If you’ve just finished school or have recently become available to search out employment, know that diversification is important in any sector, music included. It’s not easy to monetize your creativity and live off the arts. If you want to keep busy and keep your pockets full, then you have to be able to exploit your skills in any way possible. Until you reach a certain level of notoriety, that is. But for now, you have to be ready to get yourself out there, audition, network, position yourself tactically, and look through ads to find a job that gets the ball rolling.
Game Developers
All games feature a soundtrack, and if you think it might be hard to get through the door at companies such as Rockstar and EA, well, you’re right. But you don’t have to aim so high. Games are made for all kinds of mediums. You have browser games, mobile games, and one underrated field is online slots.
Nowadays, people don’t bother to walk to a real-life gaming establishment to play casino games. No, they access digital platforms on their phones and play slots for real money from the comfort of their homes. These online casinos provide such vast libraries of games, that one doesn’t know where to start. You can even go up against live dealers. Add to this the generous promotional casino bonuses, and it becomes crystal clear as to why the digital gaming sphere is taking over. And, you can be a part of it by creating music for super-advanced slot games.
Marketing
Sadly, this avenue is not as lucrative as it once was. Most of the music used today in ads is pre-existent music that’s been licensed. Even the smaller companies either buy it off bands and record labels or they purchase it off stock sites. So, the market isn’t as big as it once was. However, if you’re a decent lyricist, then maybe writing and composing jingles could be a nice revenue stream. These types of jobs are not to be underestimated.
If you land a job creating a jingle for a national or worldwide campaign, your pay could be in the tens, if not, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. You could also resort to work as a freelancer and scout for international clients and work with them. There are numerous platforms on which you can create a profile and browse for jobs.
There are quite a few advantages of working as a freelancer and if you can navigate through these waters successfully, then you will end up with solid projects on which you will be more than happy to work on.
Indie Film
With the rise of streaming services, business for indie producers is booming. More and more small films are getting made with the hopes that they will be bought by the major streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Apple.
These services are in direct competition and are in dire need of content. Thus, the market has responded. In recent years, around 800 movies per year were released in US cinemas alone. Compare that to around a hundred in 1980. And, factor in that most movies today don’t even see a theatrical release to get a good understanding of how big the market is. So, there’s a lot of work to be found scoring indie films of all budget sizes.
