The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

Should we stop thinking about music as a job and start thinking about it as a hobbyist art form? Nobody is out there lamenting that you can’t make a living off of landscape painting. It’s a fun form of self expression that people will do regardless of the economics, so maybe the problem was ever thinking you could make a profession out of it?

At one point there were several million "MySpace Bands". That's music as a hobbyist art form. Some of them might even have been good.

Completely different markets, though: how much time per day do you spend looking at landscape paintings vs. listening to music?

Some are already worried: https://fortune.com/europe/2025/06/09/bnpl-loans-klarna-ceo-...

"How many jobs there should be for X" is not a question that can be answered by people whose main intent in the last few years has been to put others out of a job while claiming they're making the world a better place. Aka, us in tech.

Meanwhile, outside of museums most landscape art is also advertising. But I’ll spend two or three hours at an art museum when I get the chance.

It’s not really The Sims. You don’t usually go stand in front of one of your paintings and emote a bunch. It’s just there breathing life into a space.

I like art but I cannot remember the last time I went to an exhibition. Certainly not since my wife and I became parents.

If musicians can't make a living, then both the quantity and quality of our musical options go down. Yes, hobbyists will always make music for themselves, but hobbyists won't necessarily record music for us or tour around the country for us to see in live venues. The issue is not that musicians inherently deserve to make a living; the issue is, what kind of musical market is available for consumers?

Like, I see where you're going with this but music is one of those things that's actually the whole point of being alive. If all we ever do is do "useful" things ($$$) we lose our chance to actually live our lives.

Plenty are. But your experience in landscape painting transfers to other professional crafts, so the loss is mitigated. What does a skilled musician have to tranfer to if the industry falls apart? Teaching music?

I also really don't like reinforcing the idea that "the arts aren't meant to be a career". One of the biggest turnabouts in the 20th century is that you don't need to already be set for life in order to spend your days training your passions. The arts are (or were) no longer this "high class" means to distinguish yourself from the working class.

Meanwhile so much of society is built upon and weathered against destruction over such artisans. Are you really going to have a healthy society if all kids see growing up are pencil pushers, hard physical labor, managing retail, or hyper-specializing after 20+ years of schooling? What's all that work building up to? To serve billionaires?

That seems like a weird angle to take it, no? I know it's just an example but there is more than one type of artist, just as there's more than one type of musician. As simple as it is, someone needed to design the YCombinator logo. Art is everywhere as well, even on a site like this that doesn't host much visual media.

(P.S. I do remember the last time I went to a concert. October).

we absolutely should be pursing things that are creative, beautiful, and transcendental. but.. should we expect the pursuit of the creative, beautiful, and transcendental to be a career? we should encourage everybody to do because it is inherently valuable instead of pursuing it because its a job.

nobody is out there lamenting that we're not supporting a 'middle class' of baseball players.

the top 0.001% get to the big leagues and make bank. the top 0.01% scrape by in the minors. nobody else makes a dime. yet... plenty of people are still passionate about the game and play it for free. the guys playing in an adult rec leauge aren't thinking "there's a career in this I can put together a good highlight reel this season". they're playing because they find it fun and fulfilling.

so maybe musicians should view music like professional sports? do it because you love it. start a band with your friends. play gigs at your local bar every friday. but don't kid yourself that it's a career.

I think most artists would tell you that if people couldn't make a living as visual artists, the quality of new art in the world would decrease tremendously. Painting is a craft - it takes a lot of training to develop the skills. It also takes a ton of work to develop one's own style. Then there's the whole business part of marketing the work.

Very few great artists would have been able to reach their level of quality just doing it as a hobby.

That's not contrary to what I said, which was "hobbyists won't necessarily [emphasis added] record music for us". And of course you didn't respond to my point about touring.

In any case, the music and recordings of hobbyists are likely to be inferior to the music and recordings of professionals, because in general, professionals are better than hobbyists at almost everything, music being only one example.

> A lot of the music I listen to is from youtubers with a handful of views.

If that's the future you want, then I guess you're in luck.

We do spend a lot of time looking at photos!

