Tis an interesting question. The music industry has more blowhards than any other maybe. How many people make a living from music production/performance without supplementary income from a secondary job or their partner.  Not very many I bet. 
 
I fully respect those who can make a living from music alone and do not begrudge them the title "pro".

Seriously, our opinions don't mean squat. You are either really good at what you do or you aren't. I don't bludgeon people over the head with my accomplishments, however big or small, in the music business. I have had some major mountain top moments only to be yodeling in the valley a few days later.
I think PRO is about the level of craftsmanship you perform at. Whether it be guitar playing or looping. I have just as much respect for a 16 year old kid that can put together a kicka@# dance track as I do for George Martin or Tom Dowd. Pro to me means able to deliver at a moments notice. There comes a time in your development as an artist that the bar you set for yourself becomes an everyday achievement. You come to a time where you just instinctively know what to do in any given situation. You do it and it just works! Knowledge is everything!

On that last point, "I'm a professional, I don't have time to learn this" strikes me as a fairly odd position. Surely being professional in a field means having a good grasp of the tools of that trade, however badly designed you may personally think the tools are. I suspect there are surgeons who have a negative view of this or that piece of operating theatre equipment, but if they throw their hands up and say "I can't be bothered learning to use this", then they're not going to be surgeons for very much longer.

For sure. You make your practical choices and move forward. If changing your setup so gaining features X and Y means you lose feature Z, then you make a call on whether to do that yet, or at all.
 
My point is simply: "I'm a professional" whatever else it means, surely means "I've got work that needs to get done, and I'll do it by whatever means are required and available".

John T
For sure. You make your practical choices and move forward. If changing your setup so gaining features X and Y means you lose feature Z, then you make a call on whether to do that yet, or at all.
 
My point is simply: "I'm a professional" whatever else it means, surely means "I've got work that needs to get done, and I'll do it by whatever means are required and available".

I agree, it's just sometimes you didn't realize something you figured was a "basic feature" would change. I don't think any of those folks on here complaining will stop at that, they just vent and complain and then get the job done, whether by going back to an older version or by figuring out a new way of doing what they need to. The Lanes/Layers discussion is a fair example I think. It works really well for me and I never did much with layers, but pre-X3 there were some things you could do easily with layers and couldn't with lanes, as far as I understand. You go in assuming that there will be a way to do all these basic processes you're used to and suddenly there isn't, or it requires you to do a totally new way of project organization which affects your workflow in other unforeseen ways. I agree one should take the time to learn the new version. But it's still frustrating when the client is sitting there and this thing you used to do all the time is taking ages, or won't work at all.

Years ago I needed to join Detroit's good old Local 5 musicians union to perform in clubs even as a teenager.
The reasoning given by the rep. was even kazoo players are considered professionals if they get paid for performing (& were required to join, for a fee of course.)

I assumed I was a "pro" because people -paid- me to use Pro Tools. It was the only way they could get me to use it. 
 
To be clear, getting paid a few times to do something is no guarantee that you're actually good at it. 
 
A more practical definition lies in the ability to draw on well trained, competent and efficient craftsmanship to deliver a service for someone who understands the value in paying you to do a better job than what they can do themselves. Not to be confused with talent, but the best have both.
 
This is starting to sound like a union line.
 
sorry.  
 
 
 

A table, or a Rock, can serve the same function...eh?..One is made by Man, or woman, or other human state of being for $$$ it seems, (and today is made real cheap, out of questionable material, for high cost)...The other is made by X, and is free to use without needing to buy....Both are not necessary....if you eat off the floor!.......no unions required...lol....Cheers!

Have you ever considered just ignoring what's on the internet, laying off of the pot for a day or two and taking a good nap?

Sanderxpander
True but there is also a reason many pro's don't upgrade to the latest version of everything right away. PT11 and Logic X being prime examples. It's exactly because they don't want to break something they know is working, whether through bugs, incompatibilities or simply "new ways of doing things". It's really frustrating to have to relearn processes you have been using for ages, especially if for your application the end result is the same.

Removable system drives have always been my answer. I boot up into the new environment in low-stress situations and revert to the old system when needed. I transition over time by installing plug-ins and such when I need them. I can't imagine just stopping and starting all over again. I have several plug-ins from my Vista days I never re-installed for Windows 7 because I just didn't need them any more.
 
I still have a hard disk around with my XP install and my Vista install. They both became obsolete in about 90 days, but I have them just in case there's some old project with some old software...
 
Amateur, professional, it doesn't matter. What matters is if you have deadlines to meet. That can happen with getting music done for your daughter's school play or finishing up a $120K audio-for-video project. You have to decide what your strategy will be for meeting deadlines. For me, if there's a problem I plow through and deal with it unless it's something that can be fixed with a workaround. My experience has been that 9 times out of 10 if something's going to bite me in one program, it will bite me in another program at some other time. I don't consider using workarounds a crutch or problem at all. Sometimes that's the fastest and most efficient way to keep going.

