Musicians seek out opportunities to perform live and record music for a variety of reasons, including both economic (money) and personal/social (non-money) goals. Understanding what motivates you to be a musician can help you choose attainable goals and identify concrete steps towards achieving those goals. Knowing your motivations can also help you see when others may be trying to take advantage of your personal/social (non-money) goals for their economic gain.
THREE ASPECTS OF A POPULAR MUSICIAN
In his book The Music Industries, Michael Jones (2012, p. 66 – 67) provides a framework that identifies three spheres in which a musician must operate simultaneously. They are:
1) The music maker – musicians must create meaningful sound for an audience.
2) The music business operator – musicians must collect payment for the music they create.
3) The music commodity – musicians themselves must become a commodity that they can sell.
It is difficult to navigate these three dimensions simultaneously and musicians sometimes think they are only good at one of these dimensions. A musician once told me: “We’re a band, we don’t necessarily have a good business mind so it’s getting in with labels and big promoters. At the end of the day you’re a performer not a music business.” However, career success becomes difficult for musicians when they give up complete control of one or two of these dimensions. To start, it is helpful to understand why you love making music.
TEN NON-MONEY REASONS WHY PEOPLE ARE MUSICIANS
1) Expressing identity: Expressing aspects of personal identity, such race, gender or sexuality can be a purpose for being a musician. Female musicians have a minority status in the music industries so their performances and recordings are gendered statements, whether they choose them to be or not.
2) Gaining Pleasure: Musicians can find creating live or recorded music a pleasurable experience. There is a sense of anticipation towards the performance or session, joy during the event, and satisfaction upon completion of it.
3) Satisfying Ego: Musicians can be motivated to create music in order to seek attention and praise from others. This form of attention and praise may occur during the gig with the audience clapping and cheering or afterwards when fans seek musicians for conversations and perhaps an autograph.
4) Escaping Self: A live performance or long recording session can help musicians escape from daily realities and challenges. Musicians may seek a mythical lifestyle that involves touring to exotic places or spending hours in the studio as a way to avoid mundane responsibilities or painful interpersonal relationships.
5) Seeking Healing: Musicians can be drawn to music creation in an effort to find healing from past hurtful experiences through the expression of emotions within their songs. One musician shares that he finds it helpful to explore difficult emotions in his songs but doesn’t like to talk about those feelings with others, including journalists.
6) Finding belonging: Finding belonging within a small community can be a strong driver towards being a musician. live performance. Bands often use words like family and brother to describe the bond that they feel with their bandmates. Outside challenges often unify the group in a band against the world mentality.
7) Sharing Experiences (with the Audience): Musicians can be motivated to create music as a way to share experiences with the audience, whether it is through the music or an interpersonal exchange at a live performance. Conversations, autographs, and selling merch can all contribute to creating connecting memories between musician and the audience.
8) Communicating Ideology (with the Audience): Live music or a recorded song can provide a space for musicians to communicate a set of values and beliefs regarding how the world was, is and should be. These values can range from world politics and religion, to statements about personal love and relationships.
9) Inspiring Action (from the Audience): Inspiring action as a motivator for being a musician which is closely tied to the motivation of communicating ideology. If musicians have specific ideas that they believe are true, they ultimately would love for the audience to respond with positive actions supporting these ideas.
10) Providing pleasure (for the Audience): Bringing pleasure to audiences can be a strong motivator for musicians, whether it is through a mad crazy party or through the aesthetic beauty of the minimal folk music. The pleasure musicians seek for themselves (#2) is often intertwined with the pleasure they hope to provide to the audience.
RESOLVING BAND CONFLICT AND BUILDING A CAREER
Have questions about how to navigate your non-money goals with those of your band-mates to resolve conflict and build a career? Email micah@micahvandijk.com and I’d love to chat more!
