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What has been developing for awhile is that musicians are coming from richer backgrounds on average. They can dally around trying their hand as a working musici

What has been developing for awhile is that musicians are coming from richer backgrounds on average. They can dally around trying their hand as a working musician and can fail and not be destitute. The age of a working class or lower class musician is waining.

absurdo 1y ago
That has been the case for a very, very long time. Classical music is basically one big orgy of wealthy people. Musicians born into families of musicians that were well off. Same goes for other artistic pursuits such as painters etc. I found very little actual insight in this article. I think musicians have been struggling for decades and the parents have known for at least as long to tell their kids to get a degree regardless of their talents. Schools like Berklee are… questionable at best. Lots off nepo babies just taking a few years to fuck about, basically.
- tonyhart7 1y ago
  dude grand piano maybe cost a house back then when you think about it
- analog31 1y ago
  I've played with Berklee-trained musicians. It's a mixed bag. They won't turn you into a great musician against your will. This is true of any education. And you have to already be **** good when you apply in order to make full use of the opportunities that they offer. Oddly enough Berklee is considered to be a jazz school, but the players from there who I consider to be real stand-outs (performing at an international level, or well on their way to doing so) have chosen to earn their livings outside of mainstream jazz.
  - pclmulqdq 1y ago
    Mainstream jazz really doesn't make money. Also, Berklee is also really strong in the broader field of "Commercial Music" which includes things like film scoring and pop-oriented genres.
    - dfedbeef 1y ago
      What is mainstream jazz
      - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
        Kenny G, of course. I saw him rummaging through the dumpster in Kirkland just a few days ago.
      - pclmulqdq 1y ago
        What you get in a jazz club. The "live from Emmet's place" series that you can find on youtube has some of the best jazz players today playing mainstream jazz.
- nradov 1y ago
  The odds are long but some musicians make it work. Several of the Imagine Dragons band members attended Berklee, and then grinded for years playing cover songs and touring small clubs until they got a recording deal. Would they have succeeded at the same level without that Berklee education? Hard to say.
  - scns 1y ago
    > grinded for years playing cover songs The Beatles and Van Halen did the same.
  - arrowsmith 1y ago
    Dream Theater is another example of a successful band that was formed at Berklee.
- vintermann 1y ago
  Conservatory music culture is peculiar. Yes, lots of upper class parents want their children to take part in it, but it is not a good career economically speaking. (Unless you want to be a double-showoff and study medicine alongside classical piano, like one guy in my hometown did.) Especially classical musicians take a step down economical class-wise if they succeed. And this has been the case for most entertainer professions for a long time.
monero-xmr 1y ago
Successful musicians have way more in common with actors than any other profession. It’s about connections, wealth, and nepotism over anything else. Let’s say your child wants to be an actor. One way to make this happen is to be a successful actor yourself - require your children to be cast in the film in return for you starring. This is how famous acting families pushed their kids forwards, including Nicholas Cage (Coppola) and Jeff Bridges. More relevant for HN is rich people. So you are tech rich and your kid wants to act. Fund the movie on the condition your child acts in it. That is the way since movies began.
- bitmasher9 1y ago
  > Fund the movie on the condition your child acts in it. The customer of such a movie isn’t the audience but the wealthy patron sponsoring the movie. I suspect this self-promotion motivation is a large reason why so many movies are so bad.
  - atoav 1y ago
    As a film maker who studied film, the reason why so many movies are so bad are manyfold: - making movies is hard. A lot of things that require years to master need to go right. A *ton* of tech is involved. - making movies is expensive. Money alone won't make you a good movie, but many productions are so on the edge that some choice they had to make for monetary reason will cause the bad. - making movies is complex, that means making a masterful one requires multiple botched attempts and experiences by all people involved. These botched attempts are also what you see. I can't stress enough how hard making a movie is, even in comparison to complicated tech problems, programming etc.
    - blueboo 1y ago
      But it’s also never been easier, cheaper, simpler. So it’s not obvious that these dynamics relate to how the middle has been hollowed out
  - dsign 1y ago
    So many movies are bad because their customer is, intellectually, the minimum common denominator. It's a miracle that movie plots don't consist entirely of grunts, chest pumping and farts, but we are getting closer and closer every year. Most block-busters have an awful lot of primal violence in them, but I bet you can't remember when was the last time any of them had any accurate, actual science.
patcon 1y ago
Science used to work this way too, didn't it? You'd be rich, or you'd have a wealthy benefactor.
- whatshisface 1y ago
  To go back in time before university endowments for intellectual work you'd find yourself in a monestary, with endowments from the nobility for intellectual work (copying texts and making those great illuminated manuscripts). As far as I know the model you're describing did apply to ancient Greece.
Hard_Space 1y ago
In the UK, the 'golden age' of the dole gave an otherwise-unsupported fringe of lower-class and middle-class talent time to mature. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/01/writers-recall-time-dole-unemployment-benefits https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/01/writers-recall...
TrackerFF 1y ago
Pretty much anything in the "creatives" industry. Want to work for the most prestigious fashion brands? You start with unpaid (or very low pay) internships in some of the most expensive cities in the world. Same goes for record labels. Art. Literature publishing. And these days, some of the above will filter out applicants that don't have big enough social media accounts.
thr0waway001 1y ago
> What has been developing for awhile is that musicians are coming from richer backgrounds on average. Same sh it is happening with basketball. More nepo babies that got to go through expensive camp than ballers from the streets rising up the ranks homie. And no person embodies dis shit more than Bronny James. Sad cause sports was supposed to be the ultimate meritocracy yo!

