>be me
>early 30s
>tried STEM, tried med school
>didn't last, dropped out of both after a few years
>high IQ, low conscientiousness, excelled in high school with lower workload. classic university dropout
>various low-income jobs in 20s

Here's the issue
>have a burning passion for music
>multi-instrumentalist and singer, but particularly in love with piano
>the one thing that requires no self-discipline to work on, the hard thing is walking away after three straight hours with no break
>been that way since I was a teenager and picked up the guitar, but currenly obsessed with piano
>play classical at the moment, advanced repertoire like Bach fugues and Beethoven sonatas
>actually REALLY good. non-musicians think I'm a professional concert pianist, actual professionals see through my imperfections, but tell me I could go pro with guidance and structure. my sound has been compared to famous pianists.
>other professionals I've played with in the past have also have encouraged me to pursue music professionally based on guitar and vocals as well
>still struggle with structure, even with everyday tasks like chores and showing up to work on time, as well as stage fright (not social anxiety, more general test anxiety, also a problem in university)

The hard thing for me is to believe that this is in any way financially feasible in the long run, in an economy that worsen with every passing day. Even though I love doing it and feel great during and after practice, and I think I would love to go pro, I still can't help feeling that I'm just wasting even more of my dwindling time as a young adult after spending four hours working out the kinks in a Chopin etude, especially when I compare myself to guys in their 20s who spend most of their time studying stocks and crypto.

Am I actually being productive, or is this just a healthy hobby, and any prospects of making a sustainable living is just a pipe-dream at my age?

I'm not American btw, I live in a socialist, European country.

>>33382061 (OP)
The competition is very tough. There are russians / chinese Wunderkinder who did what you do now at age 6.
You will absolutely need to grind to compete.

>>33382061 (OP)
I won't read be me tsunami of greentext threads. Clearly, a disorganized halfwit such as OP will never make it either in music or STEM.

>>33382111
Honestly, I have realized that being a touring concert pianist is a tall order, especially as a complete no-name at my age. By going pro, I meant more as a gigging freelancer at a local level, since I am sociable and fairly well-rounded as a musician. I could have been more clear on that, but the OP was getting long enough as it was.

>>33382141
Start a YouTube channel of you playing, upload frequently, build a following, start a band, spam your stuff on tiktok, make and sell merch of your band/channel, start a patreon where you play whatever payers request from you, etc. You only need 1000 dedicated fans to make a patreon work, just need the recording equipment and the know how and a frequent upload schedule. You can show as little or as much as you want to show of your self in the vids. If it works out it won't have been a waste of time, beats working a shitty min wage job.

>>33382269
Good advice, I have pondered this, especially Youtube and Patreon. Thing is, I hate social media, and I'm too self-conscious and semi-autistic to show my face online. I'm pretty sure I'm not ugly, since people generally have always been very nice and welcoming towards me, but I'm still not comfortable showing my actual face. I've wondered if I should go the Daft Punk route of using some type of mask. I think the overhead, lightshow pianist market on Youtube (like Rosseau) is already oversaturated, so I like the idea of a Daft Punk style mask, where I can also talk and engage with viewers directly, since I also love talking about the music and process. For what it's worth, I have been described as charismatic in the past.

>>33382061 (OP)
It's a white collar job with as many health hazards as a blue collar job.

Musicians live on gigs playing in bars. They earn as much as an office worker, they end up hating music they play just to entertain the masses, most can't bother with production. Their health hazards are:

>Works at night
>Secondhand smoke every day of your life
>Easy access to alcohol and drug slippery slopes
>Easy access to STIs and the consequences of antibiotic treatments
>Constant ear trauma. Guaranteed Tinnitus correlated with hearing loss.
>Most musicians die 65-70

You should probably join a metal or prog rock band and see how it goes.

