Twenty seven years old, business background for schooling /tech level, but accidentally got into academic administration at a tertiary institution and been stuck doing that since 2002. It wasn’t a complete waste of time as it gave me insights into many opportunities and gave me lots of experience – but the challenge is no longer and the passion just simply does not lie there any more.

For a while now,  I frequented live gigs, Checking out artists perform their music live, I was taking pictures of artists, informing people of their gigs on various social networking websites, just always staying on top of happenings in the music industry. Even after the gig, I’d write up a review sometimes, upload my pictures, link it to the event that was created etc.

I even went to extent of learning bbcode to be able to update the biography’s on last.fm (wasn’t that hard).

Gradually this became my passion and people started recognising it and showing an interest in the promo type work that it is I was doing (apparently it’s called specialist marketing according to Paul).

I started looking into the possibility of actually doing this as a career and most importantly, I wanted to be able to survive and maintain myself still, if I were to resign from the admin position.

Thing that probably made me stay on in the interim, is my fear that the industry was small which meant little room for entering into it and that the artists needing the exposure wouldn’t have the money to pay me to do their promos. So I paused the resignation and just barely sticking out the stress, overload of work, and really trying hard to actually get the oomph to wake up in the morning to go to that place.

So current situation (not ideal) is work in the day time, get home in the evenings, work more but on my own vibe at night and try sleep by 12 if its work the next day. It’s tiring but its SO worth it…well it will be in the long run.

There were many reasons for my shift in focus of career, some of which include:

• musicians are musicians, and they must realise that appointing a band member to do their online vibe. This is not a good idea because it shifts their focus away from the band and the making music’ness – leave this portfolio up to people like me
  
• I saw some bands being ripped off BIG time by people who were supposedly promoting the band and created their website – I had to step in and be the good Samaritan (charging a fortune for a template website is not on! nor is the high maintenance of web site costs)
  
• I’m sure by now you would know that I live for my music and I in support of uplifting and encouraging any local bands and artists and assisting them to become known “out there“
• I absolutely love my gigging, photography, the internet, so why not mash it all up together into a job?
  
• There is a clear need for this type of work and I can do it and am willing to learn if I don’t know of it
• I really needed a career that I actually loved doing and this seems to be it now
• I have sufficient knowledge of all the social networking websites out there and feel I can use that knowledge to best expose any artist
  
• having a boyfriend as a web developer really helped a lot – he taught me to use wordpress which in turn exposed me to many more development type sites and how-tos and I got a lot of my experience thanks to him too – no I still can’t do proper php or java script coding
  
• I think I do a good job at writing and I especially like writing up a story that I have no prior knowledge of – this normally forces me into research first and which in turns educates me even more.
  

I believe I can do a great job if I can concentrate on only that – and this is where the story is left open ended for now. Take it as an opportunity if you an artist, and hire me. If in industry, feel sorry for me and teach me what it is I need to know, (if you thinking I am too under qualified). If you a someone doing this type of work already, it would be great to meet up with you and have a chat about this.

I found it SO hard finding others out there like me. The best advise so far, I got from London – but he is South African; and thank you Paul. Others to thank are: Stephen of ConsciousFlowz, great tips I got from him – he has a music degree from Nashville and so the tips I got are greatly valued.  Teboes who constantly pushed me and encouraged me to go for it & as mentioned earlier, thanks to Ryan.

This is a scary thing, its something I have tried to avoid merely because of the uncertainty of the turn out of it all and also because it is a total new playground for me. It’s also something I don’t want to mess up hence resistant to want to even start it due to fear of messing it up if I do.

Future posts:

• How do you charge for something you love doing? I would do it free and it is hard to put a value to love
• Meeting with clients, etiquette and advise
• To ‘fun’ gig vs To ‘working’ gig
• What services I can offer

Tags: career, dreams, focus, Music, Music Industry, Music Promotions, yearn

Feelings, Music Related Links, Personal, Questions | 6 Comments