The Career Conundrum
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Hmm. I wonder if my music should really become a career. It seemed like a brilliant idea at first, but I think there’s a negative side to this that I’ve overlooked until now.
Since I started making music for money, I seem to have become less interested in making music for myself. As demands fly in and clients slap me with ridiculous deadlines, I’m starting to treat my music like more of a chore than a hobby. This is probably why you’re seeing less from me these days.
I know what you’re thinking, “you’re profiting from your music, you should be proud!” The thing is, once you start working for somebody else, you’re doing exactly that. I’m given a film to work on and a specific (usually minimal) amount of time to produce a track and video. Doesn’t matter if the film sucks. I’m getting paid so I need to make it work. This is usually the point where whatever passion I once had flushes right down the toilet.
This is how business and art collides. Again, I’m not sure if I should be mixing them together. They’re two forces of very different natures. I didn’t wake up one day and think “Right, I’m going to start a track called Alice and it’s going to land several million views around the web”. I sat down on my own time with my own enthusiasm, and happened to be in the right zone at the right time.
Making a stellar track is like having a conversation with a stranger, sometimes it merrily rolls along, other times it’s like pushing a square wheel up hill. When I’m making music out of my own passion and the juices go down, I just bid it a farewell and catch up with it next time. However, when I’ve got a deadline next Monday and a giant investor expecting gold, I need to get cracking. Ever tried continuing a dead conversation with a stranger? That’s right, it doesn’t get better.
So I say again, hmm! I’m not sure where things are going right now. I fear one day I’ll have to make a choice. Do I sell my passion for money? Do I stay at home and keep panning the gold? Time will tell.
Profiting from an artistic passion is something not a lot of people have the courage to pursue due to this exact brainteaser. I want to share with you this quote that I hold very dear to my heart:
“If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.”
K.G
Translating this to my own work I would say that if I feel my pieces have started taking shape of an unrecognizable form that not even I can refer to, that is when I need to take a step back and ask myself if it’s worth the trouble. You have the power to please yourself and the public with your talents, but be your own boss and create masterpieces, not monsters.
Be happy. That is all.
Whatever you do, please don’t be a sellout. From the looks and sounds of it, i’m pretty sure you won’t but just keep it in mind. You’re a very talented human being and your tracks inspire me everyday. Driving to school, working on projects, etc.
Do what you love to do. Stick to your heart.
Follow your Passion!
If you can find a way of passionately making money the go for it!
If you can’t then just be sure you don’t ed up selling your passion.
A lot have people have posted that either way you should keep making music.
Please don’t ever make music without passion!
I adore the music you’ve gifted us, you are my favorite musician!
But the idea of you forcing out a song because people have made you feel like you ‘should’ is heartbreaking!
Whether these people are clients or fans is irrelevant!
You have gifted the world with amazing music, and it’s not going anywhere!
If you never made another song but were happy and following your heart, I would be happy and I believe others would be too ^_^
Your music will never get old to me. When I listen to it I almost feel like I’m dreaming~
Please stay true to yourself and follow your Passion, whatever form it takes!
I went through a similar issue. A battle between a passion or a career.
The career won, and I have a wonderful life, but the passion faded for sure.
It has become a job, and one that I both hate and love.
I guess what it boiled down to for me was doing something that payed the bills, and that I enjoyed doing, rather than some income generating, mind numbing existence.
There is no right direction, but I think you should just do what you love and set your own deadlines.
Hi mate,
I agree with everyone else… the world needs your art! Gardyn is genuinely one of the beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time – please don’t stop what you’re doing.
You’ve definitely stepped up a gear with the real life filming, good work! Having watched my own mother spend endless hours in the garden, tending to the flowers and keeping it all so beautiful, I know exactly how important it is to her. I’ve always thought of her talent as a gift to the world in a some way; leaving a place more beautiful than when she’d arrived.
In my humble opinion, your ability to reach people on such a personal/emotional level is amazing – you don’t need to change who you are to be successful. If what you’re doing now is taking the joy out what you love, then look for exactly what you want. You’ve no shortage of talent mate, and they’ll be queuing at the door for you soon enough.
Don’t sell out to the corporates, keep it real, straight from the heart, and you’ll be fine.
Wishing you all the best in the future
John Elliott (UK)
One of my students showed me your work. Brilliant and exciting! From my own experience, the right balance between work you’re paid to create, and work you generate yourself, is hard to find and maintain. It is an eternal tension, perhaps never fully and finally resolved, and in itself can be a creative momentum. If you redefine creativity as “problem solving”, you can propel yourself into some exciting new spaces, that may even reinspire your personal work.
