M
Melko
Guest
Hi everyone. I've been reading up on these forums and it's always inspiring to hear about other people's success. It is good to look toward some kind of achievement when you see other people have made it there but I think it's also important to talk about our failures and all the ways we haven't succeeded because it is important to be humble, to understand other people's struggles and limitations and I think this place is devoid of any of that because typically no one wants to talk about their failures.
So I'll start.
I started out making beats maybe 8 years ago, give or take but I never networked because I have never known many people and preferred my own company. Eventually I started working with one particular artist who wasn't amazing but was somewhat business savvy and from him I learned a lot about producing music for an artist as opposed to just making a beat. I made a lot of music with this guy and everything we did we split down the middle. I worked with this dude for just over two years and we were played ocassionally on BBC Radio 1 through friends that he had made over the years. The first PRS cheques were small. Maybe £40 here and there, but we continued to make music and he promoted his stuff until the quarterly cheques were around £500 - £600. I think I got about 3 or 4 of these 'big' cheques.
All this time I was working a day job which it turns out is the hardest thing in the world to do because studio sessions run very very late. The most money I made in music was from our work together during this time. I tried working with a few other people he'd introduced me too but I found that they weren't skilled enough for me to care about putting effort into their music, or they weren't up the professional level I expected, or our styles of music didn't fit, or they didn't like that I was so nitty picky about the small things in the songs. I didn't like socializing or going to parties or schmoozing with people - I preferred to concentrate my effort on making music and have him promote his stuff so that others could piggy back onto my production and I could get some exposure but I found that that never happened. Sure, I got paid for the work I did, but I never really got noticed. And I learned to deal with being someone who will work, create marvelous pieces of music with other musicians, and no one will really know who I am at the end of the day.
After a while, he started promoting his music and stopped creating new stuff. His people were telling him to diversify his sound and I wasn't able to get the sound he wanted. So we had nothing much to go by in terms of working together and I wasn't interested in making just beats anymore but no one else wanted to work with me or knew who I was. So that was that. I had a falling out with him soon after he tried to steal a large sum of money from me, albeit not in my face but rather sneakily so I distanced myself from him and my income vanished within a few months which left me with my day job and not much else.
Eventually I lost all interest in making music and it just became a footnote. There were moments when I really wanted to get back into music but I didn't have any avenues to getting anywhere further than just making beats for random nobodies so I didn't bother. It was too late in my life anyway, I was already in my mid twenties and other priorities were taking hold and knowing the amount of time it would take to get anything decent kickstarted, I'd probably be in my early thirties before I'd even get to the same level I was at before - which was pretty much a bit of pocket money coming in every few months and no real exposure. So I decided to quit making music in a professional capacity. If I have to make music now, I make it just for myself but I'm not excited or gripped by it like I was in my early days. I don't make hardly any music these days. In that sense, I failed because there's a possibility that if I had worked harder, networked more, I could have gained the momentum i needed to earn solely from the music business by making solid records but it never happened. And that spark was gone forever.
So I'll start.
I started out making beats maybe 8 years ago, give or take but I never networked because I have never known many people and preferred my own company. Eventually I started working with one particular artist who wasn't amazing but was somewhat business savvy and from him I learned a lot about producing music for an artist as opposed to just making a beat. I made a lot of music with this guy and everything we did we split down the middle. I worked with this dude for just over two years and we were played ocassionally on BBC Radio 1 through friends that he had made over the years. The first PRS cheques were small. Maybe £40 here and there, but we continued to make music and he promoted his stuff until the quarterly cheques were around £500 - £600. I think I got about 3 or 4 of these 'big' cheques.
All this time I was working a day job which it turns out is the hardest thing in the world to do because studio sessions run very very late. The most money I made in music was from our work together during this time. I tried working with a few other people he'd introduced me too but I found that they weren't skilled enough for me to care about putting effort into their music, or they weren't up the professional level I expected, or our styles of music didn't fit, or they didn't like that I was so nitty picky about the small things in the songs. I didn't like socializing or going to parties or schmoozing with people - I preferred to concentrate my effort on making music and have him promote his stuff so that others could piggy back onto my production and I could get some exposure but I found that that never happened. Sure, I got paid for the work I did, but I never really got noticed. And I learned to deal with being someone who will work, create marvelous pieces of music with other musicians, and no one will really know who I am at the end of the day.
After a while, he started promoting his music and stopped creating new stuff. His people were telling him to diversify his sound and I wasn't able to get the sound he wanted. So we had nothing much to go by in terms of working together and I wasn't interested in making just beats anymore but no one else wanted to work with me or knew who I was. So that was that. I had a falling out with him soon after he tried to steal a large sum of money from me, albeit not in my face but rather sneakily so I distanced myself from him and my income vanished within a few months which left me with my day job and not much else.
Eventually I lost all interest in making music and it just became a footnote. There were moments when I really wanted to get back into music but I didn't have any avenues to getting anywhere further than just making beats for random nobodies so I didn't bother. It was too late in my life anyway, I was already in my mid twenties and other priorities were taking hold and knowing the amount of time it would take to get anything decent kickstarted, I'd probably be in my early thirties before I'd even get to the same level I was at before - which was pretty much a bit of pocket money coming in every few months and no real exposure. So I decided to quit making music in a professional capacity. If I have to make music now, I make it just for myself but I'm not excited or gripped by it like I was in my early days. I don't make hardly any music these days. In that sense, I failed because there's a possibility that if I had worked harder, networked more, I could have gained the momentum i needed to earn solely from the music business by making solid records but it never happened. And that spark was gone forever.