[km6xz]

With any business, to have sales that sustain you, you have to solve a
problem that the client perceives as a problem, one that he values
enough to pay to have it go away. No matter how good you are, how
great your facilities or prices are to your mind, all that matters in
business is the perception of the potential client and how much he
values his problem be taken away by you.
I am afraid you are thinking too much in terms of the lifestyle and
hobby aspect of recording from a past period and environment. If you
can't think of a set of problems you can solve for clients who want
them solved, what about doing something more pleasurable such as
recording as a hobby, have fun, and seek something else for the
income? There is little need or desire for recording services now, it
is a fact, and wishing for the return of another era is not going to
change the whole society which generally does not care.
A few people will figure out a niche service to provide based on an
identified need(from the client's perspective) and do well, but very
few do this.
How would you go about finding some narrowly defined specialty service
that fits the needs of specific potential clients? What traits and
skills can you offer that are unique. For example, success in anything
is based on perceived uniqueness. The rarer a set of skills for which
there are problems they can be applied to, the higher the income and
demand. Top athletes get much more than those perceived as lower rung,
despite on any given play, the lower perceived ranked player might
excel.
It is very hard to become generally known as the go-to-guy in
recording. Even a top 50 among 100,000 is not likely to have a secure
income. But the top is an easier ranking to achieve when the skill set
and target audience is more narrowly defined. Don't try to compete on
general terms, compete where you have an advantage, which is combining
some typical skills you might have that are pretty rare in
combination. Say you are into recording...along with 200,000 others.
You might have an advanced hobby in rebuilding old aircraft....along
with 50,000 others. But you might be 1 of 10 pro recording engineers
who also have a network of aircraft builders, publications, clubs etc.
That is pretty unique. What if you looked around and found that air
shows and rebuilder clubs were seeing fewer of the rare old birds
showing up at the meets. You might figure out that if you were to
create a library of quality recordings of the sounds of some of those
craft would be of interest to film companies, selling CDs at meets,
mail order, licensing etc. I suggested the same sort of thing to a
friend who was a middle rung recording engineer, never quite getting
the national acts he aspired to and was feeling despair in not ever
being able to make it a career. In this case his inside hobby, with
years of expertise, was model railroading. He parlayed that
combination of fairly routine interests and knowledge into being rare
well regarded as the go-to guy if you were a manufacturer who wanted
to license classic locomotive sounds for their models, or films,
selling tapes(that was a while ago), and CD at hobby shows. He has
carved out a real niche and earns, has more free time and travel
opportunities more than he ever did as a music recording engineer.

There are so many ways to make it, or at least be happy and secure
that require a new way of looking at the task and goal. A typical job
and education path really does not work much anymore as a way to a
good career with some stability and growth.
Good luck