What can I do with my love for electronic music...

[nowaysj]

If you love music, it will always be there. ALWAYS.

Food, shelter, health care, a family will NOT. Don't think that everything will be alright, just because it always has been. You will get fucking ground up and fed to the dogs in this country if you are not producing serious value for the extremely rich. Don't kid yourself about that.

Doesn't mean you have to do shit you hate. Honestly, this college right after high school thing is a total fuck up on our societies part, especially with increased longevity. If you don't want to get a degree just for the hell of it, you should be figuring out who you are, and what you like to do. Honestly, try to find something that you like to do, like day in and day out, every minute of the day. Turns out I like playing online multiplayer fps's. In one popular game was ranked 28th in the world. Does that mean an ounce of shit, hell no. You, have to find something you like doing, like actually like doing the thing, not just the results, AND that can provide income and security to you and the family you WILL have. If you like to fuck, you WILL have a family, despite your best intentions.

I truly believe you don't know yourself or the society you live in, not trying to be a dick, just saying with a degree of vantage on the situation. This isn't really a bad thing, how could you with the little experience you've had? I don't know, so either take some time to figure out who you are, what you like to do, and what is profitable, or just keep your head down, and keep studying. I promise you school is the easy part of life.

[nowaysj]

things could I do at a company like ableton, propellerhead, image-line

haha, forgot why I originally wanted to post...

Ableton = German
Propellerhead = Sweden
Imageline = Belgium

Do you see the pattern?

Let me extend it...

Native Instruments = German
Cubase = German
Logic = German (was, who knows where they are now)
Ohmforce = French

Are you getting the drift, bro? What do you think this means?

[frank grimes jr.]

Are you getting the drift, bro? What do you think this means?

It means, get a fucking job you lazy bum.

[Prolific___]

with that said-- sound design, acoustics research, synth design, music supervision, industrial design... lots of ways to work in music w/o being a musician, producer, or performer.

This is more along the lines of what I was looking for more information. Never said I didn't want to put in the work, just looking for where the work should be put in. As i'm still in my first year, I want to get on the right path before doors start to close, and to avoid dragging out college any longer than it needs to be. I'm looking into computer science right now, spend half the day on the computer now as is, and that opens up to a lot of different things I can work with. (DAWs, DJ software, VSTs, video games, Iphone apps, the list goes on.)

Are you getting the drift, bro? What do you think this means?

I think it means that until recently, electronic music had a much larger following in Europe than in America (still does). But does that mean that 10 years or so down the line after I get some work experience under my belt, these companies will be hiring in America? Can't really say, but I can say that with electronic music booming the way it is, that its more than likely that these companies will start branching into the states. MAGIX, Reaper, and Avid are american based, and I'm sure many others have branches in America.

[deadly_habit]

things could I do at a company like ableton, propellerhead, image-line

haha, forgot why I originally wanted to post...

Ableton = German
Propellerhead = Sweden
Imageline = Belgium

Do you see the pattern?

Let me extend it...

Native Instruments = German
Cubase = German
Logic = German (was, who knows where they are now)
Ohmforce = French

Are you getting the drift, bro? What do you think this means?

sweden seriously has some of the best indie programmers about when it comes to creative stuff

[slothrop]

You really want someone like static_cast on this (seeing as he actually works for NI) but I get the impression from the job ads that I've seen that to get a job working as an audio software developer you basically need to be very good at and really enjoy coding full stop.

If you think you'd find working in software interesting in general - even if you ended up doing back-end web development for an online gardening shop or coding database wrappers for a financial modelling firm or device drivers for a data storage company or whatever - then going that way is a great option, lets you work pretty much where you want, lets you choose whether to do a solid 9-5 and have plenty of time and money for your hobbies or work long hours doing clever stuff for an exciting startup, and doesn't look likely to dry up in the near future.

On the other hand, if you end up working on an end product that you personally find interesting then it's a bonus, but in my expeience a lot of the work for a largeish project is on tiny details and solving fairly abstract problems, so if you don't enjoy software development in general you probably won't enjoy working on music software much either... edit - it'd be a bit like wanting to be a vegetable gardener because you like eating food...