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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

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.

osigurdson 1y ago
The idea that the middle class musician ever existed at all is a false premise. Lamenting the loss of something that never existed is pretty ridiculous. "Ahh, remember the good old days when one could make a middle class living as an amateur ski jumper". How can we get back to that? Of course, UBI / communism.
- throaway955 1y ago
  Not false in any way. The life of the middle-income touring performer used to exist and is gone now..
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    Can you name any?
    - scarecrowbob 1y ago
      I've known quite a few people who made quite good livings playing 5-nights a week at hotel lounges in BFE. You're not going to recognize any, because they aren't famous, they just made their living going around playing music and weren't super famous. Even the relatively "famous" ones I have worked with (say, marc benno or paul pearcy or jay boy adams) aren't known by folks outside of very small circles. IME, the consolidation of radio, changes in taste around live music, and the dissolution of paying for recorded music all worked to get rid of that group of folks. But that doesn't mean that I haven't played with a lot of folks who are now in their 70s and 80s who made a good living playing music for folks.
      - osigurdson 1y ago
        Thanks for the names that you provided. I'd say these are examples of people that had some success and then pivoted to become session / touring musicians for other (very famous) bands (though one is a Grammy award winner in their own right). I suppose it is possible that there will be fewer people like that in the future. I guess we will see. Perhaps the artist in the article could similarly pivot. At least, that seems to be the main way to stay in the industry if you are unable (for whatever reason) to attain commercial success.
        throaway955 1y ago
        James Keelaghan, Stephen Fearing, Skinny Puppy...hundreds more. Also, the comment you replied to said that those names he mentioned were the relatively famous ones. The ones who are less famous than that will not have the success you mentioned. They will simply be people who had mid-level success in an industry that could support them.
  - wombatpm 1y ago
    Same with the Midlist Author
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  This is nonsense. The music business relies on a core of largely unknown session players and arrangers. The successful ones earn a comfortable living. The top players are easily millionaires, because there aren't many people who can learn and perform parts by ear with the right vibe for a headliner stadium or Broadway show in under a week. (Or a weekend, in some cases.) There are people you've never heard of earning six or seven figures a year from music for ads. And so on. The catch is these people are very, very good at what they do. They're not bedroom wannabes. As for pop - that has always had a complex relationship with management and funding. Everyone assumes you join a band and get famous. But many bands/artists were treated more like investment vehicles or startups, with record companies and sometimes private individuals providing seed funding for careers. It's a much riskier career than software, where you can be pretty mediocre and make a good living. But impossible and nonexistent are both spectacularly wrong and absolutely detached from how the industry works.
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    The article isn't focused on the plight of the session Broadway player or Orchestral musician (nor artists writing music for ads or movies or acting as a session musician for a headliner act). It isn't clear that this is getting better or worse but is completely orthogonal to the discussion. Mainstream recording artists (pop, country, R&B, rock, etc.) represent the vast majority of industry revenues. My argument is that middle class musicians have effectively never existed in this space. Just like middle class professional basketball players effectively don't exist. You either win big or do something else.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    Looks like about 3/4 of musicians are part time. The average salary of $57k for the full time workers is about $1k over the minimum to be considered middle class. And the unemployment rate is about 18%. There's no doubt that there are some middle class and higher earners. It seems that most are part time, don't make much and face higher unemployment than many other sectors. Sector growth is alaso very slow. There's a reason that most people's parents don't push them to pursue music careers unless it's as a teacher or if they're exceptional. Same thing for sports - you can make decent money as a college coach or gym teacher, but the proportion of people who play sports that go on to do anything professionally with it is extraordinary small. It's all supply and demand.
- easyThrowaway 1y ago
  This is an obvious trolling attempt, but I'll bite. Very simple statistical sample for those interested: - Go on the wikipedia page for the notable alumni of Berklee College of Music[1]; - Sort by graduation years; - Notice the "early life" snippet on the bio of most musicians from the 1970-2000. - Compare those with the bio from artists from and before such interval. Bonus points for taking in consideration how many musicians past year 2000 come from a family with an already existing musical background. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Berklee_College_of_Music_alumni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Berklee_College_of_Mus...
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    Well, I do mean in the context of the article. I'm not suggesting no one ever played in an orchestra. I'm saying that are vanishingly few middle class touring and recording rock, hip hop, pop and country artists and this has largely always been the case. In this domain you either hit it out of the park or go on to do something else. I don't really know what the table of Berklee grads is pointing toward. Are you suggesting that this says it is now harder to become a middle class recording / touring artist today than it was in the past? If so, how?
    - JSteph22 1y ago
      I agree. Entertainment has long been called a "hits based" industry.
- osigurdson 1y ago
  A question for the downvoters. How many of your middle class neighbours are recording / touring artists playing original pop, rock, hip hop or country music? Did you have a lot more such neighbours 20 years ago?
  - losvedir 1y ago
    20 years ago I knew a bunch of people in their teens and early twenties. Now I know a bunch of people in their 40s and I couldn't tell you what the teens around me are doing. Are you sure you're not just picking up on the fact that you're 20 years older now?
    - osigurdson 1y ago
      My point is 20 years ago I had zero middle class neighbours that fell into this category and that number is the same today. I suspect those numbers represent most people's experiences as well. The article is suggesting that there is a delta between the past and the present. My argument is there is no delta. There were always nearly zero people in this category.
  - scarecrowbob 1y ago
    More than you'd think. My honest opinion, as a person who has gigged a lot for money, who has played a whole lot with folks who are now in their 70s and 80s, and who has retired from programming into a life where I can afford to just make music with folks is this: a lot of folks on this thread have very little understanding of how the music industry has ever operated and almost no understanding of the material and historical situation of musicians working in the 20th C. There is a whole technological progression proceeding backwards from streaming to the Clear Channel consolidation, to the rise of cheap DJ equipment going back at least as far as the the rise of mass sheet music production, and that procession has changed the music industry at every step. While it's not some universally transcendent material praxis, there was indeed a time between the 1940s and the late 1990s when the market was much wider and more distributed in ways that made it possible for a pretty wide and diverse set of folks who aren't A-list national acts to develop functional careers as musicians. If you're not aware of that situation, perhaps you don't have enough of a basis in the history of that industry to be commenting with the kind of certainty you're displaying.
osigurdson 1y ago
>> 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.
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
  This seems extremely overly reductive. It's not just "time to practice". It's also about having access to equipment that is available, clean, and in proper working order. And it's about having access to educators who can teach you what you are doing right or wrong. And those educators having the time to be able to actually do so. And it's about having the ability to attend performances or competitions so that you can learn to actually perform and to receive impartial critique to improve. That doesn't just mean having the option of attending these events but also being able to afford the fees associated with the events as well as being able to afford transportation (whether that's getting there yourself or having family being able to take time off from work to transport you there and back). You don't need every one of these to be able to succeed but each one of these legs you take away is one less leg the next generation of lower and middle class musicians have to stand on.
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    The focus here again seems to be on the plight of the Orchestral musician / related. While this might represent a large portion of mind share in some groups it is tiny from an economic perspective when compared to mainstream recording acts. The primary instruments driving this revenue are as follows: 1) voice 2) drums 3) bass 4) guitar 5) keyboard. None of these things are expensive or hard to maintain. You don't even need to be particularly good at any of these things other than voice.

