I don't get the 'poor musicians' thing. They're not special. The world doesn't owe them a living. If they're any good they'll make a living. If they're really good they'll do better, as is the case with most trades.
This is deeply bollocks and illustrates the issues at hand.
How can someone work at becoming a successful musician while also holding down a shitty job?
If you’re just starting to make it, you’re not making enough money to live on from the music, while having to hold down the shitty job and also playing gigs in the evenings, travelling around the country, finding time to rehearse, write, record your music as well as maintain friendships and relationships. A lot of good talent gets lost forever in this trap.
The people who make it are incredibly lucky. It’s a myth that talent will always be succeed (I used to believe it myself before I understood how it works).
There’s a huge amount of lost talent out there, as well as a bunch of mediocre and crap musicians making coin becasue they fit some template.
In my world, musicians are crucial and we do owe them a living.
They’re not more special than any other necessary part of society, but nor are they less special, or less deserving of a decent income. Why do musician have to prove their worth every day of their working life when other workers who benefit us all get a guaranteed contracted wage (yes, I know this is very badly eroded and not really true anymore).
Even successful musicians have a limited time at the top and still have to continue proving their worth. Most musicians are toiling away somewhere in the middle, struggling to find ways to get some kind of remuneration for their work. By your argument they should jack it in and do something else, like Fatima giving up dance to work in cyber.
Anyway, most of those toiling away and making music are making some kind of living at it, or they give it up. But they’re not coining it in, and it’s a very precarious living.
And successful musicians create a huge number of support jobs around them, from road crew to sound engineers to bar staff; plus they give work to other salaried people like accountants and drivers.
I don’t want to live in a world where the only music available is either massively successful commercial stuff that’s supported by multinational cconflomerates, or folk singers at the pub playing for a pint and a pork pie. I want all the stuff that exists in between those extremes, and most of those are lving hand to mouth most of the time
I really hate this attitude that people have to prove their commercial aptitude in order to be considered successful or worthy.
And actually. I do consider musicians special. Because more than any other people on earth, they contribute to my internal private inner life, they enhance all the things that make me uniquely myself: my dreams, emotions, responses, memories and feelings. That might not be true for you. But I know it’s also the case for many others.
Same goes for theatre, books, dance, poetry, painting, all the arts.
Anyway, and also,
Do they owe us a living?
Course they do, course they do
Owe us a living?
Course they do, course they do
Owe us a living?
Course they fucking do