The future feudal lords will just sell to each other and ignore the jobless, moneyless masses. We don’t like to hear this, but normal people will likely become less and less economically relevant, to the point where their total economic activity will one day be a rounding error next to the economic activity of the top 0.0N%.

I worked with a founder who dealt with only a small number of very rich customers. He would say “We only sell to the rich because they have the money.” The future looks like a more extreme version of this.

In the absence of that, neurosis is certain to flourish.

So, it is not an economic matter but a matter of the psychodynamics of society. For the sake of the health of the whole, some members of the whole must be able to bring in certain vibes, patterns, states of mind, ideas, etc. And without the ability to pursue that and only that skillset, they won't be able to succeed at that. And it is required for the functioning of the whole.

It's a bit akin to the way the entire body depends on the cells that process ATP. If you eliminate all cells that serve that role, the entire body dies, even though they are a miniscule aspect of the entire operation. That is where the animating spirit comes from.

Now, with AI, all signs seem to indicate that the industry will finally reset to what was the norm for hundreds of years : Artists would be supported on their craft by patrons and benefactors. Most didn't make it to be wealthy, but at least, they got to enjoy time in their craft.

I sell you stuff worth 5 billion, you give me 5 billion. Nothing happened. Maybe you even consume the product so there is less wealth.

Only labor can generate value. Work is what transforms a thing into another thing that has more value than before. Machines and AI do not create value.

You might wonder what would happen if they had an general AI, maybe actual autonomous robots? Would those create value? Well, at first whoever got the first AGI would get incredibly rich but if everyone had access to that tech, the prices for everything that can produced with it would plummet down until they are the cost of running the AI.

Rich people get richer by employing poor people. So they can extract the value they produce. If they don't employ anyone, they are not making any profit. (Well for actual free markets, you can of course make profit being a monopolist and stuff or just do crime.)

So yes, rich people are screwed. That is why they buy bunkers in New Zealand. That is why we see the rise of fascism, because they will have to tighten the screws to keep the ship running a little while longer.

I will cheekily argue that the "transferable skill" of failed athletes is charisma. It's pretty clear that being able to talk about sports is a cheat code for upwards mobility (no matter the industry) and the mentality it builds is of high social value (you'll never find trouble finding a local court or field to make a pickup game with. An artists Meetup, a bit harder to arrange). Certainly more than 99% of artists.

But to properly answer your point, I don't have the full answer of how to balance "necessary careers" with "dream careers". If you want to maintain a satisfied populace (aka, prevent a violent coup by people who feel they have nothing to lose), they need to feel their dreams are reachable. Emphasis on "feel".

You don't even need to make money off your dreams per se. But you need time for it, and basics safeties taken care of. the current atmosphere offers neither.

That depends, how much do you value culture (and, my extension: cultural power)? If it's a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing, then whatever the market will bear.

Once, when criticising the toxic effects of advertising, I got a response to the effect of 'but how will streamers be able to support themselves?!'. Which I was really struck by, because it presumes that streamers should be able to support themselves by streaming. Should they? Is this actually a desirable outcome? Yes, the financial viability probably leads to more streaming, but what about the quality of the overall streaming? And what about the opportunity cost when someone gives up their job and puts their labours into the business of streaming?

There will always be some level of cultural output, since there will always be passionate people. But has making the arts an industry (through an ever expanding artifice of 'intellectual property', and the ever expanding criminalisation of its subversion) actually led to better arts? Would this be a better or worse world if people built bridges in their day job and played rock gigs at night, solely for the love of it?

I'm not trying to do a Socratic dialogue here, I genuinely don't know. But I suspect the answer is much more nuanced than 'more money = better art', and I am sceptical of certain legal or economic distortions based on that assumption (e.g. life + 70 copyright terms, surveillance advertising, surveillance DRM software, billion-dollar industries that subsist solely on 'IP', fines and prison terms for unauthorised sharing, or the reversing or bypassing of DRM, etc).

Many musicians teach others. Without them how will we learn one of the most beautiful / coolest things to ever exist?

I’ve tried learning from an app and it’s not the same as spending an hour with my guitar teacher. It’s not even close. I wish he were paid more given how talented he is and how hard he works.

