Finding a job in the music industry is...

Difficult!

Looking through vast postings on craigslist.com or any music career site you will sift through scams, underpaid jobs, and jobs that are only listed for legal reasons when they’re not even hiring! You consider entrepreneurship, but at what cost? You can go to Minnesota’s Secretary of State to submit your forms and all together with trademarks, your DBA forms (which include a fee to put your business in newspapers), copyrights, websites and more this could cost well over a couple hundred dollars before the investments into the actual business itself.

Either passage you take, this music industry is not a cake walk. You can not sit in your moms basement, record on pro tools, and just let your music sit in space. So you love graphic design or video? There are many postings for freelance work with restaurants and other places of business. Its just a matter of taking action. Even the most proactive people find looking for jobs difficult, but when something opens up they are the first to get it.

So in terms of waiting or entrepreneurship, my message to everybody is just don’t ever give up. Live your dream and if you can’t do it alone… find people close to help you out. Form a family in the music world like The Roots (I’ve never really seen them apart) or any group in these present economic times. DIY means "Do It Yourself" and it does not have to mean "Do It by Yourself".

When doors open, opportunities arise. Its just a matter of taking that step through the door to capture what should be yours.

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts
Career Services Coordinator
The Institute of Production and Recording

Finding a job in the music industry is...

The Answer: Diversify(Major/minor Sytem)

Viacom the owner of MTV has recently cut 850 jobs in the rise of this recession. This recession has also allowed anybody to be apart of the music industry… WMG’s stock is at $2.67 a stock. People claim it is an old business plan, others say music is not a monetary market anymore. Every week I keep seeing album sales drop, but digital sales have been steadily rising. Kanye’s single sold 1.3 million times on iTunes to date (2/4/08). So is digital the answer?

In Business, sales have to show growth and improvement otherwise stocks will drop and investor confidence will drop as well. Usually when a business grows too fast (or even a decline in growth) it strikes fear. There will always be this wall that all businesses hit where they have to cut some expenses to continue growth until it can not make money anymore. That is where the flaw of iPods come in. If everybody has an iPod, where can the growth be? What improvements can they make? iPod sales drop now, but that is expected and still people lose confidence in them. Where to go when you hit the top?

Music is a business like any other, and no matter how much you market something, if people don’t need it they won’t get it. You can make it all pretty and everything, but if people can get it for free they still will. Digital sales, album sales, all music sales are close to failing soon, and I believe it is an end to ‘music sales’ but not an end to music. I see labels changing to the 360 deal which I believe is great to keep income and allow labels to not give up in pushing their artists. Yes, it is still mafia tactics where if you can’t get revenue from one place, you squeeze em in other area’s. The more I study business and marketing, the more I realize that without the push of a strong team, nobody can make it. As a more entrepreneurship mindset comes across America, we are becoming more DIY, but DIY can only get you so far. With the help of the internet everybody can DIY, but than comes the ego with that thinking your as strong as a label.

The way to a new beginning is not the end of an old. Every day should be a new beginning in expanding from what was of yesterday. People settle for one plan, one product, one everything. That is why I love places like Target. They can get income from many places. They do not have everything in one product which is what most labels do. We need to learn to do more than just music, artists need to expand from just singing/ rapping whatever they do. 50 Cent invested in Vitamin water and got close to half a billion dollars.

My point is, it is the end of one sided music. We need to learn to multi-task more than what we are already doing. Regular grocery stores should expand with music, and more mainstream items for kids, teens and more. Record stores should sell more band merchandise, open up a place for shows and etc. Places need to come on a major/ minor system where they are mostly "this", but they also have "some of this". Most places have that, but it needs to become more apart of the business plan, rather than just a side thought

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

The Answer: Diversify
(Major/minor Sytem)