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Outside of my regular job, I am an indie folk music artist, trying to rise in the local music scene here in Dnipro, Ukraine. Even though learning to be a musici
by vanadium1st 4y ago
Outside of my regular job, I am an indie folk music artist, trying to rise in the local music scene here in Dnipro, Ukraine. Even though learning to be a musician from scratch in my 20s was a hard process that took years and years, by far the hardest part of it was trying to establish a passive income, so I could have enough free time for practicing, performing and writing music.
A lot of my talented peers are so much better then me in all of the music and performing stuff, but can't find enough time for it between regular boring work. Woody Allen said that 80% of success is just showing up, and it seems true. But now I see how a lot of talented people simply can't afford to show up. They are missing open mics and performing opportunities because they can't skip another shift as a barista, they can't find time for rehearsal because of soul killing the low paying bank job. I keep thinking about all the beautiful songs that are left to be unwritten.
I guess the life of artists was always like that - either you are struggling, or you have a source of passive income that carries you through the development years. And I do think that this moment in history is as full of opportunity as it ever was. Still, it was a surprising discovery for me. I really thought that at least at the starting level it would be mostly about who plays their chords better, and it surprisingly isn't.
- perfmode 4y agoThanks for sharing. Do you have any music online?
- vanadium1st 4y agoThank you for your interest. At this moment I am only performing live and am not proud enough of my performance level to record it and share it online
- boredemployee 4y agoI believe in the statement by Albert Barabasi who says that to be successful in art all you need is a good network, nothing else.
- sidlls 4y agoThat’s true for almost any field.
- boredemployee 4y agoNot for fields that require some kind of performance
- munk-a 4y agoSo it's good for some fields other than performers? I've met plenty of stock brokers and engineers that skate by on credentials - I try to avoid them professionally because they tend to produce workplaces with exceedingly high demands and low compensation due to the drain they introduce on the system... but they continue to exist. Heck, HN has many time had discussion on C-level folks who basically revolving door their way from failure to failure and still get huge golden parachutes when they sign on to a new company even though their performance history is trash.
- sidlls 4y agoEven fields that require performance can have strong networking requirements. Academia, software, traditional engineering, etc. One’s reputation is rarely purely or even strongly reputation based
- spywaregorilla 4y agoIs the local music scene up and running? Aren't you like 100 miles from the front?
- vanadium1st 4y agoYeah, it's weird. The music scene is as live as it ever was here, along with all other parts of the normal city life. It's not really a new situation for us. This war continues for 8 years, and all this time the front was about 200 miles from us. During this new phase of the invasion the frontline got a little closer to Dnipro, but not that much. Regular life here stopped in winter-spring, when we didn't know which cities will withstand this phase of the invasion. Tragically Kherson, Mariupol and many others are lost as of now. But we in Dnipro were lucky enough and life kind of continues here. There are changes of course. Practically no artist in Ukraine gets paid now at any level. Every single concert is for charity, gathering funds for arms or refugees. And, as with all other life, there are constant interruptions of air raid sirens. Other than that, music scene lives as usual. People still go to concerts and artists still perform. Predictably a lot of sad sad songs gets written now, but honestly no one really wants to hear them - everyone here gets enough negativity from everywhere else. The best bet is to stick to the happy and hopeful stuff.
- bsder 4y agoI really do wish we had "basic income" in the US. Besides helping out the lowest socioeconomic class, it really seems like this would benefit artists, too.
- qaq 4y agoWell the COVID gave a taste of it still can't put inflation under control from that experiment.
- ornornor 4y agoIs it from the couple thousand stimulus checks or is it from the billions companies got for free?
- qaq 4y agowas inflation mostly in industrial equipment or consumer goods?
- ornornor 4y agoDoesn’t one trigger the other in a vicious circle?
- qaq 4y agoIncrease in production capacity triggers inflations of end product prices?
- andrekandre 4y agoincrease of price for industrial inputs (petrol, chips, low stock, supply chain costs) should have a large impact if im not mistaken...
- qaq 4y ago
- 2-718-281-828 4y ago> I guess the life of artists was always like that - either you are struggling, or you have a source of passive income that carries you through the development years Most importantly ... wealthy parents ;)
- 999900000999 4y agoWealthy parents, wealthy partner. I wouldn't really mind, if I married a girl and she decided after we had kids that she just wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. And she like paints or something. But that notion also devalues domestic housework, which is just as valuable as typing all day to make ad revenue go up. But I would still like to think a stay-at-home parent could carve out more time for their hobbies. Particularly once the kids are in school. Being a music person like me, I totally would love to have classical pianist as a wife and just come home every day to hearing classical piano.