I keep seeing the same conversation over and over again in composer forums and Facebook groups. "Things are not like they used to be." "There is no money in streaming anymore." "You have to do everything yourself now." And then the list comes out. You have to be an office worker. A web designer. A graphic designer. A social media manager. A bookkeeper. All on top of actually writing music, which is the only thing most of us wanted to do in the first place.
I get it. I really do. And honestly, I would also love to just enjoy a beautiful life without paying taxes. But that version of the music industry, where you just wrote music and somebody else handled everything, was never available to most of us anyway. And the version we have now, the one everybody is complaining about, is actually more powerful than anything that came before.
More work, but also more reach
Yes, the work besides music has become more. I agree with that completely. But look at what you actually have access to today. You can reach thousands of people without spending a dollar on ads. You can build a professional web presence in a weekend. You can send personalized outreach to hundreds of companies in a fraction of the time it used to take.
Compare that to what composers had 20 years ago. You had a landline phone and a mailbox. You sent physical letters to studios and waited weeks for a reply that usually never came. You worked with pen and paper. Now we have digital audio workstations, sample libraries that let one person sound like a full orchestra, and the internet as a distribution channel that reaches the entire planet.
So when people say it was better before, I wonder what exactly they mean.
Agentic workflows are not about replacing you
There are tools available right now that can take most of that "non-music work" and compress it down to almost nothing. I am talking about agentic workflows. And before you tune out because it sounds like tech jargon, let me be specific.
I am not talking about AI writing your music. I am not talking about replacing your creativity or your artistic voice. That is yours. Nobody is touching that.
I am talking about the outreach, the research, the emails. The repetitive tasks that eat your entire afternoon and leave you too drained to compose anything.
Think about how client outreach used to work. You had to manually search the web for companies. Find email addresses buried somewhere on their website. Read through their portfolio to understand what they actually need. Then sit down and write an individual email from scratch. That was one lead. Now multiply that by fifty.
Today you can set up systems that generate hundreds of personalized drafts with a few clicks. The research, the personalization, the formatting, all handled. You review, you send, you move on to writing music.
Get comfortable with an IDE
This means getting used to tools like Cursor or VS Code. An IDE, an Integrated Development Environment, is basically a workspace where you can write code, run scripts, and build automations. I know that sounds intimidating if you have never opened one before. But it is not that different from learning a new DAW. The first week is confusing, and then it clicks.
Back in the day, if you needed a specific tool to make your workflow easier, you had to go find one and hope it existed. Now you can sit down and write it yourself. A script that organizes your sample library. A tool that renames your bounced files. An automation that sends follow up emails to prospects who did not reply. These things used to require hiring someone or buying expensive software. Now you can build them in an afternoon.
Personality is the new currency
Composing music for video games, trailers, production music, advertising, that work is not going anywhere. There will always be a need for people who can write to picture and deliver on a brief.
But there are more strategies for making a living with music than just composing for clients. I remember the wave a few years ago when everybody jumped into courses and coaching. And yes, it was annoying when every second person became a "music business coach." But some of those people made the right call, because at that moment, education was the best business model available to them.
Now things have shifted again. People are tired of courses. There are too many of them and most are mediocre. But this is actually a huge advantage if you know how to use it. While everyone is panicking about how AI destroys all industries, the thing that actually matters right now is personality. Being present. Being live. Being a real person that other people can connect with.
AI can generate content all day long. It cannot generate you sitting in a room, being honest, answering questions, reacting in real time. That is worth more now than it has ever been.
What being present actually looks like
So what does that mean in practice?
One option is streaming. Go on Twitch once or twice a week and just do what you love doing. Compose. Sound design. Mix. Whatever your thing is. More and more people are fed up with the polished, generated content flooding their social media feeds. They want to sit down with a real person and get some actual insight into what that person enjoys doing. You do not need a production setup. You do not need a content calendar. Just show up and be yourself.
The other option is turning what you already know into something more personal. If you have courses, tutorials, videos, any kind of educational material sitting around, you can turn that into a consulting program. Not another course people buy and never finish. A real program where you show up once or twice a week for live calls, answer questions, do one on one sessions. You combine the material you already created with actually caring about the people going through it. People will pay for access to you, not just your content.
One more thing
Venting is healthy. Everybody needs to let it out once in a while. I do it too. But think about it like this. You go to a party. You are in a great mood, ready to enjoy the evening. And the first person you talk to spends the entire conversation complaining about everything that is going wrong in their life, in the industry, in the world. Would you want to spend the rest of the night with that person? Probably not.
Now think about how that looks online. If someone sees your posts and all they see is frustration about the state of the industry, about AI, about how hard it is to make money with music, what are they going to think? They are probably not going to think "this seems like a great person to work with." They are going to scroll past.
You have it all in your hands. The tools, the access, the opportunity. What you do with it is up to you.
If any of this resonated and you want to talk more about how to actually put these ideas into practice, feel free to reach out. I am always happy to chat about this stuff. You can also check out the Audio Artist Academy where we talk about this kind of thing regularly, or take a look at our Growth Services if you want someone to handle the business side for you.