Now someone with a $400 controller, pirated music, and some free time can do it. Loads of people willing to play at venues for free just for the fun of it have crushed the viability of doing it as an actual job.

Anyone who could live on this planet without music is a psycopath.

So you worked with someone who you claim to be a direct -knowing even- participant in this trend. You presumably benefited from this work too. No?

It's impressive how many people bemoan the dangers they see in a thing, while continuing to contribute to its growth, again and again and again, as long as the personal benefit keeps working their way.

Maybe you don't value music or live music, but there are a lot of people out there that do. You not caring much for it doesn't change the fact or make it ok that they're getting stiffed by those with the upper hand in the relationship.

He's your guitar teacher. It would be difficult for you to state a wish that was more completely under your own control.

It reminds me of ex-Soviet chess players. The emigration of so many good grandmaster-level players diluted the market, and unless you were in the absolute upper echelons (like Kramnik, Karpov, or Kasparov), you pretty much had to supplement your income by teaching on the side.

Among other things, I play large-ensemble jazz. Over the years, I've played in a number of bands, and the level of quality and variety achieved by players with professional training is a noticeable step above amateur players. The material that my current band plays is unplayable without training. About half of the band members have music degrees (many teach music in the public schools) and the other half are dedicated amateurs with past training like myself.

Other styles, like folk music, are essentially sustained by amateurs.

Some things can only be done by amateurs, or professionals who also have a musical hobby, such as playing experimental, obscure, or historical music. Amateur musicians also support the professional scene by attending performances, taking lessons, buying instruments (resulting in economies of scale), etc.

I can keep playing this game, as can others. Why do we need all that money invested in data collection and disseminating cat videos, political unrest, etc.

But how are you going to get good if you don't get any practice and feedback?

I remember someone lamenting people videoing comedians in small venues and posting the fails, that follow you forever. How are you going to get good at stand up if you can't fail and learn?

Not everyone can be Steven King and get an advance worth 3 years salary for their first book.

Well, you know, it is kinda like how companies are replacing all the juniors with AI. It's cheap, for now. But then comes the question of what do you do in 5-10 years when you need some seniors with actual experience?

There's lots of value in amateur engineering. What if we deprofessionalized engineering via making it difficult for anyone to make a living doing it? Some people would no doubt still continue to do it, to scratch their itches and exercise their minds. But they would spend less time doing it, less time sudying how to do it, more time doing whatever it takes to pay the bills and claw out some semblance of security. We certainly wouldn't fall into technical poverty immediately, and maybe we wouldn't miss what we don't quite invent / develop, but both the people who actually love it enough to pay attention and the professionals would know the difference between what isn't getting done.

(And in fact, the US is standing on the precipice of a FAFO event with research here, having just made it more difficult to make a living focusing on it.)

What happens to a field that can only be engaged as a dilettante, never as a committed investor?

*Realizing this might be confusing in context. I meant e.g. navigational instruments

If we're looking at extremes, I don't think the ultra rich are in as bad a position as you want them to be.

Well you don’t need to. The answer is ”as many as the market will support”, as it is with any other product. However, your rhetorical question misses the point completely. The question is not should a person just make thing x as a hobby, but that this global multi-billion dollar industry shares very little of it’s revenue to the people who make thump thump and bum bum that get’s asses on the floor and people to move. All of the examples in this article are clearly quite successful acts that people are willing to pay to listen to and are quite integral part of the economy as a whole (not to mention softer values such as cultural enrichment of all human life), but are struggling to make the ends meet. Why.

Because some else literally takes the money people pay to listen to them. If I want to listen rapper Yakkedi Yap’s new single Xingabow and give him money, I would be better off to sending them money in an envelope than listening them from any streaming app (maybe Bandcamp is an exception), or even going to their concert or buying their merch. Because someone literally steals the money.

At least if you buy a landscape painting from a gallery the gallery takes just 20-40% and artist gets the rest minus materials and taxes. They don’t take 60%, then minus every possible cost from the artist, then take what is left and give it to Drake.

We can only speculate about the future having more AI-code or the repercussions thereof (as many do).

And for me with musicians the number is zero.

Software development will go this way, too, as we are all starting to learn.

