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What’s a Portfolio Career?

As you search and consider options for a career in the music sector, you might come across the term ‘portfolio career’. This simply means combining more than one occupation and/or career path, which may be out of necessity where there is not sufficient work in one area, or a choice to combine different forms of work for a combination of lifestyle, financial, creative, professional and other reasons. We are not talking about stepping away from your main path for a short stint in a different role, or a complete career change, but the balance of different work that is common in the creative industries.
According to Australian music researchers Bartleet et al (2012), “it appears that out of necessity many Australian musicians take on a continually evolving range of concurrent and overlapping paid and unpaid, predominantly part-time and freelance work, in order to carve out a viable living. About six in ten musicians maintain their own businesses and this freelance work is supplemented with a range of other employment activities.”

The researchers use the analogy that “like a share portfolio, the portfolio career allows the musician to balance higher and lower risk options”.

A survey of professional musicians for the Artists as Workers report (2021) found that musicians work 42 hours each week, with an average of 56% being creative work, 22% arts-related work, and 22% being non-arts work. Each of the major artistic professions (visual artists, writers, etc) showed similar breakdowns with varying degrees of creative and other work.

For those that work in arts-related occupations, 71% of musicians were involved in teaching, 24% in assisting other artists, 16% in arts administration and 11% in arts management (multiple responses allowed). In fact, the proportion of musicians working in arts administration and teaching were the same as the average of all professional artists working in those fields.

There are several very common combinations of work such as freelance musicians that are also music tutors, but the possibilities are endless and can develop over time based on each person’s interests, skills, opportunities and initiative.

Some occupations and career choices require vastly different skills, require full time attention or would clash with other options, but many are compatible. This writer knows people with the following combinations of occupations in their ‘portfolio’.

 

These are not hypothetical examples of what might be possible, but real people with real jobs and businesses. Every example involves some form of freelance/contract work, some involve employment. Every example involved some form of performance, and each of these people has at least completed a Bachelor of Music. These combinations allow creative people to choose their own path and determine the structure of their lifestyle and income based on what they are good at, interested in, and the opportunities available to them.

While you’re looking through the 100+ career and occupation options on musiccareer.au, remember that many of them can be combined with others to create your very own ‘portfolio’.

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