Journal 008: When Your Passion Becomes Your Paycheque

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

I've been thinking about something quite personal lately.

And it's something I never really expected to think about.

For most of my adult life, I wanted one thing.

I wanted music to be my full-time job.

Not a hobby.

Not something I squeezed around work.

Not something I did at night after coming home.

I wanted to wake up and work in music.

I wanted to make a living from it.

I wanted to build something of my own.

I wanted the freedom.

And, eventually, I got there. When your passion becomes your paycheque.

And now I'm wondering whether I actually prefer it the other way.

That's a strange thing to admit.

For years, I had two lives.

For probably 15 to 20 years of my career, I had a job alongside music.

I'd work.

I'd come home.

I'd make music.

I'd learn.

I'd produce.

I'd mix.

I'd experiment.

I'd build.

And strangely enough...

My creativity flourished.

Music felt exciting.

It was something I got to do.

Not something I had to do.

And I think there's an important distinction in that.

When you've spent all day doing something else and you finally sit down to make music, you're there because you want to be.

Nobody is forcing you.

Nobody is expecting an invoice.

Nobody is waiting for the next project.

Nobody is looking at your calendar wondering where next month's money is coming from.

You just make music.

And I spent years dreaming about the day when I wouldn't have to do anything else.

I thought:

"Imagine how much better I'll be when this is my full-time job."

I'll have more time.

I'll have more freedom.

I'll be able to concentrate properly.

I'll be able to build the business.

I'll be able to create all day.

And yes...

There are huge advantages to that.

But there's another side to it that nobody really talks about.

What happens when the thing you love has to pay the bills?

This is where it gets complicated.

Because the music industry isn't stable.

It doesn't matter how good you are.

You can be brilliant at production.

Brilliant at mixing.

Brilliant at mastering.

Brilliant creatively.

Brilliant technically.

You can have years of experience.

You can have an excellent reputation.

You can have people who genuinely value what you do.

And you can still have a fucking quiet month.

Or a quiet few months.

The peaks and troughs are real.

And when music is your income, those peaks and troughs aren't just fluctuations on a graph.

They affect how you feel.

They affect decisions.

They affect confidence.

They affect what you're willing to take on.

And sometimes, without even realising it, they affect the work itself.

Because suddenly the thing you're doing isn't just:

"I want to make this."

It's:

"This needs to work."

And that's a very different sentence.

I remember someone telling me something years ago.

A producer once told me about a group of people he was making music with.

They were producing a particular style of music, and they'd spent years doing it alongside their jobs.

They weren't full-time musicians.

They had other lives.

Other responsibilities.

Music happened around all of that.

And according to him, they made their best music during that period.

Then they all decided to leave their jobs.

Music became the full-time thing.

And something changed.

The music changed.

The atmosphere changed.

The energy changed.

The pressure crept in.

Because suddenly it wasn't just music anymore.

It had to work.

It had to pay.

It had to become something.

And you could hear that pressure in the music.

That story has stayed with me.

Because it was told to me long before the current AI conversation.

Long before today's social media environment.

Long before the landscape became what it is now.

This isn't a new problem.

Perhaps freedom isn't having no job.

Perhaps freedom is not needing your music to work.

That's a thought I've been sitting with.

Because when I was working a normal job, I had something that I didn't appreciate enough at the time.

Financial separation.

My job paid the bills.

Music didn't have to.

That meant music could be whatever I wanted it to be.

If I made something brilliant, brilliant.

If I made something terrible, whatever.

If I spent six hours making a strange piece of music that nobody would ever hear...

Fine.

I'd enjoyed the process.

There wasn't a spreadsheet sitting beside me asking what the return on investment was.

Now, when music is the business, that's different.

You have clients.

You have projects.

You have targets.

You have quieter periods.

You have decisions to make.

You have to think commercially.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

In fact, I'm proud of building a business.

I'm proud of what Eleven One One is becoming.

I'm proud of the work I do.

But I've started wondering whether the best version of my creativity needs a little distance from the business.

And that's not failure.

This is important.

Because I think there's a strange culture around creative careers that tells us:

If you aren't doing your passion full-time, you've somehow failed.

