What does the job market look like for Sound Engineers just finishing school?

  • Thread starter CHRISTOPHER SHARP
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CHRISTOPHER SHARP

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What's up Fp! I'm considering taking some classes to study and become an sound engineer.What does the job market look like for Sound Engineers just finishing school?
 
looks like if you can intern at a movie studio,news studio,etc.. real life applications for audio/video professionals...
music side.. you are more like a freelancer... unless you can hitch your wagon to a up and coming star... or get linked up with a star... work with who ever you can ....maybe you'll catch the ear of somebody....
what city are you in ... L.A.,New York,Austin,Houston,Nashville, seem to be the cities to be.. but saturated like the net is with soundclick producers...
if you can start your own home studio..I mean really do construction .. rockwool,crowning etc. inside the walls, acoustic treatment tuning your room... get a decent tracking and monitoring chain..
a there you go... start offering you services...
the whole time you where in school esp. towards the end you should have been doing mixes,tracking for free or pizza.... gain a repuation as a good engineer.. should have been hooking up with local artists
so what have you down so far besides get the knowledge... ??? you have to hustle up contacts from the get-go....
hope this helps
Life,Life what he brings Christ is his name

---------- Post added at 04:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:34 AM ----------

https://www.futureproducers.com/for...tering/need-mixing-engineer-join-team-369618/
 
Probably best to find another field as a "profession" and do music on the side for as much money as you can.
 
LOL, what a question in 2011. ^^ this is the only way to go. Find a real, profitable profession and do the music in part-time. You would be surprised about how many artists you know actually live this way. Even the common, heavily marketed pop music motherf*ckers need to completely sell-out (selling perfumes, textiles, headphones and other sh!t) and do stupid ads for skin lotions and much more to survive in the market today. Why? Well, their music isn't profitable at all - no wonder when you have to spend 20 million in-front into classic ad agencies to get that crap heard and hyped by everyone.

lol, sorry for the slight sarcasm, but people often make completely wrong assumptions based on 80s/90s music industry myths ("artists are rich", "there's a lot money to be made in music"). Mostly because of well made music-videos and PR videos, where the manager made sure to call Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Swarovski for a nice and cheap placement and printed out a few thousand dollar bills with his color printer. The images you see on MTV (or any music biz related media) have absolutely nothing to do with music biz reality, well, except their clear decline.

In short, when was the last time you or your buddies bought music? How do you expect getting paid at all? ;)

There's still a need for certain, high expertise services (education, high end recording, mixing and mastering). But to be honest, newbies don't have the slightest chance to avoid starvation within the first months. Learn something right, like software engineering, electronics engineering, marketing or PR. All these fields are well paid and it will be easy for you to build up a really nice studio and expertise after work. You also become a BETTER, MORE VALUABLE audio engineer with solid background in one of these fields.
 
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moses said:
LOL, what a question in 2011. ^^ this is the only way to go. Find a real, profitable profession and do the music in part-time. You would be surprised about how many artists you know actually live this way. Even the common, heavily marketed pop music motherf*ckers need to completely sell-out (selling perfumes, textiles, headphones and other sh!t) and do stupid ads for skin lotions and much more to survive in the market today. Why? Well, their music isn't profitable at all - no wonder when you have to spend 20 million in-front into classic ad agencies to get that crap heard and hyped by everyone.

lol, sorry for the slight sarcasm, but people often make completely wrong assumptions based on 80s/90s music industry myths ("artists are rich", "there's a lot money to be made in music"). Mostly because of well made music-videos and PR videos, where the manager made sure to call Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Swarovski for a nice and cheap placement and printed out a few thousand dollar bills with his color printer. The images you see on MTV (or any music biz related media) have absolutely nothing to do with music biz reality, well, except their clear decline.

