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The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

(thewalrus.ca)
300 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 28 Jun 25 22:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.274s | source
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elevation ◴[29 Jun 25 04:33 UTC] No.44410373[source]▶
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.

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mettamage ◴[29 Jun 25 10:00 UTC] No.44411752[source]▶
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.

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1. magicalhippo ◴[29 Jun 25 11:51 UTC] No.44412346[source]▶
> 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.