Establishment of a Freelance Musician - Essay Example

Establishment of A Freelance Musician I. Inroduction Freelance musicians are amateur artists who play or writes music. They are mostly classified by their role in creating or performing their own music. A freelance musician works for different organisations, rather than working full-time for a single organisation. A freelance musician can be an instrumentalist, a singer, composer, arranger and songwriter. He can be a conductor, simultaneously acting as an instrumentalist in the ensemble. It is a matter of both a hobby and a profession taken more independently. A freelance musician has got an active and progressive relationship with his music. Like amateur musician, the freelance musician performs or writes music part-time, and unlike the amateur one always works to receive a payment. This paper is concentrating on the various career options and requisite criteria to be a successful freelance musician. The paper is all about conceptual artistic coherence, arts access, opportunities for a career as a freelance musician. The paper also highlights how for being a freelancer the society and community as a whole reacts. It shows the impacts on every aspect of working life, from one’s workplace and skills development, through his financial situation and lifestyle. There is an analysis made with SWOT to discover various aspects of being a freelance musician. It investigates through the selling point; marketing, funding etc in the whole process of existing as a freelance musician. The discussions are all about the way the freelancers are rated in the society and the way they need to sharpen their skills in order to have better options as return. The acceptance of society is not that smooth and thus this paper is trying to see the scene beyond the margin of their existence. There is also an attempt made towards the act of joining some associations to have better responses in the society. II. Working as a freelance musician Pic. 1 source - http://www.afm.org/about The freelance musicians seem to prefer to work as a kind of different organisation. It is of course a better option than working full-time for a single organisation. Freelancers have a variety of jobs and varied qualities of roles to play. Freelance job roles can be that of a highly skilled instrumentalist, playing one instrument to a high standard in a variety of different settings from performance to recording. One can also be a composer or a song writer according to his choice and works on commission for individuals, theatre, film and dance companies. Someone can prefer to be a workshop leader, leading groups in a particular genre of music, in creative work or skills development. According to Taylor Sharpe, ‘there are also scopes to be a project manager or rather an administrator who can conceive projects and carry out strategic management from fundraising to marketing’1. The workplace for a freelancer musician is most often his home. He creates a simple but efficient filing system for projects, invoices, archives, music, lyrics etc. at the same time, he arranges some space of his own to play music, to practice and rehearse with other people. As for his instruments; there lies a difference between his own instruments and those that he allows his workshop participants to use. An ideal and good storage place for the development of the conceptual artistic coherence is the necessary addition to the working arena of a freelance musician. Added to all this stuff there should be a strict follow up towards the arts access with the regions related to the budget. It needs to be handled and most of the time handles nicely enough than the professionals, as it remains single-handed. One also needs to have reliable transporting system for the transportation of the equipments. Conceptual artistic coherence is the basis of synchronising the accessibility towards the career of the freelance musicians. The need is of strict discipline, as there is none to supervise them. It gives their artistic access a chance to get lazy with the upgradation part. It is therefore very important to check all the latest updates and be aware with what is happening. Freelance musician should regularly check his/her music and CDs and make sure that they develop creative, musical, business or social skills to give them an advantage. It is also useful for freelance musicians to visit the rehearsals of other ensembles in order to improve their own rehearsals. III. Financial sector The estimation for a freelancer gets ranged by himself. He draws a line about the amount that can make him happy to work for. These are quite flexible and changes according to the relevant project. There are also the scopes to consider charging extra when there is a great deal of preparation involved. The musician with a profession of a freelancer is independent of making the choices of his charges. Just that he should be aware of the cost of mileage and equipment hire into the respective fee. As pointed out by Nitin Nohria, ‘there should be the ways to negotiate an overdraft agreement with the bank for when fees are late in arriving’2. The receipts and the documents related to the financial sectors needs to be filed properly in the 'home office'. If the business clicks well then there comes a great deal to get counted against tax. Musicians - individual, 2007, had checked out tha the CD's, entertainment tickets and books can be counted as research. These gets the addition of all transport costs; a percentage of home costs for office use; phone costs; equipment purchases; professional3. To follow Corner, P. Kinicki, A. and Keats, B. , ‘to get an accountant can be a good choice for those who are earning pretty well. Insurance and professional supports are some of the criteria that a freelance musician can add to his profile’4 The contributions made by AFM [American Federation of Musicians] Contracts, for freelance musicians’ are the best form of protection to their budget and financial rights. The association has negotiated certain number of collective bargaining agreements with a wide variety of employers, such as the major recording companies, symphony orchestra managements, and others, to insure that musicians get paid for playing those types of jobs. On a local level Arts Development Officer are of great help. They can pursue the connections with any local arts organisations. The organisational unity is very important for a freelance musician as they act as a support in all respect. For the benefit of freelance musician, the idea for an Investigative Task Force was first discussed during the 1997 AFM Convention in Las Vegas5. The members of the Players’ Conferences virtually checked all the reform legislation they were backing either went down to