In short, when was the last time you or your buddies bought music? How do you expect getting paid at all? ;)

There's still a need for certain, high expertise services (education, high end recording, mixing and mastering). But to be honest, newbies don't have the slightest chance to avoid starvation within the first months. Learn something right, like software engineering, electronics engineering, marketing or PR. All these fields are well paid and it will be easy for you to build up a really nice studio and expertise after work. You also become a BETTER, MORE VALUABLE audio engineer with solid background in one of these fields.
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This covers it. Music - ain't nothin but a BROKE thang...
 
yeah music scene is bad.. that's why I told him to look into working at a news station,radio station,movie studio....but every school I ever research in general they have on staff ppl that help you set up interviews for employment or at least internship .....
and why isn't the OP replying .. we need to know what your school has done for you.. and what you have done for yourself to secure employement for the future...

Christ is the king...life,life is what he brings
 
moses said:
There's still a need for certain, high expertise services (education, high end recording, mixing and mastering). But to be honest, newbies don't have the slightest chance to avoid starvation within the first months. Learn something right, like software engineering, electronics engineering, marketing or PR. All these fields are well paid and it will be easy for you to build up a really nice studio and expertise after work. You also become a BETTER, MORE VALUABLE audio engineer with solid background in one of these fields.
Click to expand...

Moses, you're being too nice! After I left my second assisting position (and that's after the first, and after an internship, and after undergrad) I promptly went into the field of cooking while trying to hold it together as a freelancer. It took me about two years before I started regularly breaking even, and even now I'm not exactly rolling in dough.

Here's what the job market looks like: Make your own job.... and while you're at it.... make your own market.

Here's how you do it: Get really really good, and make sure people know it.
 
It's rough! Once I got to the point where I was able to make a solid mix, I thought I'd be fine... I was wrong. It's taken almost 4 years of hard work, long days and with very few days off. It's starting to pay off now, well, I don't have to mix everyday now. With my rates, I only need 1 FULL mix a week and a few smaller jobs and I'm set. Last month I was backed up because I had a lot of artists coming to me for EVERYTHING (VERY OVERWHELMING). This month something came up and I still have people coming to me, so I'm doing everything on priority and only taking on smaller jobs as side-projects so that I can have a little extra money and catch back up.

There aren't any benefits when freelancing which is what this industry has came down to. I quit working at the local studio because the chief-engineer sucked and made the studio look bad; I didn't want to be apart of that. Cash flow fluctuates drastically. Some months you're wallet is happy, some months you're stressing and can't pay the bills...
 
John Son said:
There are always jobs running sound at music venues. The work is annoying but it pays the bills.
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You are not going to get a job doing live sound at a venue when you are "just finishing school"...

And as more studios go out of business, more of the real experienced engineers will be fighting for those jobs...

And as the live music venues continue to close, there are less and less of those jobs available.
 
lets hope not too bad! im just finishing up the recording program at Citrus college in Azuza but I know its gonna take a hell of lot more work after this to get anywhere
 
Ayso said:
lets hope not too bad! im just finishing up the recording program at Citrus college in Azuza but I know its gonna take a hell of lot more work after this to get anywhere
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what are these schools offering besides knowledge are they helping with internships,jobs interviews, are you now recording artists now and making contacts???
if not you need to get going making contacts and such... tell me what your plan is most ... ppl in med school have a plan on where they want to do after graduating... where they are going to resident at.. and so forth
 
99% of the people coming out of these schools are NOT getting full-time engineering jobs (or full-time freelancing) within a couple years after they graduate. And the vast majority never get one. Be realistic.

Now if you are really serious and have what it takes to beat the other 99% of the serious people, then do yourself a favor and don't get scammed by the for-profit recording schools. Go to a university that has an broadcast or music recording program. They are non-profit and put YOU above PROFITS... AND you can get a B.A. or B.S. in the process which will save your ass when either you can't make a living making records OR you can but realize that you have to work twice as hard to make half as much money as the person that got a regular job.
 
If you are very "serious" about going to school for Audio, do it. But if you have even the slightest case of cold feet, don't. Education IS a valid path to making audio production/engineering a career. However, alot of it depends on where you are going to school. I myself live in Seattle and will be attending the Art Institute of Seattle for 7k/qtr. This doesn't bother me at all, out of 38 AIS Audio Production graduates last year, 34 had jobs within their field 6 months after graduation, with a median base salary of 28k.. Nothing great but for an entry level position in a field you love, I'd say it isn't too bad either.

