Mariona Escoda: "I never made my first album back financially."

At just 6 years old, singer Mariona Escoda (Valls, 2001) first encountered music, and from a very young age, she began earning money for her passion. "My first income was as a singer. I started out performing at civil weddings at the Valls Town Hall," she explains in a statement to Empresas. In that case, they gave her "a small envelope with money" and she has kept it as a souvenir: "That money hasn't been touched yet."

"I was 12 years old, and since then, I've continued earning money for singing," she explains. The artist has combined her primary, secondary, and university studies with music: "I would record music videos or collaborate with someone and have to miss school," she recalls. She adds: "There were many times when my friends were going out partying, I couldn't because I had a concert on Saturday or Sunday, especially in the summer. You can't have the same life, the same nightlife, that other people your age have."

The singer studied speech therapy because she once became hoarse and realized she wanted to understand what was happening to her vocal cords. "Mariona, impulsive and spontaneous, would have said: 'I'm going to study singing or I'm going to London to do musical theater.' And the more rational part of her came to say: 'Let's continue dedicating ourselves to music, but let's choose something related that can complement it.'" Currently, she is passionate about speech therapy, although she prioritizes music: "I'm more of a singer, because it's the job that takes up 75% of my life. The other 25% is speech therapy." Even so, she assures that at the time of making her choice, she thought about work-life balance: "A part of me chose to study a degree for stability in terms of money," explains Escoda.

She made the decision because she already knew the ups and downs of the artist's world from the inside: "I had already gone a year and a half without having any" bolus. And now it continues to happen, although not on this scale." But he says that, after winning the first edition ofEuphoria, music became his job: "I had already professionalized it, but the fact that it was professionalized from the outside, that people already knew that I work in music, is very cool." It was a great opportunity in the workplace: "The visibility it gave me meant that, suddenly, a lot of people came looking for me. More work, more opportunities and better paid than before." In fact, he remembers that he started giving concerts and played in exchange for dinner. In this case, the prize of the program was to carry out a project with the record company and the impact. "AfterEuphoria"Suddenly, since you're already a visible face, you're somehow being paid more," the singer explains.

More visibility

As for remuneration, Escoda assures that pay varies greatly depending on the job. Participating in television programs and doing brand promotions are the most profitable: "Brands usually pay very well." "On the other hand, sometimes you do collaborations with people or large corporations and you think they're going to pay you very well, and that's not the case. The things that give you a lot of visibility don't get paid much," the singer emphasizes. On the other hand, she maintains that musical theater in Catalonia should be better compensated.

At 21, after winning the music competition, she became self-employed, and at 22, she and her partner moved into a family apartment: "Between the management, my mother and I manage everything." Thus, the artist considers herself thrifty: "I'm very young, who knows if in the future I'll have to pay a mortgage, buy a car, or make albums? I can't let myself go."

In fact, during the production process of an album, she has learned from bad economic decisions: "When a song is produced, I get the urge and see that it is not what I wanted, and I decide to take it in another direction. But what you have done costs money and you have to pay for it before accepting or giving orders about something." In this sense, she assures that making albums is very expensive and sometimes the numbers do not add up: "The first album I made as a super-independent singer-songwriter, I did not recover it, I mean, I have recovered it over time with other things." "It is not just making the songs, producing them, recording them and paying the musicians, it is also paying the person who takes the photos, the poster, the visuals."