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Comment by yjftsjthsd-h | Hacker News Reader

> It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to make a hit record.

True, but hardly apples-to-apples; it's orders of magnitude easier to make music than it is to make a viral app. In either case, the barrier to entry is low, the standard for doing it professionally is surprisingly high, and making a hit is a huge undertaking.

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Yes, there are orders of magnitude of scale in both fields.

In software it can cost $10k to build an app but Google Search costs $10^10: a six orders of magnitude difference.

In music there’s got to be a big dynamic range in effort involved as well. (I doubt it’s 10^6 though!)

But comparing the best music to the lowest end app is apples to oranges.

This might approach 10^6 if you consider the largest band tours going around the world and filling stadiums with 50 000 people.

Don’t you mean 5 x 10^5 ? ;)

They just need to fill 10 stadiums and it's done. The Rolling Stones did this in Buenos Aires, for example.

If you have an orchestra with 100 musicians who receive something like $10^5 per year, you pay $10^7 per year. You need several years to practice and to form the orchestra into a team with a repertoire. If it takes 10 years, then that is $10^8.

Your numbers are grossly off here. I would bet that zero orchestra musicians are making anywhere close to $100k just from playing in an orchestra - the absolute top of the top might make that across all of their engagements. Most are making far, far less.

> I would bet that zero orchestra musicians

That'd be a losing bet.

https://www.pennlive.com/life/2016/10/highest_paid_orchestra...

In good orchestras in the US and western Europe, $100k is actually fairly standard, perhaps even on the lower end. You need to be highly skilled, the competition is fierce, and the job is very demanding. I don't have a good source, but a quick Google search should confirm that $100k is not exactly wild.

Presumably a well-paid professional orchestra could record more than one decent song a year, or at least one "every 3-4 years"?

No you don't. Orchestras come together and perform completely new works with, if they're LUCKY, 1 or 2 rehearsals. Years of practice is completely ludicrous.

As a musician and programmer I find the bar to make money on apps way way lower than on music. Being a good programmer brings you much closer to making money on an app than being a good musician does to get a record out. For one you don't need luck, money and the right contacts to release an app. It isn't even in the same ballpark IMHO. Pro musician is closer to "race driver" than "viral app creator".

There is a musician equivalent of app creator. Where do you think music in TV shows, movies and YouTube comes from. A human musician creates it. Atleast for now...

20 years ago you needed all of the same stuff in software engineering, as you described in music.

Things change... It costs as much to "release an app" as to "get a record out" today.

But I don't need to "release an app" to make money as a programmer. I just need to work on small parts of an app that already exists and I can have a comfortable salary with reasonably good job security.

As a musician you can also be a wedding band, sing only covers and make a living off it.

It's really not that different...

I don't know if it's reasonable to compare apps--which often address economic problems--with music. Probably a more apt comparison would be between music and entertainment apps (games?).

In the same way you can just put your music on YouTube if want to 'release' it.

You can ofc release apps, that doesn't mean people will ever use it. The cost to acquire a user isn't anywhere cheaper than a finding an listener.

Just curious if you've ever released any music?

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