Should we start a podcast interviewing our ex-music-school-classmates?

I think we can be a little more upbeat while still being practical: the grumpy reality is that no one (well, 98% of grads) will be making their living solely as a performer. The positive side is that if you're flexible and capable of learning, there are a ton of peripherally related jobs to find that can keep you under the umbrella of "employed in some capacity in the music industry", which may be enough to fill up your cup and soul, or may not, depends on the person. And of course, feeling like you need to commodify every aspect of your skillset in order to cobble together a living is definitely a greasy pill to swallow.

Lots of conversations already out there about the breakdown of traditional career paths like "music school --> audition for smaller regional orchestras, build experience --> land sick orchestra gig" or "music school --> adjunct for a couple years and hustle --> land full time/tenure track uni gig". BUT, with how broad the game has gotten, musicians that are flexible and diversify their skill set can build hustles that maybe their entrenched academic instructors that followed previous generations' career paths don't have much clarity into. And that's something that the Berklees or CA Musicians Institutes have better awareness of - tons of concentrations and entrepreneurial focuses so young professionals can get into copyright/sample clearance/grant writing/studio work/arts admin/creative directing/etcetcetc.

There's plenty of other places that are doing well with these facets too (I was always impressed while working at MTSU in the more traditional school of music, that the separate music industry building across the way would have kids interning or just getting employed by everyone from the Nashville Symphony to Tiktok), but it just seems funny that we don't just require all the 18-22 year old undergrads to enroll in a number of entrepreneurial/practical business classes.

Yeah, of course if you're a 'serious' music student and you just want to practice 25 hours a day (I've been there), but again just to bring back the grumpy reality, letting a 4 year performance degree go by and zeroing in just on your excellence at your instrument is a gamble even for killer players, much less for the rest of the average-to-above-average music student. Believe me, I miss those days, I long for those days, when I could just be in the practice room woodshedding and rehearsing without gasp documenting it for the internet, but it's just become part of the routine almost. Practice some stuff, write some emails, post something to social media, try and chat and bond with people as you are able and share the joys of the craft from afar. (Might be a cool thing to chat with for each guest, like "walk us through a day" or a week to give a realistic picture of what % is spend doing admin vs travel vs practice vs communication).

@blumen not to get ahead of myself but the next season should be about music school dropouts or those that graduated a different major (👀 @gem_hell) 🤪