Anderton

John
The first thing I do when I get an update no matter what the software is is read first the readme file

So YOU'RE the guy who reads the Read Me files!! I always wanted to meet you. The companies I wrote manuals for always suspected that somewhere, someone actually read the documentation...that was you! And you're right here on this very forum! Cool!!!

That was downright funny! Yes I'm that guy. 

I agree Craig, and that's the way I usually do things in a similar way (although I use my laptop to try out new versions). The problem I indicated earlier is precisely with workarounds; they are usually not based on intended use of the program but rather a way to get somewhere that results from the way several parts of the program happen to work together. These are some of the first things that "break" in new versions. All I'm saying is I understand the frustration. Obviously there are precautions to take. But still, a feeling of "why!?" Is hard to ignore when you've been working comfortably and only wanted some unrelated new features.

I wonder if this is simply a Google Translate problem.

So we're all in agreement then on what the definition of "professional" is?
 
Glad we cleared that up. Well done, lads. ;-p

It is pretty much subjective, isn't it. I've never claimed to be a professional musician, though I once was. I got paid for making music and was pretty good though I never achieved fame and fortune. I decided on a different path, to marry and settle in to a traditional family role. Maybe I could have done this with music, some of my friends did but they mostly went into radio to earn a living while still playing. Not many really hit is big in music and some who do get used and ripped off. When I think of musicians getting ripped off I always think of the guy who wrote "The Gambler". I don't remember the details but from what I do remember, he got very little from the song but the record company an Kenny Rogers made insane amounts of money off it. I know it was legal but I'll never be convinced that it was morally right, to my way of thinking.. when they started to make that kind of money off the guy's song, they should have given the writer more, a lot more. If it were me, it would have been on my mind every day and every night until I made it right.
Anyway, I became a contented amateur. I am happy with it.
 
Some of this reminds me of a tagline on a Far Side cartoon I once saw.... "I only said I was a doctor, I never said I was a good doctor". One person's professional is another person's amateur and vice versa because words mean different things to different people, except for Steve of course... .
For instance I am a professional, just not in the field of music or recording. I am a professional exterminator. Like this question, in the OP, people call me with questions I cannot answer. Last week a lady called me with the question that I usually consider to be a "red flag". She had a problem with millipedes. However, she included "the question/comment" : "I want to know if the chemicals you use are toxic because we have pets". I don't understand how anyone could ask that. Everything is toxic if it is overused or misused, heck water is toxic if you breathe it or even if you drink too much of it. Table salt is more toxic than most pesticides or herbicides. How in the world am I to be expected to control a pest/bug problem if I use something that is not toxic? What IS nontoxic?? Does she think I am going to bring some sort of lift device to pick her house up, crawl under the slab and remove all the millipedes by hand?? No.. it is just a matter of not thinking or perhaps ignorance, of making invalid assumptions. The same sort of thing applies to the question of "are you a professional?"
 
I'd say you are a professional if you charge for your work and get paid. You may not be a good professional and if you aren't, you aren't likely to get repeat customers. I know of doctors (and exterminators) who are professionals but they are not good professionals. They somehow manage to stay in business through advertising and cheaper prices but they have a poor reputation among their peers. A knife is a knife but not all knives are sharp and the dull knives are the ones most likely to cut you.
 
I could see a valid argument that Dr. Dre and all his "Beats" stuff is professional but so is Shure and AGK, in my opinion the latter is better. I think I read it in another thread on this forum. It was a thread about mixing for different mediums. someone (I wish I could remember who) who said that they were always willing to mix to suit a client's wishes, for a song to sound good with these or those monitors or phones, good in a car, etc... but they drew the line at mixing to sound good in Beats headphones... still, Beats phones are very popular and would have to be considered a pro consumer line, if not useful to a professional engineer. Still they are so widely used would it be folly to dismiss them? IDK. It is still completely subjective.
 
Anyone can say anything. If enough people believe it, it gains power if not truth. My chiropractor calls himself a doctor. His daughter works with him, she also used the title "doctor". They consider themselves to be doctors, I consider them to be chiropractors. My cardiologist and internal medicine doctor are, IMO, doctors. Barbers were once dentists... I would not want one working on my teeth but I bet they considered themselves to be professionals and maybe they were, I wasn't there.
 
So... IMO, if you make money doing it, you are a professional. You may or may not be a "good" professional. My wife is a CPA. She is a good CPA, she passed all 4 parts of the CPA exam on her first try, about 2% of people do that... so yeah, she is good. She is also by definition a professional accountant but she is regularly called on to fix things that other professionals have made a mess of. I have seen her, without skirting the tax law, change people from paying over 30K in income taxes a year to getting back near 20K... she is a good professional... and I am a blessed man because of her.
 
There is no definitive answer to the question in the OP other than if you earn money at it you can lay claim to being a pro, others may not agree and you will develop a reputation in any case. It will be good or bad. Maybe the question should be are you 'good at what you do' or 'do you just get by' or 'do you really have no clue, you just like what you are trying to do and having fun'.
 
You can be a professional! Buy the equipment and a business license and voila! You are a professional. At least you can lay claim to the title and the claim is valid, you may or may not be a good professional. 
But, what do I know? Not much.
 
J