That “I don’t know” seems to happen at many life transitions (I am in that place myself right now!). But the hardest one I think is when people finish schooling. Good luck!
I agree totally that freelancing isn’t easy and a lot of it doesn’t pay well at all, my point was simply asking if the OP had tried it, to at least get perspective outside the school setting. In some ways doing music performance reminds of a line in the Billy Joel song “Allentown”, that talks about how they were promised a good life, if they worked hard, if they behaved, and finding that those promises were not true. In music, while almost everyone knows or claims to know ‘how hard it is out there’, there is still a kind of feeling around that if you go to the right school with the right teacher, if you do the competitions and do well, if you get noticed with orchestra or chamber work, that the good things will flow, even if deep down people have drilled in how hard it is ‘out there’…and it is. Where once people came out with BM degrees and got into the ‘music scene’, these days an MM is becoming standard, and a lot of that is extending the period in school to allow finding their feet (and hopefully not hiding). What makes it worse I think is if you do reasonable well in music school, by whatever benchmarks, it is easy to forget how hard it can be, but if you clearly are not doing well it is easier.A friend of mine went to Indiana studying a brass instrument, and he said by sophomore year it became clear he wasn’t going to go anywhere with it, he wasn’t getting into the better orchestras and ensembles, and he focused on his academic degree, he saw it clearly and diverted, but it may not be so easy for those doing ‘well enough’.
A lot of this, too, has to do with what someone’s goals are. To be honest, in music you cannot expect the ‘fast track’ to success, it does happen (the young player who gets into a major orchestra like the philadelphia, a soloist who ‘hits it’ young) but it is rare, and it is not a path IME like the path many expect in ‘the real world’, where you get a job, then either move up in it, or move to another job, and it is steadily escalating levels of work. Wth music it is a lot of slow plugging away, grinding through auditions, finding gigs and keeping it together until 'it’happens,whatever that ‘it’ is.
The rough analogy to this I have seen in the financial industry, where you get these kids out of the top programs that financial firms hire , and they expect that within a year or two they are going to be featured in the society pages (or whatever passes for them), they are going to be the hedge fund manager making well into 7 figures, the hotshot banker making the huge deals, and what they find is they often are in ‘the grind’, they might be making decent money, but they also are paying for it with long hours, living out of a suitcase, and doing the dog work so someone else can make a huge bonus out of an M and A deal. The vision doesn’t meet reality, and that is where the disillusionment comes from.
My advice would be, since you are finishing your masters, to find ways to give yourself time and space to look at the future. Maybe set a deadline, like “in two years, if it doesn’t look like it is going anywhere, then I will have to face reality”…and during this time, think about a plan B, or C, even if as even I have written, that can create a self fulfilling prophesy, if you are thinking of B, you are already pulling out of A. If your goal is to have stability in a relatively few number of years, so you can start a family, This kind of plan might help. To be honest, when my S went into music both he and my wife and I fully expected it was going to be a struggle after school, he went in with his eyes wide open that likely coming out of school, probably at a masters level, that it was going to take years and a lot of hard work to get someplace, we committed to that (I say we, in that we already expect we will be helping him out post school). Given the way people are today, where they are getting married later and/or establishing family later, I didn’t see anything wrong with my son ‘wasting’ his 20’s finding if he can make it, I don’t have this view that if by the time you are in your late 20’s or even 30 if you aren’t already on a firm career track (in music or elsewhere) you are doomed…
In the end this is going to come down to what you want out of life, if spending the years fighting to make it in music is what you want to do, or if you want to limit the time to ‘making it’ then moving on, or perhaps finishing music school and shifting to something else because you don’t want that struggle, it is all about yourself. I think it likely will come down to how you still see music, if it is something that you still can’ see yourself living without, the first option, or maybe even the second, will be the answer. If you answer that question with “I love music, but I really want to have the solidity of something I can depend on, and not having that would make my life too hard”, then you probably will end up moving on in some way, perhaps shifting fields but playing music as a semi pro or amateur, and the like. In the end, no one here can answer that, because it depends on yourself. I would tell you, quite honestly, that if you think you need stability and financial security as a major thing, I wouldn’t count on getting the kind of music career soon that can give that, while it is not impossible, the gig with the major orchestra that pays well and has benefits (ie one of the big 5 or upper level regionals) is not very likely, to say the least.
This looked interesting: http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/what-are-you-trying-to-decide-in-your-career/
Also be real careful of the more schooling trap. If you have a masters you are qualified for many entry level positions. You mention Econ. Go interview for jobs at a financial firm or insurance company. They’ll be entry level so they’ll just need the basics - a bachelors. Sure you’ll be answering phones but you’ll learn a ton and start rubbing shoulders with people in the business. And you will advance if it’s a good fit. Then if more schooling is required for what you want it will be more clear. Financial and insurance companies take a lot of liberal arts kids. So don’t worry about needing a special degree. Even more advanced positions are sometimes based on work experience alone. Also you may be able to do it part time and do some music still. Good luck!
