As a student of music on music on this course, I am appreciative of the emphasis placed on the wide spectrum of careers available under the ‘music industry’ umbrella which we are encouraged to consider, as potential future workers in the creative industries. With that being said, this research portfolio will focus on what could be considered as a more stereotypically thought of career in music- that of a performing musician who makes their income through performing original music live on tour, and by recording and releasing music on single, EP or album format. This career is still very desired among conservatoire students, with a recent survey suggesting that around 28% of conservatoire undergraduates share the aspiration of becoming a freelance musician (Devaney, 2024:28); the sample size of this survey is small, but it supports my anecdotal evidence, as well as the touring bands we see featuring Leeds Conservatoire alumni, such as English Teacher (Cross, 2023), Yard Act (Cross 2022) and Everything Everything (Leeds Conservatoire, n.d.). However, it is not easy to break even in this career, as no salary is guaranteed, and even musicians who work with prestige acts may sometimes hold second jobs (Simpson, 2023). Additionally, according to a survey carried out by music distribution company Ditto in 2025, “83.6% of artists can’t afford to tour in 2025”, with “70.6 [of independent artists] primarily financing their career through personal savings”, so many considerations must be made in order to have this be a sustainable primary career. With this in mind, this portfolio will cover how I could maximise the chance of making a sustainable and fulfilling career as a touring artist, writing and recording for a band (as music made by a band is what I find most creatively attractive with my taste, and being a bassist), firstly by exploring the personal and professional qualities and qualifications required (or not necessarily required) to break into this field and develop my artistic profile; followed by running through what a ‘typical’ day could potentially look like in this career, including the various financial, legal and personal issues which I may run into in the day to day life of this career.
Being a touring artist is not a career which one must hand in their CV to apply for, or which one must have certain qualifications to be employed in as such, however this does not mean that there are not certain qualities which are desirable, if not essential in order to make it far. In terms of the degree in jazz which I will probably have in three years’ time, the qualification alone may not guarantee any success, but what is useful about being at a conservatoire is the collaboration with other musicians and integration into a city’s local music scene. In Leeds alone there are numerous ‘rising star’ bands with unique sounds who are catching attention from the music press, be that more electronic leaning acts like Bathing Suits and Adult DVD (Edwards, 2025) or more guitar-oriented groups like Bug Teeth (Teder, 2025) and Mince (Clark, 2023), who are still active in the Leeds area, but also have garnered attention and shows in the wider world. This brings us on to one of the qualities which would aid in the success of an emerging artist such as myself, which is an eagerness to work in conjunction with other people, as many influential artists and curators such as David Byrne and Brian Eno have written about how symbiosis within a scene containing many musicians is paramount to the overall success of the artists, as opposed to the egocentric ‘great man theory’ way of looking at it, as Eno puts it (Kemp, 2022). Byrne also highlights the importance of having appropriate venue spaces to play music in in order to have a healthy music scene in his book How Music Works, and Leeds is ideal for this purpose, as it contains venues ranging from around capacity 50 like The Primrose and the Hyde Park Book Club Snug, all the way to 1,000-2,000 with Brudenell-run venues such as Project House and the O2 Academy. There are also aspects of musicianship important to one’s success as a touring artist, however this may go beyond mere technical proficiency as such, and instead is a matter of creative vision and live music experience. The first of these is the slightly more nebulous concept of bringing something unique or exceptional to the table in the songwriting and overall sound of your band, and being able to showcase this in a thirty-minute set. A clear example of the strategic development of a setlist which I have been able to observe is that of Leeds band Bathing Suits, who I saw live six times over 2025. Bathing Suits showcase a very unique sound over their set, being a fusion of the British Isles noise rock sensibilities of acts like Gilla Band and Irk, and homage to 2000s dance pop artists such as Estelle and Kesha, and their set has evolved to more aptly reflect this over time, with them quickly pulling you into this sonic world by opening with ear-worm singles ‘Relay’ and ‘I Can Be A Freak’, before delving deeper into their catalogue. Notably over 2025 they have shifted towards mid tempo danceable tracks as opposed the punkier or heavier side of their music, with the unreleased closer moving from a slow, droning outro to a pulsing, almost rave-like track, which solidifies their dance-pop aspect, and garners the desired audience reaction of dancing, instead of moshing- another important detail to consider when crafting a sound and setlist. The creation of an effective setlist does not come from any particular qualification, but rather through careful consideration of audience response, and hopefully a diverse range of artistic interests, nevertheless an equally important piece of the puzzle comes from one’s ability to perform this setlist to a consistent standard, with a good quality of sound to support this. Playing the setlist consistently, is of course helped by frequent rehearsals with the band together, but received wisdom from musicians in the Leeds scene and more successful bands I admire (such as Black Country, New Road (Wayne, 2025) and Man/Woman/Chainsaw (KEXP, 2025)) alike point to playing gigs to be the best and quickest way to develop as a band, as playing- and inevitably making mistakes- in a public context makes one more aware of the pitfalls I am likely to fall into when playing live, so I can work on them for next time. Building a good live sound is a more precise issue, and the one I feel I am most likely to run into issues with, as for guitar-based music it requires not only an intimate understanding of one’s own instrument, but also quite likely a significant investment into purchasing gear (at a period in this career which may not see significant returns coming in), as in the modern day, even seemingly straightforward indie rock bands like the Murder Capital sport intricate pedalboards in order to fine-tune their tone or create specific sounds from the instrument (Equipboard, 2020). I have found personally that studying how others create their own personal bass tone, as well as having open communication with sound engineers at venues helps to improve one’s live sound, but the inevitable investment into better gear is still quite a daunting prospect.
