April 19, 2023 Discover the importance of staying true to your passion as you navigate the challenging landscape of the music industry. In this insightful blog post, I explore the journey of a music career, offer tips to keep your passion alive and discuss how to balance the business side with your artistic desires.
Career tagged a career in music April 26, 2022 |
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Being a professional musician can mean many different things. You could make your living selling records, touring, playing an instrument, or singing. You may not win a Grammy for your work or end up on the Billboard charts, but it doesn’t make you any less of a professional.
No matter what level you’re on, being a professional musician can be a lot of fun. However, it also comes with several challenges and uphill battles you’ll have to face throughout your career.
One of those challenges includes saving for retirement. You might be able to make a living playing music now, but saving for the future is another story.
Whether music is your primary or only source of income, it’s not impossible to save for retirement. However, the sooner you get started, the better! Let’s take a look at how you can make the most of your income, manage your money, and build the capital you need to lead a comfortable retirement.
If you have a consistent, day-to-day job as a musician, setting money aside is easy. You probably don’t have to worry about things like tax penalties or even calculating how much you can afford to save.
However, not every professional musician has that luxury. When you’re concert-hopping or living gig-to-gig, it can be difficult to practice healthy money management.
It’s easier than you might think to manage your money, but it can take some organizational skills. Start by creating a budget for yourself. Look at the income you’re bringing in each month and how you’re spending it. From there, you can come up with ways to “cut back” on your spending habits, both in your personal and professional lives.
For example, as a traveling musician, you might spend a lot of money on gas to get from one gig to another. Think of ways you can save on gas, like preserving your car’s efficiency and optimizing your driving. Choose to bring your own food along rather than stopping at fast-food joints, and keep a separate “road budget” so you don’t end up buying things you don’t need.
In your personal life, you can manage your money and decrease your spending by cutting back on things like subscription services and dining out.
You should be budgeting to save, not just to pay your bills now. Whether you set aside a section of your budget as an emergency fund or specifically dedicate some of your monthly income to savings, it’s easier to manage your money when you have something tangible written down.
We touched on tax penalties above, but are you aware that some of your savings could actually be costing you money? Taxation penalties are destructive and can take away some of the hard-earned cash that you’re trying to store away for retirement. If you want to maintain and grow your savings accounts, it’s important to be aware of exemptions. Some of the most common tax-exempt savings accounts include:
401(k)s
IRAs
Roth accounts
FSAs
HSAs
You can still be taxed for things like early withdrawal and minimum distributions. However, if you work with an investor or accountant on setting up an account, they can guide you through the process and help you mitigate penalties.
As a musician, you probably pay your taxes every year. Maybe you even pay quarterly taxes to avoid a large lump sum owed at the end of every fiscal year. The last thing you want is to deal with more taxation when you’re trying to get ahead. In fact, you should be looking into expenditures that you can write off and deduct! Invest your time and money into working with a tax professional that can help to ensure financial stability for your future.
Whether you’re gigging every night, you’re a “seasonal” musician, or you rely on record sales and royalties for income, it can be hard when things aren’t consistent. Even if you tend to do well throughout the year, you might find that most of your income is going directly to the here and now, just so you can get by.
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to have a backup option when it comes to your finances. Thankfully, there are a few different ways to approach a backup plan.
One is to invest your money.
You don’t have to have a lot saved up to invest, and your return could be something that sets you up for a comfortable retirement. Some of the best high-yield investments include
Value stock funds
Short-term government bond funds
High-yield savings accounts
Rental housing
Cryptocurrency
If you’re not willing to take a risk with your money through investing, consider using a “side hustle” or part-time job as your backup plan. It might not seem very rock ‘n’ roll to have a side gig doing something more consistent, but it will allow you to live more comfortably now while you live out your dreams, and give you the opportunity to have a nest egg in the future.
Whether you penny-pinch to save your money, invest in the stock market, or find ways to avoid tax penalties, there are plenty of ways to save for retirement as a musician. While it’s okay to focus on the fun you’re having now, it’s crucial to recognize that one day you’ll want to sit back and relax. Consider some of these ideas when it comes to making sure you can do so with comfort and ease.
September 3, 2020 Work can be exhausting and even overwhelming at times – especially if you get distracted by the smallest things. To stay on top of your work, you must be able to prioritize accordingly, limit distractions to a minimum, work undisturbed, and put your phone on silent. Studies show that these tools have kept people productive and efficient. But there’s one more that I have yet to mention… putting on some headphones and playing music!