>>33382355
>>Works at night
Works for me. Always been a night owl anyways.
>>Secondhand smoke every day of your life
Like I said, I live in a socialist, European country, and indoor smoking is outlawed here, even in bars.
>>Easy access to alcohol and drug slippery slopes
I can control myself. I have partied in the past, so I know myself regarding this.
>>Easy access to STIs and the consequences of antibiotic treatments
This one is worse. I have much less self-control with women than alcohol and drugs. STIs aren't the only risk here; musicians are not really allowed to have groupies anymore after MeToo, despite what the women themselves may want.
>>Constant ear trauma. Guaranteed Tinnitus correlated with hearing loss.
Also a big thing, but there are ways to safeguard your hearing on stage, like earplugs. Still, this one concerns me the most.
>>Most musicians die 65-70
Is this true? I hate to sound like a redditor, but where did you hear this?

>You should probably join a metal or prog rock band and see how it goes.
That would be based, but there's probably even less money in prog than classical. Do people even listen to prog anymore, at least current prog bands? I know I do, at least the classics like King Crimson and Yes, but it's still really niche music. Pretty much every person I've met who were into those were fellow musicians.

>>33382061 (OP)
>former touring musician and busker to 16 countries

Live performance is work intensive. People at shows and concerts are unpredictable. It’s a one-shot deal as far as getting paid, whereas merch and licensing a song are where it’s at for separated passive income.

Dave Lombardo said he only made $75,000/year from Slayer. I would’ve been satisfied with $350,000/year, but nope.

Original music is where it’s at. Have passion projects AND money makers. If you can help ad agencies or corporations create videos for clients, you can make an okay living. Bear in mind that it may kill your inspiration to write something you don’t like or for a dead-end project. Bad projects can be detrimental.

Starting bands gets harder as you get older and it’s not really that fun when you’re playing the hits. Even a Broadway musician plays the hits 2x daily. Most of them are heavy drug users and psychopathic weirdos.

Also, it’s hard to live with a musician for non/musicians. Practice is non-negotiable and it will take away time from relationships. Still, if you practice so that you HAVE TO make money, then you’re good to go. That’s the only way I got professional chops.

M advice is create an artificial deadline or be desperate. I was so desperate I hitchhiked across the US and subsisted on busking revenue. Key West to Seattle, and every where in between

>>33382061 (OP)
used to be that folks like you would pay the bills by writing/recording jingles for commercials on the radio and TV, but we can thank the wonderful gift of AI for eliminating yet another career path.

You could always try wearing a thong and going full pan piano

>>33382862
Good advice all around, but I wanna focus mainly on:
>Original music is where it’s at. Have passion projects AND money makers. If you can help ad agencies or corporations create videos for clients, you can make an okay living. Bear in mind that it may kill your inspiration to write something you don’t like or for a dead-end project. Bad projects can be detrimental.
Until recently, I really wanted to be a composer. Nothing crazy, I'm not gonna be the next Brahms or anything, but more focused on utilitarian music like movie soundtracks or jingles for corporations. However as >>33382878 says, most of those positions are likely gonna be replaced by AI more and more in the upcoming years. I fear musicians will mostly be obsolete in the not so distant future, at least in a stricly commercial sense. Don't get me wrong, I will play and sing until the day I die because I love it for its own sake, but it seems like making a living off of it gets harder with every passing day.

>>33383089
AI isn’t infallible and it’s really just a filter for low-quality music. I would find it very difficult to approximate something like Moondog, Henry Flynt, Terry Riley, Harry Partch, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, John Fahey, Arthur Russell, et al.

I think the key is to be uber prolific. Using me, for example, I can improvise a 1-minute song on piano using a three motif system. All I need to do is optimize my workflow to Ableton and voila, song. In fact. It’s a great way to demo ideas and I can imagine even outsourcing it to Fiverr if you needed a bass track, drums, or a remix. How many 1-minute ditties can you create in an hour? Can you do them in all 12 keys and in different feels? Relative minors? Instrumentation? From even just one idea, you can 10x to scale it. Having the ability to be fast is what separates the professionals from the amateurs.

You can also harvest ideas for your pet projects. I have a record player and regularly play along to a skipping record, which works as an ostinato (sometimes it gets aleatoric). This ability to improvise leads to many happy accidents and forces me to make things work. Plus, you can reharmonize on the fly - probably the closest you can get learning how to improvise without playing along to a Jamie Abersold faggotry (you heard me).

