As it stands today, the music industry is fucked.  All the old business models will be obsolete within the next two years.  The record industry is dying, and all of the businesses leaching onto it are quickly running out of blood to suck.  The game is rapidly changing and it’s leaving a lot of people lost and confused.

Right now there are a handful of ways to make money off of music.  You can 1) be a musician 2) work at a record label 3) be a manager/agent 4) be a promoter and 5) do something creative.  Let’s take a quick look at the options.  (Of course these aren’t all of the ways, but they’re the most viable.)

Being a musician is cool.  If you love making music then this is the obvious choice, just don’t expect to make a killing.  You can be the most skilled guitarist in NYC and still be playing for $100 and free pizza every night.  90% of the time, musicians who “make it” owe it to dumb luck.

Working at a record label is great if you enjoy crying yourself to sleep at night.  It’s a sinking ship and life jackets are running low.  There’s a little hope for the digital marketing side, but there’s too much red tape within the big labels to navigate effectively.  iTunes isn’t going away anytime soon, and it’s taken too much power away from labels’ digital sales.

Then there’s the management/agent side - the side that Entourage’s Ari Gold glorifies.  This is all about hustle.  And even then, your success isn’t in your own hands - it’s in the hands of the latest 10 year old boy band or a delusional diva pop star.  Of course there are agents and managers everywhere in between, but the same concept applies - you are hustling, scheming, and babysitting.

You can go the promoter route, but good luck going up against the Live Nations and Ticketmasters of the world.  There’s really very little room for growth in this area.  Bowery Presents is an anomaly.  They did something right along the way that no one has been able to replicate.  Without immense amounts of luck and years of networking connections, you’ll be hustling and living show to show.

That leaves “something creative” as the last viable option.  This is a unique space and it’s moving into Web 2.0.  Music is being reduced to musicians and fans and there are seemingly limitless ways to connect them.  This is the future of the music industry.  There is so much space to discover.  There are new services creating new paradigms popping up all the time.  Spotify is changing the game of listening to music.  Last.fm and Pandora help people filter music.  SoundCloud is doing great things around moving music, and The Hype Machine is showing the world how to discover new music.  There are so many action verbs to choose from and I’m sure people will come up with ones we never thought were possible.

As the music industry treks onwards through seismic changes, it will submerge further and further into Web 2.0.  It’s an exciting time to be discovering new ideas around the area between musicians and fans.  If you’re committed to a career in music, I’d start getting creative.