It is a lie to pretend that only a select few at the very top can live decently from their music. There are not a lot of musicians making big bank like your ty

It is a lie to pretend that only a select few at the very top can live decently from their music. There are not a lot of musicians making big bank like your typical pop star, but there are plenty that just live decently from their craft. Very often they are making less than a career in a lucrative field would bring but still more or at least equal to a median job. And they have a lot of benefits that are just not very easy to put a price on (freedom to do what you love is priceless for some). I think there is a distortion coming from the "bottom of the barrel musician" that spends way too much time complaining instead of trying to improve (or moving on to something else if they don't have what it takes). The reality is that the vast majority of music produced/performed is so bad it has absolutely no value commercial or otherwise. I don't think the software craft is very comparable, it's just not the same incentive and constraints at work...