How do I get more involved in the music industry as a designer?

I've been involved in the "corporate design world" (freelance and regular 9 to 5 design studio job) for number of years now and I'm really sick of it at the moment.

I always loved doing gig posters, short promo animations, album cover art, band logos and anything music related because musicians are usually pretty chill, they give good feedback and I just found it fun to work with them. The thing is, music scene in my small country is pretty shit so when I was younger I did a lot of free work for these musicians and bands. I'm not a musician myself, I just like music and wanted to help these guys because no one else would.

It's good because I met a lot of really cool people but of course it sucks cause they didn't pay me shit. In the meantime I started taking design more serious, went to design school (just finished 3rd year) and over the years some of these dudes started treating me like a free design generator so I had to politely tell them to fuck off.

Now, being a bit more experienced I want to try it out again, I just have no idea where to start.

Now, I'm pretty confident I got the art part covered because I've been practising digital illustration and painting for years. I just need to figure out how to advertise myself. I set up a solid portfolio site but it's filled with "corporate" work and nothing really worthy enough to get noticed in music industry. It's the ol' catch-22 I guess - Can't get work because of empty portfolio, but portfolio is empty cause I can't get work.

So I had this idea to go to these famous YouTube channels (that promote bands by uploading their albums) and just leave comments about me designing album covers and if they are interested they can reach me at my e-mail. I got two replies. The first was "Fuck off with your plugs, I'm also a designer and you don't see me advertising here. Oh, and your logo sucks!", and the other comment was "Do it for freeeeee!". So I guess it wasn't such a smart idea, but I really got nothing left.

Any advice?

Great design resource

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) Submitted July 30, 2017 at 09:41PM by Monsteroustickalotis http://ift.tt/2vctL81