Into the unknown: Music careers
Clare Stevens
Thursday, October 1, 2020
A career in music doesn't just mean becoming a professional performer. Clare Stevens reports on a new campaign spearheaded by Youth Music to help raise awareness of the sheer variety of jobs open to young people, from video game composition to classroom teaching, stage management and more.
Imagine one of your students has expressed an interest in a career in music – but perhaps their ambition is not to be a concert pianist or a violinist or an opera singer, but to be a bass guitarist or a turntablist. They may want to work on a sound desk in a recording studio or to be part of an event management team, putting on music festivals in fields. Would you know how to point them in the right direction for specialist training?
Or let's say you're the one to spot a pupil's talent, perhaps in helping you to promote performances to a potential audience, or in managing the lighting for the school musical. They may not even realise that they could develop their interest and skill into a full-time career in marketing or lighting design. Not everyone who works in music is a professional performer; there are a vast range of ancillary roles connected to the industry.
School careers advisers are not always very familiar with these, nor with possible routes into the music business. It may be easy enough to direct a gifted clarinettist or singer to conservatoire auditions or a university choral scholarship, but how can you help students whose musical journey is likely to take them in different directions from those well-trodden paths?
Step forward Youth Music (YM), which has just launched a campaign to help raise awareness of the variety of careers available in music, and to help broker connections between young people and the industry. In its new report A Blueprint for the Future, commissioned in partnership with youth marketing organisation Livity, YM sets out a plan for cultivating its talent, energy and passion for music and calls on the industry to follow suit in order to tackle longstanding inequalities of opportunity. The campaign is backed by a new £2m ‘Incubator Fund’ to support the development of young talent, with the aim of ‘smashing the barriers to working in the music industry’, particularly for young people from BAME communities or socially deprived backgrounds and – still – for women.
A Blueprint for the Future takes as its starting point the experiences of 1,300 people aged 18-25 who are keen to work in the music industries (the plural is important, points out YM's CEO Matt Griffiths, because the complex, fragmented nature of the music scene is one of the things that makes it so difficult for students and their families and teachers to understand). It illustrates how even those with overwhelming tenacity, determination and entrepreneurial spirit often find the current routes from education to employment are not fit for purpose, and highlights some of the reasons why the existing music industries are so lacking in diversity.
A Blueprint for the Future can be downloaded from the Youth Music website, visit https://new.youthmusic.org.uk/blueprint-future
The report acknowledges that the UK has a well-established music education sector, both in and outside schools, colleges and universities, and that despite concerns about funding cuts and the de-prioritisation of creativity in the curriculum, it continues to support vast numbers of young people to make music. But Livity's researchers, Pippo Khalwa and Nate Agbetu, discovered that there are not enough links between education and the industry for those who want to turn their hobby into a career. For example, they quote 19-year-old singer-songwriter Courtney from Luton, who says she finds the idea of knowing where to start quite overwhelming, and feels there is a stigma surrounding the music industry that paints it as a dream, rather than a reality. Even those who are fortunate enough to secure a job in music, such as 22-year-old Brooke, press assistant for a major record label, often find they haven't been properly prepared for it: ‘Even though I did a business management degree specialising in music, going into the label I was like “how have I not learnt anything?”’
Almost half of the young musicians surveyed were already earning some money through music, but many were studying other subjects with the aim of supporting their interest in music through working in a more prosaic ‘day job’. Very few were aware of the concept of a portfolio career embracing work in different music-related roles as something to aspire to – that earning money through a mix of performing, running events, composing and teaching, for example, is a perfectly viable model for a musician's career.
Getting a foot in the door through an internship or work experience is the first step in many a career and this is where the barriers can seem completely unsurmountable to young people who don't have family or friends working in the business already to give them that opportunity, or who can't afford to work for nothing or for very low wages for an extended period. While the report has been published in the wake of the #BlackLivesMatter campaign and takes account of all the issues surrounding racial diversity, Griffiths says that social class is often just as much of a factor as ethnicity in this. If you live on a council estate in a provincial city and none of your family have ever made a living from music, the stage of a famous jazz club or arena or the offices of a well-known record label will feel remote, no matter what colour your skin is.
Liverpool-based Sound City, an independent festival and conference for new music, is one organisation that has been addressing these issues for several years. In 2013 it set up the Sound City Music Entrepreneurs Training Course, now called Sound City Launch Training, designed to identify and develop new talent in the music, new technology and digital community. It offers six-to-12-month mentoring and training programmes, volunteering opportunities, and access to industry professionals on a regional, national and international level.
‘The Sound City programmes were an amazing journey,’ says graduate Dominic Dunne. ‘This is an industry-based course that gives you the tools to prepare, nurture and start your journey in the creative and digital industries. I learned so much about how to go about setting up and running my own business.’
Becky Ayres, managing director of Sound City, dreamt up the training programme after working for many years at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) and realising that there was a need. She says it has been extremely well supported by representatives of the music industries, and should be replicated across the country. ‘Hubs can play a huge role in this,’ she says, ‘brokering relationships between commercial music organisations and schools, and putting together programmes where people go into schools and colleges and talk about their careers.’
Griffiths goes further and suggests that there is a case for being even more radical and re-imagining what music education should be. ‘Young people are more passionate than ever about their music, it is at the centre of their lives, but that is not reflected in their school experiences, and they are finding it difficult to progress from school to their next musical experiences. Teachers need to work with industry to make music education more youth led.’
YM has put its money where its mouth is with its own Next Gen programme, offering paid freelance work to 18-25-year-olds, to give them experience of the realities of running an event such as the YM Awards and something positive and relevant to put on their CVs.
‘Our Blueprint report was written during transformational world events,’ says Griffiths. ‘Covid-19 and the re-energising of the Black Lives Matter movement have laid bare stark realities and entrenched inequalities across our societies. The uneven distribution of wealth and power is more glaringly obvious and less sustainable than ever before. This seminal moment presents us with a real opportunity not only to reflect but to act. The music ecosystem is tilting on its axis in this period of economic transition and its future is up for grabs.
‘Music has always been a force for inclusion and revolution, helping us imagine a better future. By working together, individually and collectively, we can create the change that's being loudly called for.’
Courses with a music business focus
While mentoring and placement schemes such as those advocated by Youth Music may help some young musicians to go straight from school to jobs within the industry, most music colleges and conservatoires do now offer some form of preparation for working in the profession in addition to developing their students’ performance skills.
The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD), for example, offers an MA in Arts Management: ‘Working closely with our industry partners, creating opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience, is at the heart of everything we do. We equip them with a transferable bundle of practical skills and relevant experience of current practice to ensure they are 100 per cent “employment-ready”,’ says course leader Karen Pimbley.
Foundation certificate and degree courses at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) include ‘Creative Technologies and Performance’ and ‘Management of Music, Entertainment, Theatre and Events’. Leeds Conservatoire offers a three-year BA in Music (Business) that ‘reflects the revolutionary way that music is now made, listened to and distributed by digital networks and social media’.
BIMM, formerly the Brighton Institute of Modern Music, now has branches in Bristol, London, Manchester, Dublin and Hamburg, and offers degrees in Music Production and Marketing, Media and Communication as well as in guitar, keyboard, drums and technology. BIMM prides itself on showing its students how the music industry fits together, both through arranging visits by outside speakers and internships and by enabling students to run and promote events for one another. ‘We are creating the professionals of tomorrow,’ they declare, ‘both behind the scenes and on the stage.’