absurdo 1y ago

That has been the case for a very, very long time. Classical music is basically one big orgy of wealthy people. Musicians born into families of musicians that were well off. Same goes for other artistic pursuits such as painters etc. I found very little actual insight in this article. I think musicians have been struggling for decades and the parents have known for at least as long to tell their kids to get a degree regardless of their talents. Schools like Berklee are… questionable at best. Lots off nepo babies just taking a few years to fuck about, basically.

tonyhart7 1y ago
dude grand piano maybe cost a house back then when you think about it
analog31 1y ago
I've played with Berklee-trained musicians. It's a mixed bag. They won't turn you into a great musician against your will. This is true of any education. And you have to already be **** good when you apply in order to make full use of the opportunities that they offer. Oddly enough Berklee is considered to be a jazz school, but the players from there who I consider to be real stand-outs (performing at an international level, or well on their way to doing so) have chosen to earn their livings outside of mainstream jazz.
- pclmulqdq 1y ago
  Mainstream jazz really doesn't make money. Also, Berklee is also really strong in the broader field of "Commercial Music" which includes things like film scoring and pop-oriented genres.
  - dfedbeef 1y ago
    What is mainstream jazz
    - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
      Kenny G, of course. I saw him rummaging through the dumpster in Kirkland just a few days ago.
    - pclmulqdq 1y ago
      What you get in a jazz club. The "live from Emmet's place" series that you can find on youtube has some of the best jazz players today playing mainstream jazz.
nradov 1y ago
The odds are long but some musicians make it work. Several of the Imagine Dragons band members attended Berklee, and then grinded for years playing cover songs and touring small clubs until they got a recording deal. Would they have succeeded at the same level without that Berklee education? Hard to say.
- scns 1y ago
  > grinded for years playing cover songs The Beatles and Van Halen did the same.
- arrowsmith 1y ago
  Dream Theater is another example of a successful band that was formed at Berklee.
vintermann 1y ago
Conservatory music culture is peculiar. Yes, lots of upper class parents want their children to take part in it, but it is not a good career economically speaking. (Unless you want to be a double-showoff and study medicine alongside classical piano, like one guy in my hometown did.) Especially classical musicians take a step down economical class-wise if they succeed. And this has been the case for most entertainer professions for a long time.

monero-xmr 1y ago

Successful musicians have way more in common with actors than any other profession. It’s about connections, wealth, and nepotism over anything else. Let’s say your child wants to be an actor. One way to make this happen is to be a successful actor yourself - require your children to be cast in the film in return for you starring. This is how famous acting families pushed their kids forwards, including Nicholas Cage (Coppola) and Jeff Bridges. More relevant for HN is rich people. So you are tech rich and your kid wants to act. Fund the movie on the condition your child acts in it. That is the way since movies began.

bitmasher9 1y ago
> Fund the movie on the condition your child acts in it. The customer of such a movie isn’t the audience but the wealthy patron sponsoring the movie. I suspect this self-promotion motivation is a large reason why so many movies are so bad.
- atoav 1y ago
  As a film maker who studied film, the reason why so many movies are so bad are manyfold: - making movies is hard. A lot of things that require years to master need to go right. A *ton* of tech is involved. - making movies is expensive. Money alone won't make you a good movie, but many productions are so on the edge that some choice they had to make for monetary reason will cause the bad. - making movies is complex, that means making a masterful one requires multiple botched attempts and experiences by all people involved. These botched attempts are also what you see. I can't stress enough how hard making a movie is, even in comparison to complicated tech problems, programming etc.
  - blueboo 1y ago
    But it’s also never been easier, cheaper, simpler. So it’s not obvious that these dynamics relate to how the middle has been hollowed out
- dsign 1y ago
  So many movies are bad because their customer is, intellectually, the minimum common denominator. It's a miracle that movie plots don't consist entirely of grunts, chest pumping and farts, but we are getting closer and closer every year. Most block-busters have an awful lot of primal violence in them, but I bet you can't remember when was the last time any of them had any accurate, actual science.

patcon 1y ago

Science used to work this way too, didn't it? You'd be rich, or you'd have a wealthy benefactor.

whatshisface 1y ago
To go back in time before university endowments for intellectual work you'd find yourself in a monestary, with endowments from the nobility for intellectual work (copying texts and making those great illuminated manuscripts). As far as I know the model you're describing did apply to ancient Greece.

Hard_Space 1y ago

In the UK, the 'golden age' of the dole gave an otherwise-unsupported fringe of lower-class and middle-class talent time to mature. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/01/writers-recall-time-dole-unemployment-benefits https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/01/writers-recall...

TrackerFF 1y ago

Pretty much anything in the "creatives" industry. Want to work for the most prestigious fashion brands? You start with unpaid (or very low pay) internships in some of the most expensive cities in the world. Same goes for record labels. Art. Literature publishing. And these days, some of the above will filter out applicants that don't have big enough social media accounts.

thr0waway001 1y ago

> What has been developing for awhile is that musicians are coming from richer backgrounds on average. Same sh it is happening with basketball. More nepo babies that got to go through expensive camp than ballers from the streets rising up the ranks homie. And no person embodies dis shit more than Bronny James. Sad cause sports was supposed to be the ultimate meritocracy yo!