The decline of the working musician
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
It would have once been unthinkable for even a small city of <=100,000 people to lack multiple live entertainment options 7 days a week. No more—we’re all at home, watching our particular chosen thing, listening to our particular chosen album, playing our own chosen game.
Some will claim this has been an advancement. “How lame,” they say, “it must have been to have to go to the Local Entertainment Venue and just listen to whatever act was on that night. Nowadays I can listen to Acid Techno Super Hop, my particular chosen favorite, as much as I want.” But the losses in communal behavior have been significant. Most critical is the disappearance of dance. Dance is a fundamental human behavior, stretching back to Paleolithic times. It is nowhere to be seen in many cities today, because no one has any occasion to do it except weddings, at which it is very common now to stand around awkwardly after the bride and groom have fumbled through some rehearsed step.
By now, that prestige of a live music seems to only really come from a bigger joint, or as more of a passion project than as an expected way to get customers in.
>Have small towns really lost all their theatres?
It's mostly a thing regulated to colleges. So it will depend on that. I haven't seen a smaller town without a college that still has traditional theatre around, personally. Though I have seen forums where that scene would obviously have hosted such events, abandoned.
I am speaking of the cultural shift in entertainment, from a variety of local live options on most days of the week to just television in most places across the country.
I should also emphasize that the persistence of community theatres that mostly recycle the classics (endless Shakespeare, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and The Crucible) is not a substitute for actual thriving local entertainment, but a shadow and a memory of what once was.
Color me shocked.
On the other hand, I my 150k people city in southern Poland there was no shortage of entertainment, theaters, dance halls and parties 50 years ago under the communist regime.
My grandparents partied all of the time, their pictures are an endless collection of parties, literally people bringing a sausage, a potato salad, few vodkas to some elementary school or industry plant warehouse and having fun from 6 pm to late at night. They went to see live boxing, soccer games, theater, concerts, movies.
I'm 37 none of my friends lives like that, none. There are many more restaurants, probably 20 times as many.
I'm strongly convinced that people used to have more fun once.
My grandma thinks 100% the same. She constantly wonders why are people much better now under any measurable metric like education or wealth, yet they seem to really do nothing in their life.
It's not unlike what happened to soccer as television got cheaper and cheaper: You can go watch your town's third division team, or you can watch Real Madrid play on TV. In 3rd division nobody can be professional, in 2nd division you make less money accounting for inflation than 30 years ago, but the top players in the top teams are even bigger stars, now that the entire world can watch them play every game.
And on theater, let's not forget that many parts of the spectacle are almost impossible to take on the road. You aren't going to feed a production of Phantom of the Opera in a small town for 3 months: National tours rely on 2 weeks per large-ish metro. And when you are only going to stay there for 2 weeks, there are things you just can't get away with, economically speaking. The equity Hadestown tour would need to remodel way too much to accoout for the lift on broadway. The non-equity tour, which plays even shorter windows, can't even rely on the turntable on the floor. The car in Back to the future isn't going to fly over the audience, do half as much movement, or get fire effects on the scenario.
And even if you look in Broadway itself, many don't recoup their own costs. For every Hamilton or Lion king there are many shows that don't last 6 months.
Comedy festival shows are a slightly different story, but I'm not sure how effectively they lead to new recurring audience members.
I also see venue sizes and hire as one of the largest risks/problems with greater popularity. Venue hire is expensive AF, but smaller gigs in places like pubs suffer all the same problems as described in the article.
A show has to be significant enough for someone to turn off Netflix, Spotify or a podcast AND leave the house AND commute to a venue, for MULTIPLE people*, all at the same time.
* I assume most people go to shows with other people, unless they're already embedded in the community.
I also remember in my youth in Miami there were numerous clubs just for different genres of music for Hardcore, Ska, punk and everything in between where people would play local shows. It's all but dead now.
Yes.
I spent the first half of my life as a working actor, and this has been a decades-long process. By "my day" ('90s - '00s) I looked at CVs and heard stories from older actors and said "there was a theatre [by which I meant somewhere that offered paying work] there?"
Summer-stock, where I did a lot of gigs in my twenties, is nothing like what it was then, and I'm sure I would get that response from young actors now, if they heard my stories. Even the larger venues are on life-support. CalShakes closed down this summer. OSF is struggling.
