I did, part of the expense could be said to have been "recovered" by enabling me to do something I like.

EDIT: If you see music as a hobby, then you don't have to worry about recovering the investment. It's no investment. It's an expense.

[Saga Musix]

Let's see what Mick Jagger has to say about making profit...

But I have a take on that - people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you! They didn't pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn't.

[uncloned]

what is not said by JoJO is that they made money by *performing*

so... if you can get to the point of doing live shows - perhaps even over the internet (which is possible) you could find money that way.

however, if you are good enough and work hard at your music I think people will be willing to support you - but they probably won't make you rich.

[Louigi Verona]

To become a musician you need to study a lot, buy expensive instruments, pay for software, spend a lot of time practicing and composing. It is a lot of money you invest.

Out of that long list money would be the last thing I would notice as a significant investment. In fact, it sounds like a punch line of a joke - you list so many things and suddenly your concern is money.

I would say the most important thing is investing time and energy into learning new things and into basically sculpting your life and your mindset around a particular activity, a particular field of interest. In fact, once you get deep down into any subject, you understand that going back is less and less and option since you've spent too much time on it to just throw it away and be left with nothing, in terms of skills.

As for money, I don't think there are so much investments. If you are a beginner, you would tend to buy cheaper, simpler stuff at first. Electronic hardware these days is becoming cheaper and more accessible. Software is available via torrents or you can use a FOSS operating system.

[AlisterFlint]

i thought career was all about talent and luck..

[psishock]

i thought career was all about talentand luck..

nah, it has nothing to do with those xD. Mostly nowdays it's all about connections and money, like any other professions. If you have heavy connections, you can have a great career, but if you have none of these, most likely you wont. Business is business, art is art.

[Rakib]

That's if you want an career in mainstream pop.
But there are many more people who is getting their pay check from performing music, let's say schools and kindergarden, for ads, games, films and so on. So don't give up so easy even though you're not the next britney spears

[Saga Musix]

What Rakib said. Sure, it's always good to have some connections, however if you don't just think inside the box, i.e. obvious cases like mainstream pop music, true talent is still necessary (which is a good thing!).

[g]

My opinion is that there is a hell of a lot more talent inside the box that outside of it. A lot of artists hide their lack of talent with terms like "alternative", "experimental" and "avant garde".