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?

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

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.

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

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).