osigurdson 1y ago

The idea that the middle class musician ever existed at all is a false premise. Lamenting the loss of something that never existed is pretty ridiculous. "Ahh, remember the good old days when one could make a middle class living as an amateur ski jumper". How can we get back to that? Of course, UBI / communism.

throaway955 1y ago
Not false in any way. The life of the middle-income touring performer used to exist and is gone now..
- osigurdson 1y ago
  Can you name any?
  - scarecrowbob 1y ago
    I've known quite a few people who made quite good livings playing 5-nights a week at hotel lounges in BFE. You're not going to recognize any, because they aren't famous, they just made their living going around playing music and weren't super famous. Even the relatively "famous" ones I have worked with (say, marc benno or paul pearcy or jay boy adams) aren't known by folks outside of very small circles. IME, the consolidation of radio, changes in taste around live music, and the dissolution of paying for recorded music all worked to get rid of that group of folks. But that doesn't mean that I haven't played with a lot of folks who are now in their 70s and 80s who made a good living playing music for folks.
    - osigurdson 1y ago
      Thanks for the names that you provided. I'd say these are examples of people that had some success and then pivoted to become session / touring musicians for other (very famous) bands (though one is a Grammy award winner in their own right). I suppose it is possible that there will be fewer people like that in the future. I guess we will see. Perhaps the artist in the article could similarly pivot. At least, that seems to be the main way to stay in the industry if you are unable (for whatever reason) to attain commercial success.
      - throaway955 1y ago
        James Keelaghan, Stephen Fearing, Skinny Puppy...hundreds more. Also, the comment you replied to said that those names he mentioned were the relatively famous ones. The ones who are less famous than that will not have the success you mentioned. They will simply be people who had mid-level success in an industry that could support them.
- wombatpm 1y ago
  Same with the Midlist Author
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
This is nonsense. The music business relies on a core of largely unknown session players and arrangers. The successful ones earn a comfortable living. The top players are easily millionaires, because there aren't many people who can learn and perform parts by ear with the right vibe for a headliner stadium or Broadway show in under a week. (Or a weekend, in some cases.) There are people you've never heard of earning six or seven figures a year from music for ads. And so on. The catch is these people are very, very good at what they do. They're not bedroom wannabes. As for pop - that has always had a complex relationship with management and funding. Everyone assumes you join a band and get famous. But many bands/artists were treated more like investment vehicles or startups, with record companies and sometimes private individuals providing seed funding for careers. It's a much riskier career than software, where you can be pretty mediocre and make a good living. But impossible and nonexistent are both spectacularly wrong and absolutely detached from how the industry works.
- osigurdson 1y ago
  The article isn't focused on the plight of the session Broadway player or Orchestral musician (nor artists writing music for ads or movies or acting as a session musician for a headliner act). It isn't clear that this is getting better or worse but is completely orthogonal to the discussion. Mainstream recording artists (pop, country, R&B, rock, etc.) represent the vast majority of industry revenues. My argument is that middle class musicians have effectively never existed in this space. Just like middle class professional basketball players effectively don't exist. You either win big or do something else.
- giantg2 1y ago
  Looks like about 3/4 of musicians are part time. The average salary of $57k for the full time workers is about $1k over the minimum to be considered middle class. And the unemployment rate is about 18%. There's no doubt that there are some middle class and higher earners. It seems that most are part time, don't make much and face higher unemployment than many other sectors. Sector growth is alaso very slow. There's a reason that most people's parents don't push them to pursue music careers unless it's as a teacher or if they're exceptional. Same thing for sports - you can make decent money as a college coach or gym teacher, but the proportion of people who play sports that go on to do anything professionally with it is extraordinary small. It's all supply and demand.
easyThrowaway 1y ago
