I left a career in music production five years ago and moved into programming (data science). there's no turning back.
I was very aware that I was lucky. You can be the best, you can have a great network, but (in my experience), luck is the main factor. and the "luck" window in the music space is more and more narrow currently.
I'm currently a data analyst, used to be a software engineer. Weirdly enough I feel that data analysis (programming, visualizing, consulting and presenting) feels a lot related to making music. I think I just see the art of being a data analyst.
I want to "move up" in my career, but I simply don't see the (performative) art of data science and data engineering. It feels too narrow. Music and data analysis feels broad. I could take a higher paycheck but it'd cost of a lot of fun.
It probably helps that I on top of that get to integrate LLMs and create LLM flows, basically n8n but then programming it using the APIs of an LLM. So I'm still actually programming as well.
I totally agree, because I work with data analysis as well.
Both feel similar because in the end you have to tell a story and (presumably) please the audience :)
I was very aware that I was lucky. You can be the best, you can have a great network, but (in my experience), luck is the main factor. and the "luck" window in the music space is more and more narrow currently.