Many places have community theatres, but those are like garage bands: hobbies, pursued for recreation and socialization, where no one draws a wage or has professional aspirations. (And, you know, the vast majority of the attendees have personal ties to the cast and crew.)
It's grim.
Even San Francisco does not have many venues, given how vibrant a city it once was.
Previously lived in LA, even there venues were closing left and right even before the pandemic.
It's the taste in music too, high rental costs for venues.
Another reason we want to move to NYC once our kids are off to college.
There are some great recordings of music out there but fundamentally their sum is worthless up against a society where there is music and dance being performed all the time.
Maybe modern medicine and food abundance is worth it but the imitation of art is a poor substitute.
Have you looked at TikTok? It is full of young people performing incredibly complex dance moves.
We've traded social connection for micro-dopamine hits.
And I don't think I'm being an old man shouting at clouds. I think it's genuinely worse.
"Social connection" and "micro-dopamine hits" are two different phrases for the same thing. Connections through social media apps can be every bit as deep and genuine as those made through standing in the same building.
Liking a booty shake video from some thirst trap influencer is exceedingly unlikely to result in any of these.
Saying hi to a stranger in a bar is exceedingly unlikely to result in any of these.
Maybe introducing yourself in-person is slightly deeper than thumbs-upping someone's video, but by the same token the latter is a smaller step; you can always go with a full-sentence comment or a video response of your own if you want the slightly deeper interaction.
Many people can go to a bar and fairly reliably get laid several times a month. That’s simply not possible for the overwhelming majority of people using TikTok. TikTok / Twitter/ Instagram etc are designed to be shallow interaction so people stick around. Dating apps fill that niche, but also want people to come back.
Being in public allows for the full range of relationships in any setting. You can meet a great friends at a bar etc.
In forms of social media that existed primarily to produce inter-personal connections (i.e. very early Facebook, or maybe even LinkedIn) your argument works significantly better, but the way that instagram/tiktok/etc prioritise influencers in your feed makes the likelihood of 1-to-1 interactions infinitesimally low (unless you yourself are also playing the influencer game)
There is a reason people “sliding into the DMs” is a term. It usually starts with liking posts and later moves into DMs. That same guy also showed me that he also slid into the DMs with some other woman and has another first date scheduled.
Social media is super important for the younger generation and their social life.
In any given social network this ratio is very screwed. Most people have to became interacters at least a couple of times before they can become an interactee.
How? Give an example that actually happened. If you can, address the relative likelihood vs. in-person contact.
Someone much more charismatic in the right scene certainly can do such things more consistently. What's the equivalent here, Tinder dates? I wonder which is more effective for that tip charismatic male? (it's no doubt women are wayyy more successful on dating apps. Too successful).
I chatted up a woman who was probably 20 years my senior, and the two of us had grown up in the same neighborhood in that city separated only by time. We had a wonderful conversation for an hour or so. My now-wife came over at one point, I said we were having a conversation about my neighborhood, and she said, oh, you people always find each other (it was pretty distinctive in the city, and yes, we really did find each other). Now-wife walked away and went back to the others she had been hanging out with. I knew the exact house this woman had grown up in (it was one block away from where I was living at the time), having ridden my bicycle past it hundreds of times as a kid, and just listened to the stories of what it had been like then.
The bartender played no role in it at all.
You won't have that experience on TikTok.
Standarding in the same building does not create then either. People talking in groups and one-to-one, people meeting the same people regularly does. That is what dancing was.
I've seen it happen, so it absolutely can. People have back-and-forth interactions, find regular partners, and form dance groups.
And they're usually right. It's just that subsequent generations mainly see the new normal and forget.
> "Social connection" and "micro-dopamine hits" are two different phrases for the same thing.
No. It's like the difference between a piece of good chocolate cake and some sugar cubes.
> Connections through social media apps can be every bit as deep and genuine as those made through standing in the same building.
It's possible, but far less likely.
And that's been my experience online. Lots of neat niche connections with people I'd never meet IRL. But you'd be surprised how quickly that connect can sever when that person leaves the community, even if you keep trying to reach out.
But i don't know, maybe this gen Z figured out something this boomer Millenial and other older generations couldn't. I'm open to being wrong.
