Interview with Altin Gjoni, Albania based Guitarist – 16/3/21
When did you start out as a professional or semi-professional musician?
I would say that I started as a semi-professional musician when I first played paid local shows in my country with more affirmed artists and starting to get hired as a session guitarist for shows.
I believe that my first steps at becoming truly a professional musician were when I started to record remote studio sessions and recorded my first 50 remote sessions at least. That’s when I started to understand the difference between being a good guitar player that could entertain a crowd and cover songs and a professional guitar player that could serve the song and think like a musician.
How long have you worked as a session musician? And is most of your work home studio or external studio based?
As a live performing session player it’s been more than 7 years now, while as a studio session player just a bit more than 2 years.
Most of my work regarding studio work is home based, this due to the fact that there are not many recording studios in my city and also due to my focus that was mostly on foreign markets/artists that offered a wider choice of genres and more opportunity.
Of course this last year was all home based due to the corona virus situation, which shifted my home completely to home recording.
Does most of your work come through Fiverr or other online platforms or is it direct? If it’s direct how do you advertise and promote your services? And which online platforms do you use?
Most of the work comes from Fiverr and other platforms like Airgigs and lastly Upwork. Direct work is limited mostly to contact that have previously contacted me on one of these platforms and which later have passed on a direct clients.
This is without counting the local artists/studios, from which I have mostly personal contact or get connected through the network of professional musicians and producers of my country.
One thing I have to point out is the difference between the platform I use – which is directly contacted to the vast portfolio and different income streams working modern musician are nowadays know to have.
I personally offer various services on platform. One is remote guitar tracks, other is guitar lesson, and another Is acoustic songs/full song productions with my band. The combination of all these makes for a steady income stream, with song productions having the biggest margin and guitar tracks the most number of clients.
On Fiver I receive the most number of order, due to the fact that the website is as Big as Upwork (or bigger) and has a dedicated section for audio/session musicians.
Fiver has a big number of potential client, and it’s probably the easiest to get started, but has very unstable quality and prices since the website is not specifically focused on music and also is often misunderstood for being a 5$ website – which is entirely not true anymore.
All in all, Fiver is my top source of income and networking opportunities, but to achieve them both you need to create real connections with people and have returning buyers + continuously apply for jobs.
Airgigs is my favourite due to high quality of order and bigger prices.
The website is entirely focused on music services, and so there are more specific orders, higher prices that are often similar to non-remote sessions.
The downside is that the website is not that big and work is limited compared to fiver
Upwork is mostly connected to music services in general, and not specifically session work.
This includes guitar lesson or music lesson in general, content creating (audio, video, written) for music related companies like plugin companies, online shops etc, other music marketing services which companies tend to choose musicians that have a marketing background, or are able to provide some kind of value to the companies like editing, audio design, music production for commercials, videos etc.
Being myself a marketer with a marketing degree and having knowledge on the music industry and music in general I aim to add up to the above services my services as a music marketer in the future.
Regarding promoting outside of platform lately I have working a lot on a SEO strategy for my website https://www.theworkingguitarist.com/ cause I believe that the future of remote session will be mostly google search based and not based on work platforms.
Social media is present obviously more on Instagram, which I use a portfolio of some of my work, sharing session updates, original work, links to articles and updates on my website etc.
My current goal is mostly to drive clicks to my website from social (reedit has proven great for that) and not as much to grow my following – since I don’t see social media as a source of potential clients for session work.
Do you think online services have had a positive or negative impact on the music industry generally? In particular, do you think that these platforms have impacted on how your service is valued and the price that session musicians can charge?
I think that it has been both positive and negative.
On the positive side is that it gave opportunities for musician in non-so developed countries where there are no big studios or labels and also gave another way of working for musicians in all countries.
One thing to mention is that online services present opportunities to musicians that are still learning or are not really true professional yet – a thing that cannot happen in a studio situation or a live show for any well-known artist/producer.
On the negative side I think that the prices have fallen due to 4 main factor
The market sometimes dictates the prices in online workplaces like Fiverr, and that market has nothing to do with the music industry.
There are orders where you can get paid 20$ and can get paid 200$ for the same exact job.
Lack of any sort of regulation on prices for non-online music activities (for example the US there are certain limits on the minimum you can pay a session musician in a studio if all is one according to law)
This mainly happens on non-developed countries on different countries
Difference on prices from developed to non-developed countries has destabilized how prices for sessions work.
Revenues are down in general for the music industry and sometimes the most profitable clients are not real professional artists or studios, but music lovers that are not professionals, but have a side job/business that gives them enough money to pay a good price for the service
The general impact on the music industry I would say is good. But as always the music industry sometimes fails to adapt to technology (just check out how streaming revenue works!) and it falls to the music industry to further adapt and have a fair spread of revenue to all stakeholders, artists, professional etc.
How has the COVID19 pandemic affected you professionally? And what changes have you made, if any, to the way you work during the pandemic? Do you think the pandemic has meant there has been more work for you and session musicians generally?
Professionally as a remote session player the pandemic did not affect me much in my total income. That was because the lack of live shows was compensated by a steady growth during the first phase of the pandemic of remote session work.
I would say that initially for me the pandemic brought more session work, and I believe that is true for most remote session players. That is because there were unfinished projects that were left not finished from the quarantine and were then finished remotely, and also because people found the time to work on their song writing passion and hired remote session players.
During the second phase of the quarantine (lasted way more than anyone imagined) I think people were more frightened of spending money and there was not that much work for music professionals in general.
Regarding changes on the way I work that would mostly be related to my routine. Being that I had more time I focused on creating more content for social media and updating my portfolio/marketing efforts during the time.
Without the ability to collaborate and work online during the COVID pandemic many session musicians, artists, producers would not have been able to create and release new music. Do you think these changes are here to stay? And what is your view on this?
I think that remote work will coexist with local studio work even in the future.
That is because music is naturally better when is played by a group of people in a room (talking about music based on instruments, not hip hop or dance music) and people like the process of being in the studio, recording, writing playing etc.
On the other hand, as long as revenue keeps on being cut in the music industry for professional remote session will continue to grow as a way to cut short on some heavy costs.
The rise of remote session is also connected to the way the music industry works and how modern genres work. Most modern music is sampled, and an average producer with a lap top can get good sounds as a studio would, since they both use the same samples and live instruments are way harder and way costlier to record properly.
What is usually done now in modern pop is that guitar for example is added after the producer has completed 90% of the track himself and needs some colours in the track or simple lines to be added – which obviously are best to be ordered remotely.
Another thing though that will impact the growth of remote sessions is that quality is very subjective and is generally not affected by remote work. Some musicians deliver better work where they are comfortable and have no studio time pressure, also the fact that having revision remotely is very easy and not costly helps a lot.
Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about how the internet has affected your work as a session musician, or how you work?
Personally the only reason that I became a session musician or even learned how to play guitar was the internet. I’m completely self-taught and learned from the 1st generation of YouTube tutorial videos.
The internet started me as a guitarist, the local music scene developed me further and the internet than gave me change to become a professional session player.
My dream and ambition is to be able to play in big studio one day and record live session in important music cities like London or Nashville, I think that if I ever reach that it would be thanks to remote sessions and the network, skills and mind-set it gave me.