defeat or was simply not brought forth to the floor of the Convention for a direct vote. The unique selling point, as sorted by Isenberg, Daniel are inclusive of ‘the needs to be defined well and with all professional supports. This can be done by the creation of a simple leaflet, postcard, email or business card. Along with this the responses are to be made promptly to the enquiries, as they could be future contracts’6. The awareness for new opportunities and the enjoyment of selling one’s skills are some of the added benefits. The network should be well handled and the freelance musician should talk to people at events. Maintenance of good address book is what common to most of the freelance musicians. Here, it is also important to have two copies of each document, whether be paper or electronic. The contacts should be taken seriously, as they may turn vital to one’s future work as a freelancer. iv. Lifestyle As a freelancer is responsible for managing his own workload, he needs to decide what kind of balance he can maintain between life and work. There is no time bound factor and thus needs to have proper time management. Planning workload is the key to ensure that being a freelancer is making the person happy with his own schedule. It is also important to deliver the skill in the best possible way within the requisite timeline. Being a freelancer, one can choose his own work hours. There won’t be any boss and you are free to work according to your own liberal way. There is a kind of total independence in making choices between the types of work. One can always have those projects that can inspire him. The actual nature of freelancing means that the workload is often varied and goes under rare routine. The choices are absolutely on one’s own verge. A freelance musician can work wherever he wants and at the same time can deny wherever he does not want to be. Being a freelancer, one get to choose what work he undertakes and often when and how he does. Getting attached to a big organisation like AFM (American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada)7, can be a good choice, as it plans for a kind of security of both career and finance. These organisations are meant to take care of most of the things for a freelance musician. Right from education to the upgradations in accordance to the regular trend is a great surplus benefit that one can have by getting associated with such an organisation. In financial sector, these organisations are backed up with proper judicial people to make the freelance musician secured about his payments and financial proceedings8 v. drawbacks of a freelance MUSICIAN On professional levels sometimes it becomes very hard for a freelancer to refuse work. The nature of freelance musician can be erratic, and can leave the musician get insecure about his financial securities. There are sequences when there remains no holidays for a freelance musician. This happens either due to unaffordability or having no time due to heavy workloads and commitments. As the works and projects get better, they can become an obsession. As a result most gets into the work due to the passion towards the work and thus getting busy than any other regular musician. The maintenance of time and schedule is not that strict with a freelance musician and thus his leads to a messed family life. vI. conclusion Application of SWOT It is thus very important to use the respective freedom and try only doing things that inspire the soul. A freelance musician needs to prepare himself for all time haggles. However while preparing oneself for negotiation in case of charges; it is important to ask for little more than what has been provided. It is very important to build and develop good long-term relationships with all the people the freelance musician had worked with. This helps in making his reputation grow well and to give him a uniqueness of performances. Its all about making them believe that your skills are better than anybody in the same trade or competition. All kinds of conditional factors internal to the psychological and financial sector of a freelance musician can be assessed and classified through SWOT analysis; that is to say, strengths (S) or the weaknesses (W). The external aspects of the freelancer’s lifestyle and reputations can be classified as opportunities (O) or threats (T). Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats Liberty of enthusiasm, energy, imagination, expertise in his own musical field of choice Not well channelised personal energies, gets troubled at expressing negation. Lacks in checking his own experience and expertise limitations Needs general management opportunities. Gets the independence to manage his own required strategical planning Many reasons of financial insecurities. Organisational participation can help, but most of the freelance musicians are reluctant to do so A year planner is suggested and the firmness in maintaining it is also equally important. One should be shameless and charming, at the same time while seeking work, as it is the way to prove the best in him. It is also important to give oneself at least an honest year to check the survivable possibilities and the chances of sustainability as a freelance musician. Competitions needs to be welcomed in order to raise the grade and should be handled all positively. Bibliography ‘American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada’ http://www.afm.org/about [accessed on 05.05.08] Corner, P. Kinicki, A. and Keats, B. “Integrating organizational and individual information processing perspectives on choice”, Organizational Science, vol. 3, 1994. The Australian Guide to Careers in Music By Michael Hannan, 2006, http://books.google.co.in/books?id=70ezTRBX-CcC&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq=freelance+musician%2Baustralia&source=web&ots=jRS1ZspZYk&sig=tDGkFB2Wd9QVJnAWJLPsI4sKT9A&hl=en [accessed on 05.05.08] Freelance Musician, http://www.freelancemusicians.org/ [Accessed on 05.05.08] Isenberg, Daniel Strategic Opportunism: Managing under uncertainty, Harvard Graduate School of Business, Working paper 9-786-020, Boston, January 1986 Musicians - individual, 2007, http://www.entertainmentnow.com.au/search.php?parentCat=47 [accessed on 05.05.08] Nohria, Nitin, William Joyce, and Bruce Robertson (2003), ‘What Really Works’, Harvard Business Review, July Overview of the Work of the Investigative Task Force 1997-1998, Andrew Brandt ITF Secretary and President, Regional Orchestra Players’ Association, http://www.freelancemusicians.org/itfover.html Taylor Sharpe, The Life and Career of a Freelance Musician; published Mar 27, 2007 http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/184336/the_life_and_career_of_a_freelance.html[accessed on 05.05.08] Read More