The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

I played in a cover band with some well-paid engineers. We enjoyed music enough to consider going full time, but even with four-figure bookings were were barely taking home minimum wage. We looked into getting a manager to find us more high-paying gigs, but management fees and travel costs eat up the gains.

For a band, it's virtually impossible to find work outside the weekend. If a region had a few restaurants that were known for year round "live music Mondays", "live music lunches", etc, it would increase the number of hours that a musician could work during the week, and make full time performance viable for more musicians. Of course, people would also need to support these performances by patronizing the venues that host them.

But until a working musician can fill their weekday calendar with paying gigs without excessive travel/lodging costs, you'll continue to see talented musicians drop out and do something else.

I've noticed post-covid there are a lot more weeknight gigs. I think it was accepted during the recovery period as everyone tried to make up for lost time, but so far it hasn't faded out. I hope it continues.

I've come to the perhaps grim conclusion that the world doesn't value music enough. It seems to me that most artists are making music because they love to do it themselves. It's essentially a form of play. Wanting a career out of it implies sacrifice in the way we currently have our world setup.

The current world we live in doesn't care enough about creativity. I find it a bleak thought, but here I am. Feel free to try to talk me out of it, because it does feel kind of depressing. Or feel free to validate it. I want to see the world for what it is, not what I like it to be.

What would a world that cares about creativity look like?

Even if you play gigs 7 days a week on Broadway (Nashville), all year round, you'd make a pitiful salary - compared to the work put in.

And you'd be locked to only playing certain types of music (country, classic rock, singer songwriter), doing multiple gigs a day.

Truth be told, most musicians would be better off by picking a job, any job really, and treating music as a side hustle. And that really pains me, as I started out as a musician.

If you're going to make a living off music, it's going to be a never-ending marathon of hustles and uncertainty. Cover bands, church bands, wedding bands, session work, lessons, roadie work, instrument tech, and half (of not two thirds) of that work is based on sheer luck, depending on what people you cross paths with.

> I've come to the perhaps grim conclusion that the world doesn't value music enough.

What do you mean by not valuing music? Should we allocate more of our paycheck to music? Or should we talk more about how great music is?

> It seems to me that most artists are making music because they love to do it themselves.

I mean, art is ultimately an expression of emotions. If you don't love creating the art you create, unless you have another deep emotional reason to create it, it's going to affect the result quite significantly.

> The current world we live in doesn't care enough about creativity.

This is just human nature though I think. Most people want the fuzzy feeling of something familiar. And then you have those who go to large events for the shared experience of going, rather than what's actually performed.

Personally I love going to smaller venues (<300 people) where the cost of admission is such that I feel I can take the risk of something unknown and outside my comfort zone. But I also realize I'm weird that way.

The music industry is a multi-billion dollar market and growing, so it's not really fair to say that the world doesn't value it.

The problem is that it's a bit of a winner takes all market. It's comparable to professional sports.

Everyone loves soccer, but 99.9% of people won't get paid to play it. That doesn't mean it isn't valued - some of the highest paid people in the world are soccer players!

They sort of do (or as much as they ever have), but I think that the modern world gives access to national and global stars via prerecorded entertainment and the little guys can't make a living like they used to.

That's a drag in many ways because local circuits and regional music are where a lot of new styles and bands came from, and the wealth is more concentrated now into fewer people.

People do care whether they realize it or not. They will always care. They have to if they consume any creative media at all. Our government and economic system on the other hand might not care to offer any encouragement other than “good luck, you’ll need it. I hope you’re good at marketing.” The article states there are more people making music than ever. I agree. I became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of output coming out by bedroom musicians. The list of bands playing near me weekly is huge. Whether it’s more quality on top of quantity is another discussion.

What people don't care about is seeking novelty.

Think of it: a lot of people listen to music as a background of some kind. That means they don't want to keep going "Ugh, this one sucks, next, next, next..."

But, there's thousands of absolutely excellent songs that are time tested. You can play top 100 from the 80s and not be annoyed most of the time.

But ever time somebody plays Prince or Duran Duran is a time they're not playing the song you just released.

It'd probably be a bit less winner-takes-all without the capitalist dynamics that make it such.

The technology plays a huge role.

Why watch local soccer in most of the world when you can watch the Champions League on the internet ?

In the Soviet Union people were watching Dynamo and Lokomotiv on TV rather than going to local games too.

This is just not true.

There has never been as many ways to make money off being creative as individual as right now.

This board just loves to romanticize the past to an absurd degree and then conclude free money fixes everything.

It is basically every non-software discussion on here. The present sucks, the past was better, free money.

I don't think the capitalist dynamic have as much of an impact as the technology and social factors.

Tech allows distribution, and the social factors is people want to listen to what's popular