I work in a restaurant but after unexpected Instagram message I have a new side hustle earning me thousands each month
A MAN who works in a restaurant for his day job also has a new side hustle that earns him thousands every month.
Shaquille, 25, counts music as his passion and has shared countless videos of himself writing, producing and performing his own original songs on social media, particularly Instagram.
He has even appeared on Britain’s Got Talent, as part of a duo with his older brother but had only really found fame in his local area of Manchester.
That was until he got his big break in Asia.
When he initially got a message via Instagram asking if he would be interested in penning songs for popular K-pop groups, Shaquille thought it was just a joke.
K-pop, short for Korean pop, is a vast billion-dollar industry which has become hugely popular in recent years with acts like EXO, Blackpink and BTS becoming famous worldwide.
Hopefuls in South Korea who dream of becoming a K-Pop idol follow a set path to fame.
They are first signed up by an agency or record label from as young as 10-years-old as start off as a trainee.
Once they’ve signed on the dotted line they are sent off to a special school where they take singing, dancing and acting lessons.
When they graduate they take on the role of K-Pop idol and get assigned to join different groups, TV shows or films by their labels.
Shaquille believes he was discovered after a popular US-based A&R shared a song he had submitted to a competition.
He told the Manchester Evening News: “I got this message on Instagram and it was from a guy saying ‘do you wanna work with me to compose tracks for K-Pop artists?’
“As a musician you get a lot of DMs like that, but my mum always taught me to never say no to an opportunity, so I went along with it.
“It was a bit dodgy at first because he was quite shy and we only spoke via video and his English wasn’t strong.”
Now he’s a K-Pop songwriter and works with a team to compose and record the English version of a song before it is pitched to the record label who buy the record and then adapt it to their K-Pop audience.
The venture has worked out well for Shaquille, who in just more than a year has already penned songs for some of the top K-Pop actus such as EXO, Monsta X, NCP and Astro.
While the money so far hasn’t been enough for him to quit his day job as a restaurant supervisor, he says it has been enough to “change the trajectory” of his life and he has been able to move out of his mum’s place.
He said it was humbling that while in Korea he felt like a “big, hot-shot producer” in Manchester it just felt like he was working in a restaurant.
Shaquille said that he wrote the least popular song for a band but because the band was so big, the song also was big and he earned £8,000 from it in just the first six months it was out.
He explained that in K-Pop it was all relative and royalty based, all depending on how well a song does, how many people buy the record and how much merchandise is sold off it.
Shaquille said that he was now learning about the global music market rather than just Manchester.
He added that while he loved the “togetherness” of Manchester it could still be “quite cliquey”.