Why you SHOULD study music in college!
Part of my job as an Assistant Professor of Flute at a University is to go out into schools and work with young flutists. The hope is that all the flutists will learn some new ways to practice, gain some skills, and become better musicians. The other goal is to find the young flutists who may want to study music at the university level and see if they might want to come study with me. That’s the model of the American music school; we generally must recruit our own students.
On quite a few of my visits, I hear from students who really want to study music in college but have been discouraged from it by well-meaning friends and family due to the idea that it is hard to make a living as a musician.
Those well-meaning friends and family are not wrong. Being a professional musician can be less financially stable than getting a job working for a large company, going to work for 40 hours, and getting a paycheck. But as we’ve recently seen in our economy, those types of jobs aren’t necessarily stable either. I’d like to propose that maybe we aren’t being open-minded enough about what could constitute a career in music. Most people are thinking about students going to college and studying to become a band or choir director or a student trying to become a performer.
There are other options to have a career in music!
What about Music Business? If you want to be a performer, when you leave college, you will be your own small business. So why not learn HOW to do that. Learn how to do your taxes as a freelancer! You could also get into Licensing, Publishing, Marketing, Contract Law, Copyright Law, Non-Profit Administration, Grant Writing, Intellectual Property Law, Music Technology, and Entrepreneurship. The only thing that you need to do to be a performer, is play your instrument really well and do a lot of networking! All the skills you learn in Music Business will help you to be a more employable performer.
Are you interested in Recording Arts? There are so many avenues to take in this field! You could get into Audio Engineering and Mastering, Electronic Music and Synthesis, Live Sound Production, Sound Design for film, animation, gaming, and Music Producing. You could be involved in recording for all genres of music! The connections you could make in the studio, could also help your performing career!
What about Music Media? This kind of overlaps with Business and Recording Arts, but you could work in Film Scoring, Commercial Music, Sound Technology and Engineering, Arranging and Orchestration, and more! I have a former student who plays flute at a very high level and is now a show operator for a large amusement park!
Any young musician who is interested in performing for a living should absolutely be looking into being an entrepreneur. You are a business when you graduate, so why not take classes on Marketing, Networking, Taxes for the Self-Employed, Website Creation, and creating your own revenue streams.
The bottom line is you do not have to make a binary choice. The choice that keeps being presented is don’t study music and you’ll make stable money or study music and be constantly hustling. That binary doesn’t necessarily exist anymore. Yes, some areas of the arts are less stable than others but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be super prepared to make your own career a stable force that can provide for your needs.
A former teacher of mine once asked a class if they want to only be a musician on nights and weekends. Because if you get a standard 40 hour per week job, that’s all you get. If that sounds great to you, wonderful! We need you to keep doing your music and joining community ensembles! If that sounds awful to you, then you have OPTIONS!
And that’s what I want everyone to remember. You have so many options to make a career in the arts. Imagine what could be possible for you if you perform at a high level AND have a ton of business, recording, and media skills. I bet you it will lead to so many more open doors and interesting opportunities than you could ever imagine.
Study Music! Study Art! Study Dance! We need you and your love of the arts to continue to inspire and uplift us all!