June 25, 2020 If you’ve ever played an instrument, you know how staying focused feels like. Research shows that music and productivity are strongly correlated – the more music you play, the more creative and productive you’ll get. Being immersed in a state of creativity only enhances your chances of understanding the world, which helps you become mindful in the long term. “Music breaks mental barriers,” many musicians would agree. Besides that, it improves your brain’s cognition and boosts memory. There are many reasons why you should start playing music. In this article, you’ll find some of the most important.
Music Psychology tagged a career in music, brain, musicians December 20, 2019 April 11, 2018 What if your job isn’t flexible enough for you to take the next step in your music career? You’re going to have to find a way to make the band your priority. Only bands who truly want to bring their music to a wide audience will get there.
Advice, Career tagged a career in music, career advice, freelance, job November 10, 2016 I am 24 years old and have a marketing job, college education, cute girlfriend and parent’s rockin’ health insurance. So I guess I have absolutely no place to talk about how hard my life is or how difficult it is to get my music out there into the hands of people who would rather pirate the newest Taylor/Bieber/Gomez/Kanye/whatever record than download mine for free off of Bandcamp. But I guess I’m going to, because a lot of you reading this are probably in a similar position.
April 26, 2016 There’s always been a notion that if we could emulate the lives of those we admire, then our lives would have the same outcomes as theirs – talented, successful, rich, famous, happy, whatever. That, of course, explains all the “Seven Secrets of…..” books and the popularity of biographies as treasure maps to our desired fortunes. Although the lives of successful music artists fall into that same category and there are certainly crafts and skills to be mastered, there are two areas that cannot be duplicated, which are, unfortunately, the two most important things required for success – artistry and luck. Which is why nothing compares to Prince. His was the perfect storm of skills, artistry and luck.
Prince tagged Career, Prince, a career in music, music industry February 4, 2016 FACT: Musicians generally look for the answers to all the wrong questions. What questions am I talking about? The ones that all amateurs or people who have never been in music ask. These questions are based on ignorance, guesswork, fears and self-destructive thoughts centered around how some people think the music industry works. By seeking the answers to these questions, you can only reduce the likeliness that you will ever have a chance at growing a successful music career.
Advice tagged a career in music, building fans, career advice, success December 29, 2015 Everyone harbors a dream to become a rock star at some point in his or her life. It is easy to get caught up in fantasies of flying all over the world and living a lavish lifestyle. These fantasies do not always include the songwriting and recording processes, which are arguably the most important aspects of a career in music. Here are some things you should know about these parts of the music industry.
Career tagged Copyright, a career in music, music busines, songwriting November 23, 2015 Setting the proper foundation for your career in any business is very crucial in setting yourself up for success. When it comes to building your career as an independent artist building and setting the proper foundation is equally important. There are so many things that you should make sure is in order to make sure that this is properly executed.
Live Music tagged DIY, Fans, Independent, Live, a career in music, connecting with fans, live gigs October 30, 2015 It was a Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis. Charlie Waymire and I were in a studio at college, tuning up his monster double-bass drumset for his band’s recording session later that day. Or maybe should I say trying to tune his drumset. Taking turns wielding the drumkey while the other played, nothing either of us did seemed to get both bass drums to sound the same. All we got were these loud, sonically unmatched thuds.
Advice tagged Advice, a career in music, drumming September 10, 2015 The acclaimed NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton is a must-watch movie for anyone in the music business. Many of the struggles that artists (particularly young artists) continue to wrestle with are powerfully depicted in the film. However, there is one minor theme in the film that resonates deeply in the current music climate: the fact that the best way to make money in the music business is rarely the creation of the music itself.
How to Make Money tagged Beats, Marketing, NWA, a career in music, music busines September 3, 2015 “The great thing about rock and roll is that someone like me can be a star.” – Elton John
It shouldn’t be news to anyone in the music business today that the smart (and maybe the only) money is in live performance, merchandising (which is kind of tied into live performance) and publishing (and all of its Constitutionally-guaranteed income streams). The bottom line: If you want to make a living these days on the artist side of the music business, you need to write and publish your own songs and perform them from the stage in an entertaining manner. Here’s a step-by-step list of how you might go about doing that – starting with the live performance side. (Note: There are probably a couple hundred other ways to accomplish this – but the odds are better this way. You’ll see why.)