>>33383946
[continued]

As far as drug use goes, I have to be honest:

Drugs fucking work. It’s basically on demand creativity, gains you access to rooms/hangs you’d otherwise be excluded from, and gets audience members to show up at your early shows. I saw one dealer do Trunk Space in Phoenix and half his crowd was buying weed from him in the parking lot. I (allegedly) did the same thing with shrooms and it was like a magic key to better venues and women galore. My notch count is 74 (13 threesomes, 1 foursome) and I’d say a good 1/3 were from the magic drug-musician combo. See pic attached

However, one of my good musician friends lost his mind in coke. He’s actually a shabbos goy and took on their habits, so he’s intolerable. He got blackballed for not getting vaxxed, so they replaced him with a person with a religious exemption (also not vaxxed…). Lots of compliance tests…

Me and him, however, always had a saying:

There are musicians with drug problems and there are drug addicts with a music problem.

Booze is also liquid stage fright reducer. It works and sometimes you need to have SHOW MUST GO ON mentality. I struggle with alcohol but that’s due to genetics and trauma (which is the source of overachieving).

I did get one of the best insults in my life that summed up the low-caste musician lifestyle. I was dealing at St John’s College in Santa Fe, and we met some rich kids. When I told him musician, he said in a TransAtlantic accent, “Oh, I guess someone has to.” Got my ass.

After a while, you start to feel like a clown or what Bill Hicks said - “an amusement engineer”.

Also, everyone gets envious of you when you mention that you’re a musician. Women automatically assume you’re a wild person or a deadbeat (they think I’m a scrub, but I’d rather listen to Matthew Herbert or King Crimson).

>>33382269
The Patreon model is good. If you can improvise background music on the regular, that’s a good approach. However, your output will change depending on what you get paid the most for. I had a virtual busking back when it was popular (fuck you, Amanda Palmer) and the requests felt like humiliation rituals. Weird stuff, too, and it makes you a magnet for creeps showing up at your gigs. I had to tell no less than 5 gay dudes to stop stalking me and told off men daily from female band members. You become a target and you can see why fame is a terrible thing.

One time, I was playing Provincetown and this kid yell my name. He was a precocious New England kid but I realized that at any point of time someone can upset your day unintentionally. Anonymity can be good. One of my old music roommates had a woman stalker, which was crazy to see someone mentally broke and attach to your music. Worse, she was Indian and she wanted to be a standup comedian. Holy shit even this ugly sexless dude noped out of there.

>>33383946
I forgot to add: the music that will be filtered will just be ukulele and whistling music, used to sell products and promote a cutesy image. Lemme see if I can find an example:

https://youtu.be/BzM0qok5Cns?si=CKvf07cQG72UcH8j

THIS SHIT IS GONE. But it’s already such a trope that anything that veers from the norm gets attention, which is the point of composing. Interstitial music is easy too, and I think being able to get your music credits up and join a professional composers union/musicians union means you’ll be able to find more gigs.

Funnily enough, I saw an opportunity from my friend who got a gig outside academia. It was for something like Puerto Rican Domestic violence Survivors Fashion Show and he was tasked with creating a song similar to The Chromatics “Beating of the Clock”. Thousands of dollars on the line, unlimited licensing, and… he couldn’t do it. This dude played Carnegie Hall, Bard College, Hudson, in multiple world class venues, and nada. He ended up handing over a terrible piece that wasn’t even in time. This is a dude who does Zappa-tier shit but those poor Puerto Ricans

>>33382061 (OP)
>especially when I compare myself to guys in their 20s who spend most of their time studying stocks and crypto.
With an argument like this you could argue all jobs are worthless, but we all know that's not true

>>33382061 (OP)
No it's not productive and it's inherently a waste of time
Just do it cuz you like doing it

>>33382061 (OP)
Even major orchestra players have day jobs - usually as teachers or studio musicians

>>33385271
No. Being in control of an audience and gaining the respect of your peers is a lofty goal. The most satisfied performer I’ve seen was a dude in San Luis Obispo named Rich in Love. Here’s another dude:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EUDRUbKLYs4&pp=ygUkIFNhbiBsdWlzIG9iaXNwbyByaWNoIGluIGxvdmUgc2luZ2Vy

You can make a real living at busking, but you have to follow the seasons. We had a few patrons, staying on couches and access to upscale parties. It turns out old people like to party