What is It Like To Be Professional Musicians?

   

       Many people think that being a musician is easy. One of the reasons is the kind of mindset that being a musician doesn't have to be smart in academic performance and finishes school or college. It is true that being a musician is a pleasing job.
They can go on tour to the places that they haven't visited before and played on different stages with their band mates. However, there is a band that must face the reality when their new album is accessed illegally. In some cases, their fans hacked the new album and upload it, so other fans can listen to it for free. Due to being pirated by their own fans, pushed to create new music and bullied by the haters, musicians must face obstacles to be professional artists.

     When a band finishes an album and it is ready to be distributed, the band members expect people or in this case, their fans, would buy it in the hope of both economic income and good reviews. But there is a trade off, some fans find the price of the album expensive and the only way for those kinds of fans to listen to the musicians’ album is through music piracy which is free. Other kinds of fans would just choose one or two songs to judge whether the album is filled with good songs or not before buying them, and that also can be done through piracy. Those kinds of things would have negative effects on the band.

     There is a difference between a band that has a record label and a band which goes indie. The label band is safe to assume that the band has their its benefactor in terms of promotional and tour activities, while the Indie band must find their own partnership and do all their band activities on their own. But when the band is in a record label, sometimes the higher-ups want the band to change their genre to be completely different. But they can't do anything about it, because the band is tied with the contract. On the other hand,  the indie band is free to make music whichever they want because they stand alone. Usually, in a record label, the producer demands that the band must make one new album every year in order to make their contract safe, but the rules of one label is different from another label. However, when some fans are growing tired of the band’s music, the band can't do anything before the higher-ups says so, that is the stressful part of being a musician.

      Nowadays, electronic dance music or EDM is ranking top in a music chart, so the market and the radios are filled with that kind of music. Many song producers change their course of genres to have that taste of EDM in order to fit in the market demand. Many bands change their genres, even the once called ‘metal’ or ‘rock’ bands drastically change their genres into some sorts of EDM just to stay safe in the market ranking. This action attracts negative feedback on the fans. Not all fans like that kind of music and just comfortable for whatever the band genres before changing their genre into EDM. The performance of the band that changes genre to EDM is deteriorating and kind of forcing their way to have fun on the stage. Consequently, hate comments are flowing down on the YouTube to EDM artists.

     In short, despite requiring no academic knowledge to become a musician, there are always obstacles to overcome in order for you to be more sophisticated in it, nothing gains in the end if you can't be passionate in what you do.

By Muhammad Aditya