I think a major key point is to never get financially overcommitted, to where you are obligated to stay submerged in the commercial side of things for too long against your will. You need to be able to go to the surface whenever you choose, take some good long lungfulls of fresh real air, before diving back down in search of the “gold”.
Best of luck to you!
Hi,
I just wanted to say that your music is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. It releases such an overwhelming and inspiring wave of nostalgia over me that is unlike anything I’ve ever heard or felt before. So whether you continue your work independently or for profit– or both, for that matter, please just keep making music. For real. You’ve single handedly changed the whole way I listen to music– how I feel it, interpret it, actually hear it. After listening to your unique sound, it’s difficult to listen to anything the same way again! It’s changed the way I see the world, believe it or not.
Thanks so much for doing what you do. DON’T STOP!
Your Loyal Fan,
Dalyn B.
It doesn’t sound like the problem is making a living off of your work, but rather the type of work you are engaged in at the moment. You don’t like the type of projects you are being offered, or the restrictions and demands they are placing upon you. You can either attempt to find a more suitable type of work for your talents and tastes, or put yourself in a more selective position that only takes certain jobs on your terms. This would not be a career alone. Ultimately, you will have to work to pay the bills. You can either work a lousy job and do your music on the side, or at least have a job that combines some elements of what you love. And you have potential to grow your fan base and job experience in a way that could open new work opportunities down the road that may better suit you. In any case, even if you do create music for someone else, don’t think of it as selling it or working for them. The music you make is yours and yours alone. They provide at best inspiration or direction, but you do it for the music, not for them.
Strange as it may seem, Money is not a good motivation. I suggest you either cut your contract and/or find a way to sell your music for free.
[...] recently read his entry about “the career conundrum.” basically, making a passion into a career – good thing? bad thing? both? it takes me back to [...]
Hiya !
How about you continuing to produce your great videos doing what you love to do plus making money from that activity without you having to ‘work’ for someone else or having any deadlines at all ?
If you want to know more just get in touch and I’ll let you know how I think you could achieve that easily (you have my email tagged to this comment)
Either way … all the best and I wish you much success.
Gary
You just have to ask yourself which one makes YOU happier. I’m nearly certain this has already been stated to you previously in one way or another. Me personally, I’m only in for the pursuit of happiness. I don’t care whether I have gold dripping from my pockets. If I’m not happy about it then why have it in the first place? The one thing, I just recalled, that I wanted to tell you before, is that the day you stop making your music for yourself is the day your music loses all meaning. It’s my wish that you’ll do as you please, without the heavy influence of others. If you want to stop making music, so be it. I guess a good summery of this paragraph would be “Be true to yourself”.
I have thought this same thing too. I want to one day play songs at clubs and create my own songs too but I need the right feeling for it. I already have one of my very best DJ mixes in my mind, I have everything ready for it and I could do it any time but I don’t want to. I don’t have the passion for it right now and I know it will just suck then.
I also have thought that maybe when I make money from my songs, one day, I’ll get more motivated and passion to do my songs but as you said and I have thought, it just becomes same grey work you have to do every day…
Thus I’m thinking to get a basic job which I do every day and then make music whenever I feel like it.
Passion, intuition and creativity cannot be forced to a tight space or deadline. They need to be free and live as they want, not in a tiny box which money creates around them.
Quit getting reqular payments from your songs, quit getting clients and job requests. Quit all that and just find a nice basic job where you like to be during days and during evenings when you have free time do whatever kind of nice songs you ever feel like. This is my advice.
Passion, intuition and creativity should always live free, no money, laws, orders, clients or anything else should chain them.
True happiness is priceless… :o)
Stopped in to say “wow”. Loved Gardyn, very moving — even for a non-beat-phile like myself. As far as making your art your career, keep something in mind: About 90% of what you throw away as garbage would sound amazing to the average joe. Just sayin.
God bless,
Derek
I made my passion my job years ago. I’m still finding that balance, but it seems like a major part of it is that you need to be ok with turning down jobs you know will make you miserable. Even if it means not as much money coming in, taking only the jobs you will enjoy makes you happier and makes your portfolio even more geared to get you the type of work you’ll like. Good luck :)
I hope we are all helping you in your decision to make this talent of yours a career. I understand how hard it must be to sell yourself short in your work. It must be very important to you to create something genius and not just something to sell. Unfortunately, most of your clients won’t be able to really appreciate the difference like other artists can. However, You are so lucky to make a living off of such a beautiful talent. It may feel like you aren’t doing your best or not caring about your projects, but that’s because they aren’t the masterpieces. Keep the true genius to yourself. If “The Man” wants to give you money for only half your talent, take it… Keep your talent for yourself and your fans. Give your busy work to the check writers.
