The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

How many financially self-sustaining musicians should there be? Streaming has caused the number to fall, but recorded music before that likely made it fall as well.

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?

The question we should be asking, as consumers of music, is how many musical options do we want?

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?

Plenty of hobbyists record their music. A lot of the music I listen to is from youtubers with a handful of views.

Can you recommend a YouTuber with a hand full of views that you think is a good musician?

There are tons of rappers and EDM DJs on Soundcloud (not YouTube) that have legitimately good music. They might not be good 5 years from now or even 1 year from now, but they are good now if you put the work into finding them. Seems like atleast in the DJ scene someone might be on top of the world fairly quickly even if they disappear soon after.