Use the Downtime: Ziggy Diaz on How Musicians Can Diversify Their Income (Episode 31)

Make Music Your Business.

Making music is easy. Making money in music is not. Ziggy Diaz, better known as Ziggy Beats, has spent his career stacking skills: keyboards, beat programming, producing, composing, DJing, and on the Babyface tour, playback engineer and stage manager right alongside Nomad.

In Episode 31 of The Career Musician, recorded on a gig in the Bay Area, Ziggy explains how musicians can diversify their income, from learning every piece of software in the room to using tour downtime to study the markets. Nomad calls him meticulous: he takes his time and gets the job done right, every time.

From one finger to every DAW

Ziggy grew up in church. His father bought him an old Casio keyboard, and he started picking out the church melodies with one finger. His father noticed, and got him into a music school in the Bronx for classical, sight-reading and theory. Then came church gigs, bands, and the question: if I can play all this, what if I could make it?

He studied computer science in the 90s and learned databases and spreadsheets for day jobs. Nomad pointed out that he was ahead of the curve, learning data before anybody talked about it.

On the music side, he never came up on tape. He went straight to software, and every scene he worked in used something different. Cubase first. Digital Performer with the DJs on Long Island. Logic in Staten Island. Because he could move between them, import files and handle arrangements, people kept calling: I need a keyboard player, I need a remix, I need help on this song. Work begets work.

His advice: have one go-to program you know cold, no matter what. At the time, he and Nomad were both learning Ableton to bring it into the Babyface show.

Wear the hats the gig needs

Nomad and Ziggy go back to Nashville, where they had a production team with their friend Richie Pena. Each focused on his own area, then came together, and the music was tight because of it. When the Babyface gig came up, the idea was to bring Ziggy on as a backline tech. He became stage manager, then playback engineer.

Nomad loves the blend: DJing keeps Ziggy current, composing keeps his arranging and theory sharp, and producing lets him work across genres. That is the pillar Nomad calls Diversify or Die, and Ziggy is a working example of it.

Study the trends, a little every day

Ziggy has been watching where good paying jobs are heading: artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science. He pointed to everyday examples, like search engines finishing your sentence and an AI assistant that could call a barbershop to book a haircut. If more work is going to be automated, he wants to be part of that trend.

So he set aside time to study it: coding, Python, programs and books.

"I'm not saying I'm the best, but I'm doing it every day, a little bit at a time."

Ziggy Diaz, 13:00

Nomad tied it to the idea he was studying at the time, the compound effect: turn a daily habit that lines up with your goals into a ritual. Five, ten or thirty minutes of songwriting every day grows exponentially. Same with anything else you want to learn.

And he admitted something many of us feel. He always thought he would never do anything but music. The older he gets, the more he sees it differently.

"It's okay to do music and something else, because now you're just broadening your path. You're expanding your horizons."

Nomad, 18:39

Use the downtime

As Ziggy put it, one thing career musicians have is time. Hurry up and wait. Waiting for soundcheck, at the airport, on the plane, on the bus. When the gigs slow down, a lot of players think about driving for a rideshare. Ziggy decided to learn what people on Wall Street do.

His approach sounded a lot like practicing scales. First, learn the language: in your spare time, watch financial news on CNBC or Bloomberg until the lingo makes sense. Second, paper trade before you use real money. Many brokers offer practice accounts with fake money. Back test a strategy on past charts, practice it, and only go live once you are consistent. Keep it simple, too. He described a trader he knows who sticks to one basic moving average rule and nothing else. And always set your risk, because a stop keeps a bad trade from sinking you further than you planned.

For players without a big account, he suggested currencies as a place to learn, because that market trades around the clock during the week, which fits a touring schedule. He told stories of placing a trade after a show and waking up $150 ahead. He was also clear that it comes with risk, that the market is "a pool full of sharks," and that he would not recommend crypto at that time because it was too new and too loosely regulated.

"Before you even open an account and just start placing bets, long or short, don't do that. Educate yourself first."

Ziggy Diaz, 31:06

This is Ziggy sharing his own experience, not financial advice. The principle under it is what matters for your career: prepare before you play, and stay consistent. Luck = preparation + opportunity in the studio and anywhere else.

The takeaway

Learn every tool the room uses and master one. Say yes to the hats the gig needs. Spend your downtime building something, a skill or an income stream, a little every day. That is how you Make Music Your Business when the business model keeps shifting. If you want more work behind the stage and on it, start with the free Get the Gig guide, and check out Ziggy at ziggybeats.com.

Get the gig. Keep the gig. Build the career.

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