Why it’s hard to go pro

Society
Society will always object to every little new and unconventional thing you want to attempt at first. But when society has something to gain from you, it's very easy to forget all about the “No please. Just don't” phase. Apart from parental or religious issues, something faced by all musicians looking to go pro is 'popular demand'. There's nothing wrong with Pop music – but the word 'Pop' comes from 'popular', and when the majority of Dhaka city wants the same vocally-driven upbeat music with a four chord progression – it becomes an issue for musicians devoted to other genres.
What Dhaka desperately needs is a larger platform and a wider range of opportunities for musicians and bands that focus on genres like Blues, Jazz, Soul, Funk, Indie, Electronica, Pure Acoustic, Psychedelic, and so on. Sure the communities of such music are only recently expanding, but opportunities to broadcast their music have not shown up either.

Money

Say you have the platform – are you halfway there yet? Unfortunately you're not even close to halfway if you don't have the money. Even with the money to get your gear, to get your practice in, and to get yourself to different shows, here's the deal – you're talking about music being your primary profession, or at least a major source of your income. How do you make a decent living off of being a professional musician in Bangladesh? Either you naturally and coincidentally love the music that's in popular demand, or you abandon the idea of passionately doing music as a musician, and settle for the life of unwillingly doing business as a musician, i.e., 'sell out'.

If you're a musician who does non-commercial gigs here and there, and pays more attention to expressing themselves or a cause – it's difficult to make enough money to support yourself properly, let alone an entire family. Other than the super commercial, huge promotional concerts, no concert really pays musicians enough here.

Elita Karim, singer and writer, says, “It's not possible to pursue music as your primary career in Bangladesh. You need to have a day job and be prepared to work hard, even go hungry, in order to make music. Many artists have to resort to making corporate jingles or soundtracks for television shows on the side.”
 
 

Knowledge

You've broken through the first two barriers, and you're ready to get your music out – what do you need the most now? An album of course. But if you want a copyright for your album and go big with it, you'll need to sign a deal with a record label. Thankfully in recent times, there are some new, dedicated labels that help musicians receive all their legal rights, as well as get any kind of music out.  But most of the major record labels that have been around for a while only know business.
This is how it normally works – you produce music that's in popular demand or could be in popular demand, win the attention of a record label, submit your music to them and the rest is simple – sign a 60 year contract and get around 10-15% of what you could ultimately get, up front. Sarcasm aside, a legal contract is usually around 5 years long, and you're supposed to get paid based on the total number of sales.

“Since the Intellectual Property Rights laws are not very strong in Bangladesh, musicians never receive the revenue they deserve. Ideally, a musician should earn off of every song in every CD every time it's aired on television or the radio or played online”, adds Elita Karim.
If you don't know the business and more importantly, your rights and a how a legal contract works – you'll end up not getting what you deserve out of signing a contract with a record label.