About 13 years ago, after graduating with a degree in music production, I faced my first issue. Potential jobs were a 40-minute-plus train ride away in Brighton, the nearest city. However, the studio positions were hardly ever available, as people who secured these jobs tended not to leave.
Despite my initial disappointment, my ambition and determination to work in the music industry remained unfased. I am fortunate to have a strong, inherent drive towards my goals and passions. When I set my mind to something, hardly anything can deter me.
The concept of work in this world has always bothered me. The financial value of a worker is determined by their performance in the market. A person who sells lucrative harmful products to children likely earns ten times more than someone who works 18 hours a day to save a child’s life. These markets rarely prioritise aspects that provide meaning, longevity, sustainability, or love.
That’s the reality, and if you want to play the game of “success” you have to numb those feelings of distaste and get to work earning some money.
I knew this many years before I graduated, and was already doing dodgy call centre jobs when I was just 16. When you’re young, the allure of money is far more appealing than ethics.
I have always had ethics though, but I didn’t quite know where to apply them until my mid twenties. In my earlier years of ambitious capitalist exploration, I was captivated by the equation of tech equals progress, believing that technological advances were paving the way to a utopian future. I think they call this a “techno-optimist” now.
So, after graduating, thanks to my dodgy call centre experience I already had some CV points into the business world. Interestingly, securing a job in sales or marketing can be relatively simple anyway. It’s a good way for people from a working class background to get a leg-up in the world (and probably get a cocaine addiction, but I managed to swerve it so you can too!)
Our society fundamentally revolves around buying and selling. If you perform well in sales, job security is likely, though not necessarily within the same company. For the young and ambitious, unswayed by the ethics of capitalism, I consistently recommend acquiring some sales skills.
When working in sales, my most significant accomplishments were in the technology industry. Awed by dreams of utopian smart cities and sustainable, progressive, welfare-supportive infrastructure, tech was another field I quickly became deeply engrossed in.
My viewpoint has changed on tech. Although I still vouch for its potential, it now appears to me that technological progress is far from utopian. It’s a type of progress driven by isolated profit, seemingly unaware of the damage it’s causing.
Indeed, most of the world’s problems appear to function in this way – isolated issues or detached attempts at problem-solving, removed from the systems and interactions between events and their outcomes.
Of course, I wanted to do something with music after 2 diplomas, a degree and an undying passion for music. I took this deep passion and set about turning it into a career by establishing a record label. I utilised my business knowledge to navigate the industry I love. I developed a career of over 12 years, becoming a music industry expert in the process.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on why I made this choice. Why was it so critical to transform my passion into a job?
Much of the answer lies in the amount of time I wanted to dedicate to my passion. It seems straightforward: if you’re working 40 hours a week, shouldn’t as many of those hours as possible be spent doing what you love most?
I was young and naïve. If you want to make your passion your business, the passion serves the business; never the other way around. You end up spending less and less time on the things you’re passionate about because stress eats your creative and inquisitive mentality.
After wrapping up my label and before securing my first employment in the music industry, I felt mistreated by the industry during the hiring process. Despite achieving significant results in sales and marketing in more complex, efficient, established, and profitable industries, and leading a team that built strong communities around artists, I felt undervalued. I was told I couldn’t break into the music industry without living in London, which frustrated me. Given my extensive online experience and observing other tech industries shifting to remote work around 2015, I knew this London-centric view was unfounded. I then pledged to change the industry, possibly as an employer, to make the music industry more receptive to remote work.
In one of my previous startups, I implemented a systematic remote work operation. This system allowed freelancers to work flexible hours based on their preferences, greatly simplifying project management and task distribution. The need for physical offices or specific locations was eliminated, with only effective management and systems required.
The “gig economy” could function efficiently with a more robust infrastructure to support this work model. Platforms like Freelancer and Fiverr are solid starting points, but there’s considerable untapped potential, particularly in terms of connectivity to a business’s enterprise resource planning stack. Currently, solopreneurs and small to medium-sized enterprises are far from fully utilising this.
Transitioning from some of the most advanced corporate tech stacks for business system management to the horticulture world has been intriguing. In horticulture, large-scale projects and financial tracking are still managed with printed tables filled out by hand.
In industries like horticulture, where people earn minimum wage for a day of physical work (resulting in a highly skewed kilojoule to £ conversion ratio in favour of the employer), the world is lagging behind the “knowledge” industries. It’s no surprise that the idea of bunkers and a metaverse paradise appears more feasible than averting the numerous impending apocalyptic storms.
Outside of major music companies, the music industry typically only offers unpaid, commission-based, or part-time internships/apprenticeships to entry-level workers. The freelance realm in the music industry is disorganised, complicated further by exclusive clubs and a tendency to work with certain individuals simply because it’s trendy. Soundbetter is the only significant jobs marketplace, but it doesn’t cater to industry executives who can offer business-related skills, work, and consultation to the music industry market.
Job security in general has become a significant concern. My six years in the music industry, filled with short-term contracts and high-pressure sales expectations, have highlighted the need to rethink employment strategies. The prevailing “outcome-based” hiring approach, where employees are considered liabilities if they don’t directly impact profits, is concerning. This mindset should not dictate our communities or societies.
We can see how large corporations do not care to lay off staff members. They’re not community minded. They don’t care about people.
More recently, in the horticulture industry, I have observed that zero-hour contracts are prevalent. While I understand that minimum wage is appropriate for unskilled, new workers, we should guarantee a certain number of work hours each week. I believe zero-hour contracts should be abolished.
Although businesses need to make profits to survive, this shouldn’t come at the expense of community members’ livelihoods. We need to reconsider our political system if it doesn’t support people’s survival.
Our politics should encourage businesses to prioritise employees over profits, without penalising them for doing so. We need to improve long-term staff payment and security, reminiscent of the “golden age” of employment. However, numerous complications need to be addressed, and perhaps left-wing solutions like unions could be part of the solution.
The protection of workers in the western world has significantly declined. I believe we need a government that safeguards the quality of life of its citizens.