To those making music for a living

This place
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In short: If you are making a living from music (or trying hard to), please respond to this call, so we can tune this new platform to your needs.

The Social Music Network needs to become… a network. And in this network the strongest nodes are those who make music for a living – or are trying hard to, putting all their bets in a professional music career. TSMN neets to be built to support them. If we succeed at this, the rest of us will benefit. If we fail, at this, TSMN will fail.

It’s as simple as this.

To do this, we need to identify these music makers, invite them, and ask them how TSMN can support them better. I’d like to discuss with them whether a directory of professional music makes in the Knowledge base would be useful, what kind of information do they need the most, would they be interested in a private space only for professional music makers, and so on…

One problem with open discussions for music makers is that they quickly get filled with hobbyists (like me). With the best of their/our intentions, hobbyists can derail any of these discussions for (aspirational) professional music makers because

  • on the surface, hobbyists and professionals might look alike (they release music, they discuss about music…) but their biggest problems can be very different
  • there are way more hobbyists than professionals
  • hobbyists tend to have more free time, also to discuss online
  • hobbyists have little to no pressure to get income out of their music making
  • hobbyists may not know how things actually work nowadays in the (social) music industry.

This why we need to provide to (aspirational) professional music makers a safer and productive space for discussion and collaboration.

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Good call! Personally, I feel there’s a few big bottlenecks in music discovery that the corporate music industry & Big Tech have no interest in solving. If we can find ethical ways around this it will be absolutely transformative for music.

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Thank you for breaking the ice, @Mel. I have started a draft on Promotion strategies with better intentions than actual knowledge. We can discuss there whether this is useful and what you are referring to.

Other suggestions?

Collateral comment: I have been told that many music makers are not or don’t consider themselves “professional”, and that they keep getting back to “normal jobs” just to pay their bills. That’s of course fine and totally understandable. Please don’t take my words literally. Still, there are some music makers who are trying to build their career (or part of it) making music regardless of the difficulties and detours, while many of us are hobbyists and don’t try to turn this hobby into our career. While the words are imprecise, I hope we all understand the difference.

And again, it’s not that we don’t care about the hobbyists. It’s that we care especially about those who are trying to make a career, and the better things go for them, the better they will also go for the hobbyists.

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I want to add an opinion, but it’s just that and might be all wrong.

Despite the fact that I consider myself a professional music-maker/composer that just recently forgo-ed their status as a freelance artist, and am now employed by a university, I must say I would add my hesitation to make these distinctions. I can totally understand the sentiment, but I think it’s more connected to impostor syndrome (heavily imposed to all of us by society of course) than ‘the reality’ I personally see.

I believe music should be accessible to anyone on a multi-dimensional spectrum with various axis of ‘consuming’ to ‘producing’, and ‘rarely and for fun’ to ‘seriously and paid for’. Categorisations of anyone involved in music in any way should be blurred as much as possible. Case in point here are some efforts of avant-garde composers on one hand and improvisational experiments where audience is treated as legit performers in a musical performance. These might feel edgy-experimental cases, but on the other hand, we should also note that at the turn of 19th century, before the mass adoption of radio and record player, every household had a piano and regular music evenings with family singing and playing, reading notes, etc. In other words, before the mass-reproduction of recorded music, music was a full social activity for and by anyone.

Society changes, and so do habits and values. It’s now a different world, anyone can say that, and it’s true. But in terms of valuing a “music-making activity”, I tend to lean onto the idea that it doesn’t matter much why, how frequently, how “well”, and if you’re paid for it.

We all DO want to make life easier to those music-makers who are in hardship in life. That’s all that matters to me - that’s why we need to think more about fairness on platforms, mechanisms of mutual aid and solidarity. Because, I want to stress this, I believe we should actually get rid of monetary value of a recorded piece of music and move towards socialist vision: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” [via marx]. And while we are dismantling capitalism (or its substitute - techno-feudalism), we need interim solutions: name-your-price, patronage, subscriptions, memberships, collective ownership of means of production - whether it’s for a “professional musician” (gigging, releasing, rehearsing from morning till morning) or for occasional part-time weekend fiddler.

At the same time, “making music for a living” is hard work, and work is work, it’s a reality, harsh reality that brings its own set of problems that often take blood sweat and tears to solve and those who can help with their support, should do so because we need music in our lives in order to feel joy for life.

EDIT/in retrospect
(maybe this post of mine should actually go under a separate topic, as some kind of meditation on the topic. i’m not sure i’m contributing to this topic)

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I guess I should have chosen a better title for this topic, or perhaps I shouldn’t have brought this topic at all.

All I wanted to say is that we should keep TSMN focused on the needs of those who have more to risk, to win and to lose on Fairness and autonomy for music makers and friends.

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This is exactly it. This problem, and its root (the idea of having to “earn” a living at all), is imposed by capitalism. Distinguishing between “hobbyists vs pros” isn’t a value judgement on the quality or “deserving-ness” of the art — it’s merely pointing to a socio-economic problem that shouldn’t exist, but does.

The problem as I see it is:

  • art is labour intensive (as is other unpaid community work: being a carer, parenting, etc)
  • time is limited
  • arts workers are forced to get other employment to “earn” a living, which means if our work requires a lot of time we can’t effectively produce art
  • the other employment (for the likes of me) is usually badly paid, and is actively making the world worse because that’s the kind of thing that capitalism loves

In the absence of Universal Basic Income / Services (as compensation for the theft of the commons, and because capitalist system doesn’t include the concept of necessary-for-human-survival activities), the solution left to us is:

  • expand our networks of mutual aid and dual power, including:
  • in our arts scenes, find ways to discover and support arts workers

I think the last point is what I want to help happen. In ethical-tech places like this forum, or on the Fediverse — places that attract like-minded people who all want to solve this problem — we have a lot of talented souls with a lot of skills. I’m hopeful for the future :slight_smile:

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