This is an obvious trolling attempt, but I'll bite. Very simple statistical sample for those interested: - Go on the wikipedia page for the notable alumni of Berklee College of Music[1]; - Sort by graduation years; - Notice the "early life" snippet on the bio of most musicians from the 1970-2000. - Compare those with the bio from artists from and before such interval. Bonus points for taking in consideration how many musicians past year 2000 come from a family with an already existing musical background. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Berklee_College_of_Music_alumni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Berklee_College_of_Mus...
- osigurdson 1y ago
  Well, I do mean in the context of the article. I'm not suggesting no one ever played in an orchestra. I'm saying that are vanishingly few middle class touring and recording rock, hip hop, pop and country artists and this has largely always been the case. In this domain you either hit it out of the park or go on to do something else. I don't really know what the table of Berklee grads is pointing toward. Are you suggesting that this says it is now harder to become a middle class recording / touring artist today than it was in the past? If so, how?
  - JSteph22 1y ago
    I agree. Entertainment has long been called a "hits based" industry.
osigurdson 1y ago
A question for the downvoters. How many of your middle class neighbours are recording / touring artists playing original pop, rock, hip hop or country music? Did you have a lot more such neighbours 20 years ago?
- losvedir 1y ago
  20 years ago I knew a bunch of people in their teens and early twenties. Now I know a bunch of people in their 40s and I couldn't tell you what the teens around me are doing. Are you sure you're not just picking up on the fact that you're 20 years older now?
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    My point is 20 years ago I had zero middle class neighbours that fell into this category and that number is the same today. I suspect those numbers represent most people's experiences as well. The article is suggesting that there is a delta between the past and the present. My argument is there is no delta. There were always nearly zero people in this category.
- scarecrowbob 1y ago
  More than you'd think. My honest opinion, as a person who has gigged a lot for money, who has played a whole lot with folks who are now in their 70s and 80s, and who has retired from programming into a life where I can afford to just make music with folks is this: a lot of folks on this thread have very little understanding of how the music industry has ever operated and almost no understanding of the material and historical situation of musicians working in the 20th C. There is a whole technological progression proceeding backwards from streaming to the Clear Channel consolidation, to the rise of cheap DJ equipment going back at least as far as the the rise of mass sheet music production, and that procession has changed the music industry at every step. While it's not some universally transcendent material praxis, there was indeed a time between the 1940s and the late 1990s when the market was much wider and more distributed in ways that made it possible for a pretty wide and diverse set of folks who aren't A-list national acts to develop functional careers as musicians. If you're not aware of that situation, perhaps you don't have enough of a basis in the history of that industry to be commenting with the kind of certainty you're displaying.

osigurdson 1y ago

>> 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.

OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
This seems extremely overly reductive. It's not just "time to practice". It's also about having access to equipment that is available, clean, and in proper working order. And it's about having access to educators who can teach you what you are doing right or wrong. And those educators having the time to be able to actually do so. And it's about having the ability to attend performances or competitions so that you can learn to actually perform and to receive impartial critique to improve. That doesn't just mean having the option of attending these events but also being able to afford the fees associated with the events as well as being able to afford transportation (whether that's getting there yourself or having family being able to take time off from work to transport you there and back). You don't need every one of these to be able to succeed but each one of these legs you take away is one less leg the next generation of lower and middle class musicians have to stand on.
- osigurdson 1y ago
  The focus here again seems to be on the plight of the Orchestral musician / related. While this might represent a large portion of mind share in some groups it is tiny from an economic perspective when compared to mainstream recording acts. The primary instruments driving this revenue are as follows: 1) voice 2) drums 3) bass 4) guitar 5) keyboard. None of these things are expensive or hard to maintain. You don't even need to be particularly good at any of these things other than voice.