11 More Incredible Reasons Why Being A Musician Is A Fun Life Path

In part 1 we shared 11 unique reasons why a musician’s life is most different than the average person’s path and earthly experiences. However, the list is extensive, and the interesting peculiarities – many. So let us reunite for another celebratory piece that highlights the advantages of choosing the path less traveled, that of a creative person without the guarantee of a stable future whatsoever.

11. More people remember you than you think.

As a long-time musician you will realize over the years that many people show up both on social media and in person telling you things along the lines “Hey, remember me??? We spoke after the X show on Y day when you opened for Z artist.” And you’re going to look into the ceiling and remember you did open for that name years ago but you will not have the slightest idea who this person is. With every performance you put on, more and more people will register your voice, name, and likeness while you’ll just be worried about singing the right lyrics in time with the beat. The fact often brings in perks, especially when former fans become restaurant owners, flight attendants, real estate agents, and you get to have dinners on the house, skip the line for tickets, and have fat rental discounts because of their memories of you.

10. You are more spiritual than those around you.

Emotions are uncomfortable to manage —the negative ones in particular— but musicians have the formidable mental asset of seeing beauty where everyone else sees gloom. And there is something to be said about the tangency of what making music is and the definition of a spell (“a spoken word or form of words believed to have magic power”). And if you ever noticed how people sing together, cry together, laugh together, jump together, and dance together at concert shows, despite songs being decades old for example, that’s just about as close to magic as you’ll get. One individual casts hour-long melodic words and everyone else absorbs all of it, resulting in an exchange of energy. Musicians know this and are aware of how easily they can manipulate the mood of a room with their voice so they almost intrinsically believe in the higher call. Most of them also conduct team prayers before hitting the stage. Is this ritual more special than the average atheist conduct? Not really, but it does confer an air of magic and fun to the meaning of being a musician.

9. Your lovers can’t move past you.

Because not everyone else in their life is going to write lyrics and songs about them. It does something to your self-esteem when your existence and interaction with a person was worthy enough of immortalizing in a song. And respectively, a musician’s former lovers will forever remember them and secretly listen to their music even when they’re married to other people.

8. You develop heavy-duty business skills.

Because as an up-and-coming musician, you must learn just about all the skills needed to move past the initial stages on your own. From managing, scheduling, budgeting, and scaling, to networking and negotiating, these are all foundational pillars for any successful entrepreneur.

7. You work for yourself most of the time.

It takes a good while to get to a self-sufficient position as a music artist, but when you do, a 9-to-5 job is not even an option. You become so accustomed to the lifestyle and the grind that you begin wondering how does everyone else put up with having a boss who tells them what they can and can’t do? It sounds like insanity once you’ve begun working as a full-time music artist.

6. You have to continuously push to stay afloat.

Speaking of the grind, being a music artist is not a job that will let you relax. You’re always on your toes as the next project may not match the success of the past project thus the income is not guaranteed. Most normal people dread the idea of forever living in an up-and-down type of career flow. Musicians have learned to embrace it and rock with it. It does make for fun stories and a persistent character.

5. You hear melodies when everyone else hears little nothing.

Music artists have a knack for finding inspiration where everyone else hears just a keychain falling, a metal spoon dropping, a clock turning. The sheer amount of daily objects recorded and then inserted in big studio recordings is impressive. Billie Eilish and her Bad Guy hit are a terrific example: “In an interview with Rolling Stone, the use of a Sydney pedestrian traffic light sound in the song was revealed; it originates from a phone recording made by Eilish in February 2017.”

4. You carry a whole lot of empathy in that artistic heart of yours.

People who are not in touch with their emotions – can’t create. You will find that many musicians —those who actually write their own songs to be precise— are activists and big social causes supporters. From fighting for human rights, animal rights, minority rights, labor rights, women’s rights, musicians tend to get deeply involved with non-profit organizations and even put together fundraising shows of their own because THEY CARE.

3. You get to be popular beyond your high-school years.

For the usual person, the popularity contest ends with the high-school diploma. For musicians, well, it’s sort of their lifeline until they’ve cemented their likeness and brand in the minds and hearts of many. It is pretty cool to be in your 30s and get plenty of social media attention and be invited on TV shows and podcasts. Not a perk for introverts!

2. You get a lot of free things at the top.

Here’s a funny yet very ironic truth: the more fame you gain and the more money you make, the easier it is to keep that fame going and that money flowing. In time, people begin offering you a lot of things for free to get the brand support and exposure from you and your music. Many musicians you know haven’t spent a dime on clothing in decades because they have both fashion houses and indie designers knocking on their door with free clothes for them to wear in exchange for photo ops.

1. You have the privilege to see people being directly impacted by your music.

If you know to write sticky hooks, catchy verses, and high-quality ad-libs, chances are, your songs will catch on fire from the first listen. The easier your music catches on, the faster the fans hold on. Thus, when you begin performing regularly, you also begin getting fan mail, fan videos, and fan packages. In those, you get to read heartfelt confessions of how your music helped people get through depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and various trials in life in which the song you wrote one night at 2 am actually served someone as a therapist and gave them the confidence they needed to get up and get going. This level of connection is not something experienced by other career paths.

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