The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

> I heard one answer more than any other: the government should introduce universal basic income. This would indeed afford artists the security to create art, but it’s also extremely fanciful.

Until we start viewing "fanciful" ideas as realistic, our problems will persist. This article is another in the long series of observations of seemingly distinct problems which are actually facets of a larger problem, namely that overall economic inequality is way too high. It's not just that musicians, or actors, or grocery store baggers, or taxi drivers, or whatever, can't make a living, it's that the set of things you can do to make a living is narrowing more and more. Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes, breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry.

If you want to talk about the root of problems, it comes down to preferences. Income inequality in musicians? People prefer some musicians and songs over others. UBI and taxation isn't going to meaningfully change the income inequality between the median and top earners in entertainment fields due to social dynamics. Guess what the primary driver of the housing shortage is? Preference for larger homes and "better" locations. There are enough housing units nationally, but their distribution and charateristics don't match the preferences. You might be thinking about NIMBY, but guess what that is? The preferences of the people already there. Solutions like UBI or just building more skip a logical step of evaluating the true underlying causes and presume them instead. To solve a problem we must first understand it.

The inequality of musicians is not about what they earn once they make a living making music. Professional instrumentalists, for example, tend to be paid fairly equally (though not necessarily well).

It's about who gets to become a musician, because practicing the skill takes a lot of resources, and it seems the middle class can no longer afford that.

>> It's about who gets to become a musician, because practicing the skill takes a lot of resources, and it seems the middle class can no longer afford that.

Most of the middle class has lots of time to practice (just do that instead of watching TikTok). Practice can help you become a better musician, but cannot make you great - innate talent is needed for that. Being great is also no guarantee of success - luck and / or other forms of skill are needed (marketing capability, etc).

This is also only on the performance side of things. The real limiting factor in music for the most part is writing songs that people want to hear. If you can do that you will be successful almost immediately because supply and demand is so out of balance here and distribution is trivial.

This doesn't work in practice. Marketing for instance rewards spending far more than skill. Sure social media/viral marketing can theoretically be free, but that just kicks the can down the road. My friend's band is (in my opinion) terrific, but despite constantly playing shows and posting everywhere haven't gotten "instan" success". They haven't gotten the recommendation algorithms or playlists skewed in their favor by signing with a major publisher but that comes with its own problems

Well, do tell. What is your friends band's name?

Thin Lines, Golden Days is a fantastic album: https://open.spotify.com/album/7KZ2Rp2bp5X3MU3rmu7nwf?si=O1d...