I was so impressed with your Buzz and Up videos. I’ve shared Alice with my friends as well. I’m a big fan and it’d be a sin not to take this success and run with it! Like I said, just keep the true hard work and genius mixes for yourself. Videos like Alice, Upular, and even Bangarang are priceless. They couldn’t afford you if you produced that work every time. Don’t be hard on yourself. It’s just a job. And you’re such a good artist that you have these things thrown at you. Artists come to hate what they used to love when they HAVE to do it and have little choice. You’re one of the lucky few who can relax and take the jobs you want when you feel that you want.
Good luck to you, I’m holding my breath waiting to hear how your career turns out,
-Rosie
It’s really awesome what you find in the interWeb, I was reading issue 193 of “practical web design magazine” and I decided to check out their website, where I saw the link to the Pogo interview from http://www.netmag.co.uk and eventually found my way here. And I saw this article and read the comments and realized this is what’s happening to me, I’m doing what I love for money and it makes me hate it, I guess the idea of doing something you love while earning doesn’t specifically say do it full time coz other people will be chasing you for results and when your no longer doing it at your own pace it’s as close as your not doing it yourself. Like someone has taken over your hand and produces some crappy stuff turning you to a personal puppet.
Here is some good advice. Trust me, I went down a similar path.
Do what you LOVE as a hobby. Do what you KNOW as a job.
They may overlap. That is where the trouble starts. My love was doing insane Photoshop mockups. The problem was that as soon as my employer figured out that I was good at it, it became a job. Over time it became a chore. It turned something that I had loved into something I grew to hate.
You have to decide: do you love making music on your terms, and would you still love it if someone was mandating you to make a song out of movie X within Y amount of time.
This post comes off as a buzzkill, but please, for your benefit, make sure you do things because you want to, not JUST because they can make you the most money short term, or fuel your ego for now. I ended up leaving my art position to work in IT. And to be honest, I make more now in IT than I probably would have in art. I love IT as well, and I think eventually I will regain my love for making art. But having to do it as my JOB took the joy out of it for a very long time, and I am still trying to regain that spark that drove me at first.
You have real skill and I would hate to see you turn your gift into something that you grow to hate. Trust, it is not so bad to work in a normal job while you continue to pursue your music in your free time. Not only will it allow you to own what you make, and do it on your own terms, but you will make better music because of it. And you can keep making music and work on making money from it as a side gig. :-)
- Brad in Chicago
I think you need to remember when you do art, design or music for a job a part of you will always be frustrated with what you are creating for someone else. I am designer, I find myself constantly frustrated with my clients and their “ideas”. They hire a designer then do not allow you to create, only give they what they want/see in their heads and sometime it is just plan ugly. You have to detach from that piece and say, it work, its money it this months rent and walk away from it; And then you find 2 min spare do something AMAZING THAT YOU LOVE to remind yourself way you do it.
I find your music inspiring in my line of work, I love to have it playing when I am design characters for animations etc. It takes me back when I was little watching those films thinking all the time that animation was my dream and Disney was the GOAL. I know now, that dream is very far away and that I can’t say why I am so proud I am of a complete stranger that they have created something Disney is interested in.
Please don’t lose heart in what you love, just remember your amazingly talented but sometimes, not everything you make will inspire you to keep going. SO make /listen/watch something that will. x
dude as an artist myself, i hate the idea of being forced to create. its like being forced to imagine. im currently going to school as an art major, but i fear the same thing. and it happens so often in music. Do what you gotta do. To be honest, i love your older stuff better. i just heard your honda ‘walking on a dream’ track. one of my favorites from you. the new toy story ones were a bit disappointing i thought. i thought you could have done better, but now that i hear this i can see where that could have come from. i also liked upular a lot so it may also just depend on the samples you use. art is not to be rushed. you’ll never be proud of something you didn’t do on your own will or passion. but if it pays the bills, and you’d rather not have a separate occupation then its the way to go. work and art gotta stay separate unless you can be happy with your work. what you do makes you not what you have to do. i dont know what i would do in the situation either. good luck. your music is the shit so either way dont ever stop.
I think what ever you do, Don’t let other people take your happiness away. I really think what you do… what you have is a gift. And you only live life once. Don’t let other people take away what you enjoy and love. I know I’m probably one in a million responces. but my 2 cents is Don’t lose your happiness with loving something you like to do, that brings this much joy to others. wonder since most of your songs have to do with disney if some how you could work a deal to just make a cd… or something along those lines. idk, I lost my happiness once with what I like to do, due to stress and time limits like you.. its hard to get happiness back in it/doing it.. be smart think about it, ask around, get options and ideas. to be honest if you did get a cd deal… I’d buy even if its free on youtube =p there are people that do like supporting their fav. artists.
I just stumbled upon your work and I just want to say Thank You. If you are ever in the Memphis area in the States dont be a stranger.