I don't believe that anymore.

Actually, I'm starting to think the opposite can sometimes be true.

Maybe having a job doesn't mean you aren't serious.

Maybe having another source of income doesn't mean you're less committed.

Maybe it actually gives you the freedom to be more committed creatively.

Because you're not asking your creativity to feed you.

You're allowing your creativity to feed itself.

There's a difference.

I'm in a different position now.

This is where things get interesting for me personally.

If I went back to working alongside music today, it wouldn't necessarily mean going back to the old version of my life.

I have something in my locker now.

I've spent decades building skills.

Production.

Mixing.

Mastering.

Audio.

Mentoring.

Business.

Technical knowledge.

Industry experience.

I don't have to go and work in a warehouse again.

I could potentially find something alongside what I'm already doing that actually complements it.

An audio role.

A music-based position.

A technical position.

Something part-time.

Something that gives me a degree of stability without taking me away from the thing I've spent my life building.

And strangely...

The idea doesn't frighten me.

It actually makes me feel quite powerful.

Because then 11-11 Audio doesn't have to carry the entire weight of my existence.

It gets to breathe.

And so do I.

Imagine what happens when the pressure comes off.

Imagine being able to take on a project because you genuinely want to do it.

Imagine being able to turn something down because it isn't right.

Imagine being able to spend a week experimenting without wondering whether you've made enough money.

Imagine creating something completely fucking weird because you don't need to monetise it.

Imagine making music that nobody has asked for.

That nobody needs.

That nobody has commissioned.

That might never make you a penny.

Just because you want to hear it.

That's the kind of creativity I'm talking about.

And perhaps that's what I've been missing.

Not time.

Not knowledge.

Not ability.

Freedom.

The irony isn't lost on me.

I've spent most of my life trying to get to the point where I could work in music full-time.

And now that I've reached that point, I'm asking whether I want to introduce a little bit of the outside world back into it.

But maybe that's not going backwards.

Maybe it's going sideways.

Maybe it's evolving.

Because the goal was never really:

"I must earn every penny from music."

The goal was:

"I want music to be a huge part of my life."

Those aren't the same goal.

And perhaps I've confused them.

The industry isn't getting any more predictable.

That's another part of this.

We're operating in a music industry that's changing incredibly quickly.

AI.

Automation.

Remote working.

Changing consumer behaviour.

Changing platforms.

Changing revenue models.

Changing expectations.

Changing definitions of what a producer even is.

You can build something today and find the landscape has shifted underneath it tomorrow.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't build.

It means you shouldn't necessarily put every single egg in one basket.

Especially when your creativity is one of those eggs.

Because I don't want my creative decisions dictated by fear.

Fear of a quiet month.

Fear of losing a client.

Fear of missing an opportunity.

Fear that something isn't commercially viable.

I want some of my creativity to remain completely untouched by that.

Maybe the dream was never the full-time job.

Maybe the dream was the freedom.

That's the conclusion I'm currently arriving at.

I thought becoming a full-time music professional would give me freedom.

And in some ways, it absolutely has.

But in other ways, it's created a different kind of responsibility.

And perhaps the next stage is finding the balance between the two.

Building the business.

Doing the work.

Mentoring people.

Mixing.

Mastering.

Working in audio.

Continuing to grow.

But potentially having something stable alongside it.

Not because I've given up.

Not because I've failed.

Not because the music industry has beaten me.

But because I want to protect something.

The reason I started doing this in the first place.

The enjoyment.

The curiosity.

The obsession.

The weirdness.

The freedom to make something because it feels right.

Perhaps that's the real luxury.

Not being able to make music for a living.

But being able to make music without needing it to make a living.

And I think there's a lesson in that for anyone trying to turn their passion into a career.

Be careful what you wish for.

Sometimes the thing you desperately want can change the thing you love.

And sometimes...

The most powerful thing you can do is make sure your passion never becomes completely responsible for keeping you alive.

—

Raff Di Renzo

Founder, Eleven One One Audio

Maybe freedom isn't having nothing else. Maybe freedom is not needing your passion to pay for everything.