@Cruiser I’d travel a lot more and teach a lot less. Had I chosen music, I wouldn’t have gone the academic route. Even if I had continued on to get a master’s degree, that would have been the end of it. I was never a good enough pianist to be a voice teacher, and I had no interest in teaching music history or music theory. (This, in fact, was one of the biggest clues that philosophy was a better fit for me. I love teaching, so why didn’t I want to teach music?) Non-academic musicians have to go where the work is, and that changes frequently. I have a friend who moved to Europe, where the market for his speciality is better, just to keep afloat. Philosophers travel to give talks and go to conferences, but much less frequently.
This would probably have affected my marriage quite a bit. In fact, it might not have happened. My now-wife/then-girlfriend is a workaholic, and she likes having me around. So she wouldn’t be able to travel with me, and she wouldn’t like me being away so much. It also would have affected me economically. Non-academic musicians tend to be either very poor or very wealth. It’s an unpredictable, sink-or-swim business, and there’s only so many people who can be successful at once. Instead, I have a job that is very predictable in its advancement and that provides moderate security even at its lowest levels. For all the talk of graduate students getting shafted—and we do—my own program has provided me with enough income that my wife and I have never had to worry about affording food or rent. We couldn’t afford much of anything in the way of luxuries until I started taking on extra classes and she got promoted, but living on the streets was never a threat. My musician father, on the other hand, has come very close to that more than once.