I've produced music for others (as a job, if you will), and I've produced music for my own enjoyment and satisfaction. While I do get an amount of enjoyment ou

I've produced music for others (as a job, if you will), and I've produced music for my own enjoyment and satisfaction. While I do get an amount of enjoyment out of producing music for others, it may or may not be music that I personally like. It has to meet certain criteria. It has to sound like this, use these instruments, or be that duration, or whatever. A lot like programming, I think. I can program on my own time, making whatever I fancy, using whatever language I want, to my own maximum enjoyment. At a programming job, I will likely enjoy it to at least some degree, but I may or may not be doing everything in a way that I think best, because I'm doing the work for the satisfaction of someone else. But then, producing something for someone else, be it software or music or whatever, results in a different kind of satisfaction on my end: the satisfaction of meeting someone else's need. They wanted X, and I made X for them, and they are happy with it. I may or may not like X myself, but I am pleased that they like it!