I know several people in the field who have made some sort of audio tangent into their full time job. It's not this impossible thing that people around here make it seem like. There is so many opportunities and need for audio at every corner, you just have to be creative and dedicated. You see alot of people like the ones above who have been trying to get into the industry for a long time but have been unsuccessful so they act like you need to sell your soul and shit to get coffee for the sound engineers assistants assistant. The truth is if you really immerse yourself into it, you will be rewarded, some way or another.

I think that if you really want to transcend into a new plateau in life, you need to incur some sort of debt to past your current threshold.. Just do it man, and don't listen to any of these failure stories.
 
SoundSplash said:
If you are very "serious" about going to school for Audio, do it. But if you have even the slightest case of cold feet, don't. Education IS a valid path to making audio production/engineering a career. However, alot of it depends on where you are going to school. I myself live in Seattle and will be attending the Art Institute of Seattle for 7k/qtr. This doesn't bother me at all, out of 38 AIS Audio Production graduates last year, 34 had jobs within their field 6 months after graduation, with a median base salary of 28k.. Nothing great but for an entry level position in a field you love, I'd say it isn't too bad either.

I know several people in the field who have made some sort of audio tangent into their full time job. It's not this impossible thing that people around here make it seem like. There is so many opportunities and need for audio at every corner, you just have to be creative and dedicated. You see alot of people like the ones above who have been trying to get into the industry for a long time but have been unsuccessful so they act like you need to sell your soul and shit to get coffee for the sound engineers assistants assistant. The truth is if you really immerse yourself into it, you will be rewarded, some way or another.

I think that if you really want to transcend into a new plateau in life, you need to incur some sort of debt to past your current threshold.. Just do it man, and don't listen to any of these failure stories.
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Hmmm... "38 AIS Audio Production graduates last year, 34 had jobs within their field 6 months after graduation, with a median base salary of 28k"? I'd love to see the fine print on that statistic. That does not seem like a realistic statistic. Maybe that is including internships, one-off freelancing gigs, selling a "beat", doing a couple of $25 mixes for people on the internet, etc... But full-time salaried jobs? Those numbers don't seem right.


And I am not giving "failure stories"... I make my living in music and have for many years... and I can tell you for a fact that having a "degree from some music production trade school" is not what is important... "being good at what you do" is what is important. I can't think of ever hearing of anybody who got a job in this part of the business business because of a "degree" they had... The best thing you can get out of one of those schools is if they have some sort of "networking" system or job placement department... but you need to be realistic about what jobs actually exist, regardless of "who you know".

The best advice is to go to "regular" college/university and take music production classes... or learn on your own... A "real" degree WILL be very useful to you.

And the fact is, the job market is bleak and only getting worse for engineers.

Sticking your head in the sand does not make it any better.
 
Don't even bother looking. Either look for a internship, shadow another producer for "free" or just go solo and get a normal full time job. It's very rare anyone gets a job out of music school these days, that's why i dropped out recently and decided i'd teach myself and treat it as a hobby instead.
 
dvyce said:
Hmmm... "38 AIS Audio Production graduates last year, 34 had jobs within their field 6 months after graduation, with a median base salary of 28k"? I'd love to see the fine print on that statistic. That does not seem like a realistic statistic. Maybe that is including internships, one-off freelancing gigs, selling a "beat", doing a couple of $25 mixes for people on the internet, etc... But full-time salaried jobs? Those numbers don't seem right.


And I am not giving "failure stories"... I make my living in music and have for many years... and I can tell you for a fact that having a "degree from some music production trade school" is not what is important... "being good at what you do" is what is important. I can't think of ever hearing of anybody who got a job in this part of the business business because of a "degree" they had... The best thing you can get out of one of those schools is if they have some sort of "networking" system or job placement department... but you need to be realistic about what jobs actually exist, regardless of "who you know".

The best advice is to go to "regular" college/university and take music production classes... or learn on your own... A "real" degree WILL be very useful to you.

And the fact is, the job market is bleak and only getting worse for engineers.

Sticking your head in the sand does not make it any better.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Those numbers sound cooked up.
 
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