I am 14 gonna be a freshman in high school and am very interested in music (well most music). Since i guess i should start thinking about what i wanna do when i grow up what are some careers in music.

Thanks guys

My first choice is as a musician....with Mah band

My back-up incase my band doesn't make it is Radio DJ....so I can sit on my ____ and listen to tunes all day

Also Im gonna be a freshmen also in August

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Just a amatuer looking for tips

Current Gear:
1968 Kay Strat
Kramer Focus 111S
Johnson 15w amp
Squier Black and Chrone Special Tele

If you are that serious about guitar get yourself a good teacher and learn as much theory and how to read as you can.Also gig as much anf often you can always better to play with guys better than you. Then when it is college time get a degree in music.I know it is a lot of work and also a lot of not fun stuff -learning to read but if you do this you will always get work as a pro player and the dream is always alive of hitting it big with a band where the millions are. Plus by the time you are 18 you should have a big roster of students to teach which is great money. Dont forget when Joe Satriani was giving Vai lessons he was like 17 and Vai was 15.

Old Joke:
What Do A Guitarist And A Sandwich Have In Common?
They both can't feed a family.

I had a bunch of guitar-player buddies that were brilliant and turned pro. I almost did. The closest any of us got was one almost became a member of Kiss. Another, the highest achiever by far, is currently a senior writer for Guitar Player magazine, but he still has a day job teaching at a community college. So how many are still full-time guitarists? N - o - n - e

My personal opinion:
In parallel with all the guitar playing, having a band, and songwriting ... I vote for pursuing a career as a recording engineer and eventually a producer. When you are ready for college, move to an area where there is a lot of music going on, and go to school there. Get a 4-year degree in it, and intern wherever you can. There is good money there and much more stability. Things like "money" and "stability" likely don't resonate with you at your age. But a time will come when that will become very important to you.

Above all, get a 4-year degree (preferably a B.S.). That is often the key between having a job and a "career". By not having one, you are often excluded automatically from nearly all the best jobs. I can't stress that enough ... you don't want to be on the outside looking in.

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

Because you are young, you probably imagine that the only well-paying careers in music involve performing, preferably as a guitar player because that's what you like to do. I sure did, and that mindset held me back for too long.

Career as a guitar player? There are a million guitar players, and so many of them are good enough that there just aren't enough good-paying gigs for them all. What do you call a guitar player without a girlfriend? Homeless.

As for "recording engineer," every kid with a MacBook and a copy of Reason thinks he's gonna be a recording engineer. Even as the big studios are closing, every college campus is building a huge teaching recording studio... not to teach you how to be an engineer, but to take your money if you want to become one. Most people who take these courses will end up selling cars, haunting the local bars and opening a "project studio" in their garage that records local bands and doesn't break even. In the next 10+ years the schools will be puking these guys up at an incredible rate, and they will have no creative skills, only technical ones, which are a dime a dozen.

There may not be a huge number of career options for guitar players or recording engineers. But there are still limitless possibilities for "content creators:" in our case, musicians who can create original work. Songwriters, composers, artist/engineers... these are the guys who can make a living.

I know people who write for TV or re-master music from movies for soundtrack albums, people who work as music supervisors in film. I know full-time music directors for mega-churches, part time concert promoters and guys who work in audio forensics. I know songwriters and bandleaders who market their CDs harder to music supervisors than to their "fans." I personally write and produce music for commercials (local, regional, mostly, but a few national gigs), but I've also worked as music director on a string of corporate shows, I arrange and produce for singer/songwriters, I've scored documentary film and I've started creating music for video games (a growth industry, fer sure).

Not a single one of my clients has ever hired me because I am a good guitar player. They hire me to solve problems, to fit into their mix, to make creative content that works.

Sure, I'm not a rock star. But I get up every day and walk down the stairs to my own studio, where I am surrounded by guitars and synths and blinking lights, and I spend all day screwing around with the things I find here. No rock star has it better.

So, step 1 toward finding one of the 100's of careers in music: think of yourself as a musician and a creator, and head in that direction. Take piano lessons this year (it'll make you a batter guitar player, I promise). Start composing, and give yourself permission to make thousands of mistakes. Start noticing all the places you hear original music in your daily life, and imagine yourself providing it. You'll see a huge world of possibilities open up.

There's always Juillard

How do you get a musician off of your doorstep?
Pay for the pizza.

Seriously though, I have a B.Mus, B.Ed and teach elementary school music. A lot of high schools have guitar programs now, so that's another option. I also teach private lessons to about 40 students.

Though not 100% music, there are also special education programs that make significant use of music.

Other than that, SlapChop has a terrific response. I agree that performance will be "the" opening. Even in my industry (film/TV), there are openings for musicians all the time: original scores on features and TV, studio bands for the live shows. Name artists often hire guitarists as well, and not always big names either.