The problem is people are ok with corporate, mass-produced slop—whether it be music, furniture, or (soon) software. Fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for human craftsman-produced product.

Bandcamp is chock full of bands, from home produced stuff, to bands spending saved money on a cheap studio. It's enough that even in the sub-niches I like, I can listen to 10-20 newly released albums every week.

I doubt more than a small single digit percentage of them make money that way, but they very often really enjoy what they are doing.

those responsible for advancement of musical boundaries rarely are recognized or rewarded in kind, at least since the dawn of the recorded music mafia.

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." Hunter S. Thompson

My answer is no not necessarily. One can pursue it in their free time. Whether it should be a career or not is honestly an invisible hand question (aka capitalism). I'm normally not pro invisible hand such as in the case of healthcare, but when it comes to stuff like this, I totally am.

It might be beneficial to have dedicated people to do this, but a lot can be accomplished by free time.

When you do a hobby you can get practice and feedback in. It depends on their situation.

Someone is a kid? A lot

Someone is single? 4 hours per evening and 6 hours per weekend day. That's still a lot.

Someone has kids? Don't know but doesn't seem like a lot

silicone valley is grifting its own rich people with paper bomb shelters.

silence is golden and allows for reflection upon what we heard

But, if your central moral argument about the subject does revolve around thinking such a scenario is likely and being disgusted by it, then being paid by the people supposedly promoting this kind of economic inequality and working with them while they do it is pretty goddam hypocritical.

You probably want digital payment systems like banking and warehouse management. But I am thinking those sort of areas are only fraction of modern software industry.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O7EcT5YzKhQ&pp=ygUeUXVhcnRlciB...

Not at all clear.

FOSS before that likely made it fall as well

Almost certainly false. Imagine a world where the concept of open source never happened, so if you want a website you have to pay thousands of dollars for web servers, compilers, databases, etc. Would the demand for software developers be higher or lower than in our world?

Gabe Churray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGufuxRFqAM

Pete Calandra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUxNw2MEg0Q

LtN Jones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qke-hC7RnXQ

Johannes Winkler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1tySFkXUUA

Caught In Joy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxM9MNau3U

Jay Hosking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCLqevwWE1g

Gattobus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGeAMOwW01k

Dexba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3PB05qVI38

Tefty & Meems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILVIzsoc6_0

Vox Mnemonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnQi3dnWrKE

Oxix52: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDNZPzSaYKo

JP Blasco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKiB04JlQqY

Kris Lennox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC3GNZYcXUU

Singing Circuitry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwdxTuFosdo

Winterdagen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhNfUDs6TGY

Noah Lifschey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVFg-ZxNns0

There's plenty of music available even if only some hobbyists record. In terms of musical options, I'd say we're in a golden age. Used to be, we could only listen to whatever some record label was willing to fund. Before that, just local musicians. Now we can pull up all sorts of obscure musicians all over the world. Recently I went down a rabbit hole of famous rock songs played in medieval style on period instruments; that's not something I'd be likely to find at a record store.

Recording isn't the barrier it used to be, and it'll keep getting easier to make good mixes as the software improves.

Meanwhile, it's likely that the power law will continue to apply, and plenty of especially talented musicians will hit the big time and do live touring. In fact, as more music is generated by AI, I expect people seeking authenticity will develop more interest in live music.

clearly that isn't the case. the fetishism of amateur/hobby practice here is ridiculous. if people found value in these activities, they would pay for them. UBI advocates basically want someone to fund them drinking beer while they tinker in their garage.

The right question is likely how much time we should dedicate to subsistence - roof, clothes, food.

And that number ought to go down.

From that you can derive that we should have a freaking lot of people who can devote their time to music.

It's of course quite dull, kitchens, cabinets, ... Mostly tailored to living spaces of upper middle class and rich people of varying taste, so you'll be doing a bunch of tacky stuff no doubt.

That and carports.

If we do not explicitly carve out a space for the arts and other transcendental pursuits, capitalism eats them. And then the cancer grows.

So it is a moral imperative to make it possible for SOME of us (obviously, not everyone is called to such things) to pursue these things exclusively.