Quote Originally Posted by Francisco Scaramanga
If you can get by without a job thats well cool. But if ever things slip and you are a bit short on cash, then I dont see how bitching about filesharing is going to help things.
Well, quite, you either have to cut your overheads, or find other sources of income, and yes, bitching about file-sharing doesn't change anything, you know, it doesn't matter how many threads on however many forums there are, it's not going to stop, and that is just a fact of life. I can however understand Henry's initial exclamation here though to an extent, it's like pissing on your chips then making you eat them..
I personally cut my overheads by moving to a place where the cost of living was cheaper and most of my gigs were, and basically tried to get as much work performing as possible, but there is only so long you can go on doing it, as it starts to kill you in the end, and this is why you find a lot of acts who don't drink, play their gig and go straight back to the hotel, as it really takes it's toll doing 2 gigs every weekend of a month.. I'm thinking now about what other angles I could go for work wise in the end as I don't want to gig forever, and doing it all the time means that is some ways you can lose the love you had for the whole thing, and in many ways, I look forward to the day when I have a job that I enjoy as much as I have this over the years, and get a lot more love and appreciation back from doing musically related activities, that's one thing that sucks, when your job becomes your hobby, what do you do for a hobby?
I might like to add also that you have to bear in mind before a lot of people started gigging, getting releases etc., this was after doing 5 or 10 years slogging it out whilst doing a shit job, but the points here about having to supplement your income are very true, it's not like 10 years ago where you were selling 3000 + units, and getting four figure sums for gigs. You either have to be gigging one hell of a lot or really on top of the game, or do something else.. I mean I know a lot of people who do sound design (Like Jingles for TV & Radio) or rent out their studios, or have some other kind of job either music or non music related, it's tough out there..

sorry if this rambled on a bit, but just clearing out a few thoughts that have been going round in my head for a while.. ;)