If I want to be a professional musician for a living what can I do right away to start making money in the music industry?

Tom Hess's Answer: You can start by studying this article on how to make money in music that will get you thinking about the action steps to take in order to begin making money in the music industry.

More specifically, the single 'fastest' avenue for making money in the music industry is to begin teaching music on your instrument. Note: there are MANY other ways to make money in this business, such as through selling records, performing, doing session work, publishing, composing for hire and more, BUT teaching music is the 'fastest' of these paths to make good money as a musician NOW. The other career paths I mentioned CAN all be developed to make you A LOT of money over time, but that process takes more up front work 'in the beginning' of your music career.

In addition to being the fastest area of the music business to start making a living in, teaching music can be very secure and VERY lucrative and you remain in complete control of your work schedule. You will be hard-pressed to find another job (in music or in any other industry) that will allow you to earn as much money as you can by teaching your instrument while working on part-time hours. What this means for your music career is that you will now have lots of additional time to invest into other areas of your musical goals (that take longer to develop) without working at a full time day job that you hate and that is unrelated to your music career.

Go to this page to learn how to become a highly successful guitar teacher.

Learn more about how to make a living with a career in the music industry.