@bridgenail is correct, there are a lot of entry level positions that require a college degree but aren’t necessarily specific, and a lot of learning with any career is going to be on the job, even in a specific field most kids coming out of college have a lot to learn, with software development, unless someone already has worked professionally, there is a big difference between what you learn in school and the actual nuts and bolts of doing development professionally, you might have some of the tools, but a lot is learned on the job.
For some, academia provides funding and resources so that you can do your work long enough to develop a bridge to professional life. It depends.
Thanks so much for all your replies. My plan now is to seek opportunities to do things I care about in music (play more chamber, teach more, volunteer and think about what positive social impact I could make) instead of running excerpts 5hrs a day. I also haven’t spent much time reading about practice and performance psychology. There are so many great resources that can prevent one from burning out, becoming bored and unhappy, etc… I think music and taking job auditions or doing competitions requires a certain amount of single-mindedness and focus, but that needs to be paired with curiosity and willingness to always explore new pieces, new ideas, new ways to create. It’s hard to not think of these as a waste of time when we have busy schedules and too much music to learn and everyone (including myself) acts like this is a race.
And you’re right, if I need a non-music job to pay the bills, there will be opportunities to find something that’s not awful and doesn’t require a whole other degree. I was hired full-time during a summer once to translate things and make subtitles. Maybe there’s something there that could be part of a backup plan after some more research and maybe certifications.
I think everyone I know that did a DMA at a good school found employment teaching at the college level somewhere (sometimes non-majors or at schools that don’t have well-known music programs) but I can’t think of anyone that just didn’t find a job.
@Noldea01, I don’t doubt your statement about DMAs finding jobs, but I can give you a list of others that haven’t - despite very fine credentials - top conservatories and colleges all the way along with requisite summer festivals and teachers! A DMA is not a sure bet.
Your approach sounds great. Good luck to you.
We lived in Bloomington Indiana for many years. Great music school. Sadly, the town is full of people who earned the Ph.D and still could not find a job. They are everywhere. These are people who won top awards and competitions in classical music. Everyone is chronically underemployed. It’s very sad. If Bloomington is that bad, Nashville is much worse. I knew of a younger girl who was in a different field of music there (Bloomington) who was occasionally on national TV and somewhat famous. She just quit one day and decided to go to high school and college to prepare for med school. You still can get a degree in another field. Your skills would give you plenty to participate in at another school (like a Purdue, Georgia Tech). Best wishes.
" Sadly, the town is full of people who earned the Ph.D and still could not find a job."
The first step to employment in music is to GET OUT OF BLOOMINGTON. Good music school but hardly a large cultural or commercial hot spot. IU grads should know that.
Noldea01, I am just so impressed with you. Really.
I was thinking the same thing, musicamusica!
@noidea01:
I think you just answered your own question, in your last post I think you synthesized what a lot of people were saying and have translated it into a plan of action, that is awesome. One of the things I remember from reading and coursework on things like solving problems, or in determining a best course, is that you often have to get out of the routine to see the possible answers to the questions you seek (or some such). One of the problems with music study is that a lot of it comes down to a routine, a necessary one, where you are continually practicing, rehearsing, then more practicing, and it seems like being a hamster on an exercise wheel, because the focus is so narrow. A friend of my son had an older sister who was a musician, she went to a top music school, and when she got out she deliberately did not follow ‘the track’, she didn’t do the orchestra auditions and the like, instead she gave herself time to look at what she wanted to do. She ended up forming a chamber group, plus she also founded a group dedicated to bringing music into the schools, found she had a talent for the organization as well as the music, found sources of funding, and last I heard was really enjoying her life…she actually turned down a position in a relatively high level, full time orchestra to stay with what she did.
I spent a lot of time thinking more and realized something that sounded true for me and thought might help others. It might be naive or obvious but here it is: As I said in a perfect world, I would want to do music if that meant having the necessary time and ressources to devote myseld towards uncovering genuine elements of the beauty and expression that music can offer. Competitions and job auditions should be thought of -for me at least- as opportunities to have practical ways of doing so and surround oneselves with people that have worked hard towards this too and devoted their lives to it. Preparing for an audition seemed like a really empty goal when it was a goal, an end. But it seems much much more exciting now that I realized it is just one of many ways to enable myself to do what I want, which is being afforded unlimited (well is a lifetime of) opportunities to make better music everyday, find better ways to touch others and become the best artist I can, performance after performance until the end of the road. It’s unbelievable corny but made me feel better and more equipped to accept current limitations and find ways to positively deal with discontent about some of the situations I have to encounter in my professional life. Everything is an opportunity for growth, shitty gig, audition, rehearsal, etc…
I think this may be similar to the realization (however fleeting!) that grades- or for that matter admission to a school- are not an end either, but a means to a goal, learning. Also “corny” but so basic. I always enjoyed Alfie Kohn’s books on this.
We humans get so caught up in the systems we set up, that we forget why they are there in the first place. This is a very insightful post and will certainly help others. I admire the way you have grappled with this “emptiness” and found a way to fill it that is both practical and artistic 
Thank you!