One of the main concerns most people have before setting out on a journey is that traveling will affect their ability to continue advancing their career and/or education. Such a concern is valid in most cases, as usually your job or school requires you to be there physically, which essentially rules out the possibility of any sort of significant travel, other than road trips on your days off. However, music is a great example of a career path that doesn’t lock you into a certain location, as most of the networking, learning, and promotion can be done online, and the rest is up to your talent and free time. With that said, here are a few things anyone can do to keep building their music career while traveling:
1. Becoming a Music Teacher Through an Online MME Program
Although your primary goal might be to create and promote your own music, a fast way to make music pay is to become an online music teacher in your spare time. If you’re already a decently skilled musician you could sign up for an online music education degree to begin the process of securing a spot as a well-paid music teacher. Even if that wasn’t your original plan, it’s a great backup to have and it will improve your overall musical skill set, so it’s a perfect career advancement option for anyone who is passionate about music. If you think about it, what better way is there to establish yourself as an expert in music theory than to earn a masters in music education?
2. Licensing, Publishing, and Promoting Your Music
To achieve the goal that most aspiring musicians have in mind – making a living making music you’ll need to start by turning your music into a sellable product. The way you do that is by bringing it to the market via various online publishing platforms, which may sound fancy, but YouTube could be considered an example. Other options to consider would be CD Baby, Tunecore, Reverbnation, Soundcloud, Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, Tidal, etc. Any site that will let you post your music is a publishing opportunity. In the old days, you had to make a ton of physical CD copies and distribute them, but now you just need to popularize your musical brand and increase online views+/plays to get recognition. Don’t forget you may need to set aside an advertising budget to drive traffic to your music.
3. Recording on the Road
Of course, one of the biggest obstacles associated with traveling and making music is the challenge of capturing pro-quality recordings when you don't have access to a stationary conventional studio. Luckily, you can easily construct a portable recording studio that will produce clean and crisp recordings. In fact, it’s even possible to get decent recordings in a vehicle or outside, but it’s important to keep the microphone shielded from wind when recording outdoors.
Traveling for Musical Inspiration
Building a music career while traveling is not only possible, it’s also likely that hitting the open road might stir up your creative juices and result in the emergence of your greatest work. Keep in mind that some of the greatest songs have been written and recorded by musicians on the road.
