After working for years as a classical horn player, I had to switch jobs a couple of years ago, because I couldn't make a living anymore. I am currently working two jobs, unrelated to music, and with rather bad pay. I was hoping it would be something temporary, but there are not many options out there for me where I can make a decent living - suprisingly, a professional musician has close to zero value in the real world job market - at least where I live. I've tried session works in Airgigs, but I've only made like 1500E in 5 years, and only from one out of three services I provide - not exactly promising. I won an award for Best Documentary Score a decade ago, but since I'm an introvert and suck at PR, it led nowhere.

Because of some things going on with work now, I'm considering quiting my main job and going back to music again, which is my passion; although not classical anymore.

I am thinking of starting by doing soundbanks and going from there. Is this something you can make a living by doing it or will it more likely be like pocket money unless you're well-known? I have zero experience with that business-wise, and especially the timeframe needed to become somewhat established. I would keep my part-time job and have unemployement benefits for a year, so I have some time to see if it works. Realistically though, can you start making a living from it within a year?

Library music and other composing work is also something I want to do, and could probably be good at, but due to life stuff I haven't managed to start yet. If I were to quit my job, I guess being afraid to starve would be probably be a great motivator to finally do it - although I know it would take a few years to start seeing money from that, so it's more of a long term goal.

Seems like I'm at a crossroad again, and not sure how to move forward.

I feel like I'm stuck, and I don't know what to do.

If anyone has any suggestions, or went through something similar and managed to find a way out, I'd love to hear you out.

Transitioning back into music after a hiatus can be challenging. Exploring avenues like soundbank creation and library music is commendable. For inspiration and guidance, consider reviewing career essays at https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/career/, which offer insights into navigating career shifts and pursuing one's passion.

I had good luck in airgigs, but not in soundbetter and fiverr did you try that? I think musician prifession will dissapear if market leads the politics. We aint needed anymore almost. Only if the goverment subside us we will survive.

In the english magazine SOS (Sound On Sound) there was a long series on doing library music (and making money with it) in 5 or 6 consecutive issues, i would have to look up which and even if the topic is not my cup of tea, the information in there was vast and detailed - maybe helful to you.
Anyway, good luck to you. I have been in Greece only two times but i have the best memories.

I've been on Airgigs for 6 years with 3 different services - I've only made 1500E out of just 1 of them in that time - hard to be in competition with people who ask for ridiculously low amounts of money for their services. I don't pay to be promoted, though - perhaps I should try that. Yeah, times are tough. There was a microloans fund set up recently here, I wanted to apply, but I don't meet the requirements. Only way I could get a small loan to start something is to put a mortgage on a house which is in my name, which makes no sense financially (if things don't work out, they'll take my house for a small loan). For now, it seems, all I can do is devote my spare time to something related to music, and only quit my day jobs if I start making some money. Like my favourite Demotivator says, "not everybody gets to be an astronaut when they grow up"!

Hmm.

Library music is incredibly competitive - if you’re not prepared to go hard and push, I don’t see how that will work.

There’s not really ANY area in music production where it’s easy money and lots of work. Whatever you do, I wouldn’t give up the day job til you’re established in your chosen path.

Number One, you state that you are an introvert and low energy when it comes to marketing yourself. Whatever it is that is holding you back from risking it all to excel in the music entertainment industry is what is keeping a roof over your head with equity.
Embrace your Pro-Hobby credentials and enjoy being a musician that is not pressed/stressed to create/produce like your next meal (etc) depends on it as an everyday gig.
Get yourself an affordable workstation keyboard and learn to play a full horn section with both right and left hands.... that way you can also solo at anytime in recording work with your external input real instruments. ..... I do this with string section, percussion and horn section layering. The only reason solo musicians on real instruments have been replaced is because they are out-maneuvered by people who don't mind developing their technical chops in fundamental time and expense savvy business practices. .....

Once the music is written you can decide what to do with and others can decide if they value it.

I love the story of the lady who gets in a New York cab one day, looks at the name on the drivers ID and says

Oh that's funny there's an opera on at The Met with by a composer of that name.


Yeah I know it's me.

says Philip Glass.

After some discussion here and over at VI Control, I think the best option for now is to stay at my jobs, and use my spare time to set the foundations for some business by creating soundbanks and maybe small sample packs, and also create a portfolio to be able to approach some ad agencies or studios that do library/custom work here in a few months and see where that takes me. I know the music business is hard, I don't expect any easy solutions - I've just being feeling down these past few weeks and worn out from work. If something picks up, great, if not, well, at least I'll have tried. Thank you for your replies.

seeing as you won an award for best score, can't you leverage that and try and get paid work as a composer? that gives you a big advantage over other composers, I have never won awards here even though I've been composing most of my life. Unfortunately I feel like the 'industry' is a completely closed group that will never let me in, it's also very cliquey and I have experienced really bad discrimination, it's very hard to fit into the perfect mould or expectations they have of you. Try and stay positive, I know how hard it is! most musicians struggle a lot, keep us updated on any progress you make.

When I won the award, I imagined a few people would approach me, and I'd get some scoring gigs. No one did.

But it's my fault as well, as I should have marketed myself towards people in the industry, which I never did. I don't hang out in those circles, nor do I attend festivals etc, so no opportunities arose.

I'm gonna start working on a few things for the next few months, set up a website again, create a portfolio, and then try to connect through some local events and see what happens.

up to you but I think a website might be a waste of time, it didn't make much of a difference for me in my business, most of my reputation was word of mouth, I used it to promote mixes I'd worked on but very few people actually took the time to visit it, in the end I took it down, this was after 2-3 years.

Doesn’t do anything in itself but NOT having any sort of web presence is a big red flag IMO. Doesn’t have to be a flashy site, but not having anything is a bit “so are they legit or not?”.

Get into investing and trading.

library music in 2025 == generative AI.

Just like generative AI replaced a good portion of stock photography and illustration.

And it doesnt matter wether a good composer, photographer or graphical artist can do better work or not. Before someone searches through hundreds of stock items, they rather spend the same time to prompt something.

It already was bad before AI, too much stuff to browse, too much competition to make an earning, too much free stuff around, and then people want to hear and see what they alreadx know, on top of that.

Stock libraries also always suffered from a lack of good search engines.

Generative AI solves this issue, or at least thats the promise.

And it costs virtually nothing, technically, if run locally.
This is a situation that can not improve for the artist, only get worse.

I assume its more future proof to get into horse shoe making.

Website, yes, never a bad idea. A single good looking decent static page with relevant info can suffice.

Btw - another job technology swallowed. in late 1990s it was a thing to create a website for an artists. But nowadays, a machine generated page is indistinguishable from a custom site, cheaper, more reliable, and more easy to maintain.

The only thing thats annoying and time consuming with this is all the intranparent hosting costs.
This has changed for the worse, and might still be a reason to hire someone for the job.
Nowadays, not so much.

just don't use wix! looks terrible, it says 'I'm poor and too lazy to pay somebody to make me a website' for me it gives off a bad impression, same thing with contact email, make it relevant, use a business address.