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, a

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.