Full time musician

I honestly believe now that the model I envisaged a few years back is seriously flawed.

When I started my Bachelors degree in 2004, I maintained that the Internet will allow people that pursue music as a part time hobby, to sell their songs online. They would go about their regular day jobs, and, when the sun sets, turn into rock stars.

I was wrong.

I realize now that it does take the entire day to pursue your musicianly craft and be successful at it. The Internet is such a noisy place that it takes extreme discipline as a musician to create any kind of notoriety. And of course, your songs and your chops have to be extremely awesome, too. Setting aside a few hours at the end of a long day is never going to suffice for this.

The typical day of a musician could look something like this:

10am:
Get up, have a shower and some breakfast. Maybe if you're so inclined, go for a run before your shower (this is going to be so much more helpful to your career than stimulating illicit substances).

11am:
Open email, log onto Facebook, ReverbNation, MySpace, Twitter, Headliner, SonicBids, MusicXRay, LastFM, GetAGig and Google+, and perform your daily dose of online marketing and networking.

1pm:
Upload some new material to Bandcamp and Vimeo, and put some tracks on Soundcloud for an overseas collaboration.

2pm:
Warm up yesterday's pizza leftovers and consume while answering emails. Wash down with fresh coffee, while you update your electronic press kit on Ourstage.com. Package a few CDs that need to be sent out to stock up at CD Baby, for the music review website and the fans that won the competition on Facebook.

3pm:
Restring acoustic guitar and put new batteries into stomp pedals. Wipe the beer stains off the amplifier head and the cables.

4pm:
Turn on amplifier, plug in microphone and guitar, and practice the entire live set twice, before your neighbour gets back from the office. Go over the chord changes and lead parts of the new song in the set. Jump onto the drums to work out a few parts.

6pm:
Re-write and develop the lyrics you wrote yesterday.

7pm:
Turn on monitors and have a quick listen to yesterday's demo recordings. Make detailed notes about your impressions, and tweak one or two things. Add egg shaker and record a couple of new ideas.

9pm:
One hour break while you get some Chinese takeaway and watch a few Youtube clips or listen to Grooveshark.

10pm:
Go out to a gig of another band that you would like to do some gig swaps with.

2am:
Return home, download the gig pics from your phone, post updates to Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Make a list of things to do in your google calendar.

3am:
Hit the sack.

There may be many more things that you will have to fit into the next day or two, such as band practice, performing live, teaching your instrument to others, interviews, photoshopping the promo pics, editing the video footage from the studio recording sessions, learning some php coding for the band website, checking out new artist services on the net, writing another blog post, and many other things...

DIY musician is a full time occupation, no doubt.