Darius Syrossian quit his job as a chef to DJ/produce full time. Was just about to go back when he caught his big break.
He posted a massive speech on Facebook a bit back about never quitting etc.
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Darius Syrossian quit his job as a chef to DJ/produce full time. Was just about to go back when he caught his big break.
He posted a massive speech on Facebook a bit back about never quitting etc.
what is the measure of success though? People calling you to spin their parties? One night a week at a bar or club? very night flying around the world sleeping on planes? You dont need to give up your whole life to be successful at something, just re-evaluate what success is to you.
A lot of really good points I like the conversation thanks guys for inspiring me. I'll work on finishing the song and as soon as I do I'll post it up here and you guys can tell me how bad I suck ;) jk I hope not haha
Alright guys I have a rough draft all finished up it's not mastered or polished or anything like that but would you guys want to see it?
there's the track tell me what you guys think
I may not be in a position of authority on this but my take on this is dependent on all sorts of variables and definitions, a bunch of which have been touched upon.
I'm an engineer so we'll start with the definition:
Successful - you can't just say its the endpoint. I know quite a few producers/DJs who would consider being able to feed themselves with music to be success. I know others that don't care if they starve as long as they do something new (which happens to be the category who tend to produce the best music and also garner the best income from it, but definitely not always). I know a ton of young (like me) DJs and producers who are expecting to "hit it big" and would be disappointed to not sell out stadium shows.
Now in every field it has always been my opinion that there are two factors in achieving success: hard work and creativity. Depending on your particular definition of success they can be more or less important and its never just one road.
How this is relevant to the question is that in music and art in general the creativity tends to be much more important. As a mechanical engineer I know quite a few people who have "made it" through pure unbridled effort with little innovation on their own part. That doesn't happen with music.
There are two ways producers/DJs reach stadium sell-out success (and this is largely true on all levels of success): They make a new, interesting, and original sound/style, or they work their balls off playing other people's new interesting sounds and get lucky. (oh yeah, luck is definitely in all of this)
The question of full time producer is really one of time management coupled with what I'll call "creative inflation". Clearly the latter of the two success paths is significantly more difficult.
The faster you learn, the less time you need to learn a set of skills (be it DAW mastery or music theory). The same thing goes with creativity; the more creative and abstract your mind is the more likely you are to develop something new, which is the key to "success". If you're the Einstein of electronic music and you happen to create the concept for the next giant sub genre without a billion hours of slowly evolving your Electro tracks, you can spend that billion hours working a day job and walking your dog (slightly unlikely believe it or not). This is not to say if you weren't working your day job you wouldn't produce a billion hours more awesome new music, but you still got somewhere that might have taken significantly longer with less creativity.
Now taking into account that most people (including a lot of very successful producers) tend to be farther towards the hard work end of the spectrum, the time issue gets more complicated. Lets say you could work full time at producing and come up with a sound and have it done in a month, or you could take a year to do it and work a day job. The issue with this is that while you would seemingly be 1/12 as likely to "make it" with something new, you are significantly less so for two reasons: your rate of proficiency growth slows as a correlation to your decrease in time spent, and the likelihood of someone else (who does produce full time) having the same idea and finishing it first drastically increases. A new synth sound or weird time signature might not have this to be as much of a concern, but something like a new method of live performance or a new way to utilize your software definitely does.
So your chances are lower by more than just the decreased time. That being said this is all a probability scale. All you can do is increase the chances that people will like your music enough to boost you to "success".
Its about what you want to do.
Do you want to make a ton of money and you like music? Keep it as a hobby.
Do you want to headline Ultra no matter the cost? Get prepared to starve and probably not succeed but your chances improve drastically (about 40 hours a week) if you go full time.
Do you just want to eat and make some absolutely awesome tunes? Here's where you'll have to evaluate if you can make more time to produce by working a better paying part time job than gigging as a DJ for fewer effective hours, and whether the easier money is worth the less entertaining job.
There are a ton more facets to this and DJTT blog has a bunch of awesome advice as to the business of DJing/producing, I only hope that my brain isn't so fried that this was just a massive post of babble.