So, assuming that this band does progress to a point where we are receiving a sustainable income, what would a typical day ‘on the job’ look like, and where would these income streams be coming from? As I alluded to earlier, the answer to the former question changes day by day, but it is safe to say that a large portion of the year would be spent on tour. To use two examples of middle-level popularity bands who released albums in 2025, and so would therefore have reason to tour, the Liverpool band Courting played 33 shows in 2025 across the UK, USA and EU, and London’s Black Country, New Road played 52 shows in the UK, North America, the EU, Asia and Australia. If we were to take any given day out of this touring schedule, the structure of the day would look something like: promotion, travel, preparing for and playing the gig itself, and amongst that trying to find time to do normal living things like eating, sleeping, etc. Looking at travel first, if we are operating as a band of 3-6 people, for example, each with their own gear to carry, then the prevailing form of transport I can gauge from my research into the Musician’s Union and government guidance for international touring would be a series of short-haul flights (following a long-haul if the tour is further afield). Bassist and prominent YouTube personality Adam Neely has made some of the most transparent documentation of touring life which I have been able to find, including the total transport cost of flights for his European tour, which according to him amounted to $7,123 (£5,276) for four musicians to have 3 transatlantic flights and 30 short-haul flights, so a mean average of £160 per flight between the four of them, so it is safe to assume that each of their shows needs to earn them or their management somewhere around £200 at a bare minimum (considering food and accommodation costs the real number probably needs to be higher). Profit from the tour does not exclusively come from ticket sales, as in this day and age, merchandise is an equally, if not more, important contributor to a band’s income, with those in the industry saying it could make up around 70% of an artist’s earnings (Bassett, 2023), and shows are a lucrative opportunity to sell merch, with there being a large crowd of people in a room who just paid to see you play (although that is hindered somewhat by certain venues taking a cut of up to 20% on each sale (Newsbeat, 2021)). Vinyl and CD specifically are a more reliable way to make money from the release of an album, with streaming payouts being as low as they are at this point (VIRPP, 2023), so taking time to sell my own merch at the stands after shows will be imperative to the feasibility of both touring and recording music. Another issue which will come up in the daily life of a touring artist is promotion; physically speaking, it is difficult to do much in the way of posters in cities that I would be travelling to on the day of the show, unless tour management or the record label is able to put some up in advance, so the main day to day promotion inevitably will have to be done with social media. The landscape of social media is constantly shifting, so the advice on how to most effectively use it varies depending on who you ask, and is often at the discretion of each artist, but an important consideration to make would be which platforms to use- different platforms cater to different functions and audience range, so Instagram and Facebook might be best for reaching my audience about upcoming shows, due to their outstandingly large user bases and wide age demographic (Crossley, 2025), whereas YouTube and TikTok may serve better as means of discovery for new fans in the form of video content, as that is what those platforms favour with their recommended and ‘for you’ oriented algorithms (Musician’s Union, 2022). By this logic we can say that in general, though not as a hard and fast rule, while on tour I am more likely to be using Instagram and Facebook (which can be used in tandem quite easily, they are both owned by Meta) to promote upcoming shows, using tried and true methods like presenting scarcity and invoking fear of missing out, in order to motivate the masses to see our shows and increase ticket sales, as well as sharing good quality live clips of the set which audience members are likely to share, in order to improve our appeal to our followers, or even potentially record labels. As for the shows themselves, they almost seem like a background detail amidst the whirlwind of promotion and admin which has to take place to make them happen, but it is important that I make every show count, as for the vast majority of people, their impression of the tour will be based on one show alone, and you never know which show might result in a sudden massive shift of merch sales, or even when label employees might be watching you (Hess, n.d.). Ultimately, though it is only 45 minutes of each day, the live performance is what compels me most as a musician, and is why I chose to write a portfolio on this career in the first place, so it is important to keep my eyes on this as the purpose of the job, and what compels me to make music at all.
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