No one's going to be recording the score for a major feature or TV show in a garage project studio anytime soon. And the (movie) studios all hire musicians for other things as well.

For those jobs, you generally must be able to read music fairly well and you'll need to join the union. Other careers that stem from that include arranger, rehearsal director, etc. Who knows, some day you might be holding up your own Oscar for best original score!

On the contrary: there is a huge amount of major TV work done in the composers' "garage:": project studios. While they may be fairly sophisticated, they are often in the composer's home.

And not every feature film is scored with 120 orchestral players on the Newman Stage at Fox. For example, most of The Bourne Identity was done on synths in John Powell's project studio, with only a small string section and a solo bassoon added., and the closing title music was another licensed track by Moby, no doubt created in his one-room London studio. As the music changes, so does the technical demand.

What are some colleges that are good in music but arent out the roof cost wise and what degrees would you need to be a dj

what are some ways i could find out more about theory because im really interested in theory

Thanks everyone for the replies

Mass Communications would be thing to major or minor in if you want to be a DJ. My Dad was a DJ in the 70's, but he never made it his career nor did he major in Mass Com. He wishes he had though, and since I'm also interested in radio, particularly music and internet radio, I'd like to study Mass Communications in college in addition to something music specific.

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I'll tell you right now, if you want to be a radio DJ, that is going to be a tough battle. Also, you don't need a degree to be a DJ, but I guess it helps. I have been out of radio DJing for a couple years now after doing it for a decade. The industry itself has gotten weird with all the downsizing, syndication, and automation, and are hiring less DJs because you can just have a DJ record their breaks, not only for the station you're on, but other stations the company may own. For example, the afternoon drive guy in town where I lived would record breaks and email them to another station where these breaks were played at night where he was the "night time DJ"...The afternoon DJ at this other station, would email his own voice breaks to this station in my town where he was the "night time DJ". These are the Clear Channel owned stations, which I didn't work for, but they only have 1 or 2 full-time DJs at each station, and a couple of part-timers...then they just pool the talent regionally. So in the past, you would need 4-5 full-timers and just as many part timers at a station, but now you can cut the staff of 8-10 down to 2-5 people, and of course management looks at that as better on their bottom line, who cares how it will sound on the air to only have 3 DJs total, like the station I was at, because money talks....

Part time gigs are hard to get as a radio DJ because many stations are automated, so while it may seem like they have a weekend guy doing a 6-8 hour shift, chances are, he recorded 8 hours worth of breaks in less than 2 hours in the middle of the week, because guess what, its not about live radio, OR the music, but the money. They will do what saves or makes them money, the music is secondary, at the highest. As much as may you think radio is about people listening to music and/or the news, its more about getting the people to tune in long enough to hear the advertising that makes them money. Radio DJs 99% of the time do not pick the music they play while they are on the air, the good ones just make it seem like they do, but everything is formatted days, if not weeks ahead of time, by the program director. However, even if you are the program director, like I was for a brief period, you still don't get to pick all the music. You have to adhere to format guidelines, deal with management and sales people who get bent out of shape if something too new or heavy sounding hit the airwaves, record company and promptional people who want you to play their artists which you have to do at times, no matter how much they may suck, in order to get freebies and money to pay for other listener schwag because even though you have had 500 people ask about T-shirts, the bosses don't want to spend the company's own money to promote the company...Anyways...thats just some of what you can expect if you want to be a radio DJ...I'm not sure about the satellite radio DJs, though I am sure there are rules and guidelines they must adhere to as well cause the satellite radio companies are millions of dollars in debt and have bills to pay...

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RAMA LAMA FA FA FA

There is no money in radio, and any media that doesn't allow user control is dead... that goes for TV news, music radio, any kind of "push" media is getting killed by user-controlled IP-delivered tech.

Jobs where you simply deliver re-hashed content will cease to exist. Even if DJ's really did "sit on their $@!" all day playing records (and they don't... ask any mid-market loser standing on the tarmac barking a remote for a car dealer at 2PM on a 95 degree day), well... who needs that person anymore?

Learn to make content.

Reminds me of Tom Petty's song--- The Last DJ !!

i cant comment on the music industry in the States, but i think it's universally true that if you want to make it as a gigging musician, it's gonna be tough. if you want to write and perform your own stuff tougher still. these days it's way easier to make a demo but the industry seems to be more profit/product driven than ever. if you want a music industry career, there are plenty of courses you can do now which may give you an entry, but for most of us nothing comes easy and if you want to work and make a living out of something you love doing, yep you can do it and you should do it but be prepared for a lot of blood sweat and tears along the way.

patrick
auckland nz