I know what you wrote is fairly obvious but the wording really resonated with how I feel about social media platforms but couldn't quite word it so well.
My wife was maid of honor (we weren't married yet) at her college roommate's wedding. I danced with several of their friends at the reception; one taught me to two-step (it was in San Antonio). I taught her basic swing. There was exactly zero romantic involvement; I was there with my girlfriend, for heaven's sake. But she was nice, she was fun, and we just chatted as we went through the dances. Got a couple of her funny college stories out of that. And that's what it's about: having an excuse to be physically close to someone else, doing an enjoyable activity that rewards skill, and to gossip a little. We, like all apes, are social animals. We're happier when we do that.
Of course I credit it to people being cooler back then.
And one of my relatives remembers from her early childhood the music scene in pre-war Berlin. There was an opera on practically every corner. And movie theaters. Those are virtually gone too.
Today I play music for a folk dance group, and they have weekly dances, but a dozen people showing up is a lot.
Disclosure: I've played in a lot of bands, in a variety of styles.
Not caring about what others think you look like is about as close as you can get to a definition of “cool”!
If you’re a young white male worried about being seen dancing because of a stereotype that’s a problem with you; dance is human heritage and everyone’s allowed to do it. I genuinely believe the whole “white people can’t dance!” thing is rooted in white people being self-conscious because they’ve been dancing to black music for the last 100 years instead of waltzing to the classics, not to mention the comparatively censorious attitude towards dance in White America versus Black America. Be the change etc. etc.
When a culture ridicules something it's not the person facing ridicule's fault for doing it less. Not a good faith take at all, and I doubt you would apply that take to other situations. Especially when we are discussing why people stopped doing something.
Having been a young white male ridiculed/joked about, I believe it's rooted in the actual countless jokes/ridicule/and mocking, not some weird white guilt. Again I don't think you would make this argument apologizing for ridicule in other situations. Young people have shown they don't care about arbitrary racial lines people like you want to emplace when it comes to the music, so why dancing?
The only place I was accepted and encourage was at Salsa clubs. I think in huge part because it didn't have the American cultural stigma of 'white boys can't dance', it just had 'let's all friggin dance'.
And the reason young people are doing less in-person socialisation is less because home entertainment has gotten better and more because in-person socialisation has gotten worse, especially in America where people have nowhere they could socialise in walking distance, can't afford a car (and would get arrested for drunk driving if they could), can't afford to get molested in a techbro fake taxi, and if they tried to cycle they'll get run down by a boomer in a giant truck who was playing candy crush.
Not sure I agree, or maybe just partly. Radio has been around for over a hundred years. Movies too. Bars and hotels have been able to play recorded music on cassette, then CD, now streaming, for at least 70 years.
This decline of the working musician is a much more recent phenomenon.
What is that idea that people don't dance? How and where people dance change, but people still dance. Example are:
- Professional dancers, and other performers with a dance component
- Partner dancers, who usually do in in some sort of club
- Partygoers, going to night clubs, music festivals and raves
- Fitness, doing aerobics or whatever name the latest "dance as exercise" thing has
- People in house parties, dancing with friends for birthdays, new years,...
- People dancing in front of a camera, for some social media
- Street dancers
- People just dancing alone at home
Maybe there are less balls with live musicians, but there are new trends related to dancing. Remember flash mobs? Where people just get together, dance for a few minutes and leave. And TikTok, one of the most popular social network today was built on people doing silly dances, and it is still a major component.
Instrumental acts aren't as popular as they once were. In the cities recorded beats make up more than half the gig. These are performed by a musician on a laptop. They might have dancers, for some entertainment. So the gig pool is lessened. The article so much admits the stars, as they call them, made the most money off of Band People. They had more gigs, so they could cobble together a career. Music has always been a precarious living.
Then add in the downturn of nightlife in general. Restaurants and bars tell the same story: young people aren't drinking. Businesses built on already slim margins are getting squeezed beyond break even. Is an indy band going to make up the difference in admission or cost-to-perform to a struggling bar? Dubious. If they have a following maybe; but then those artist aren't struggling anyway.
Young people are also making less money at a time when prices are sky high. A night out drinking even just a couple of beers can easily surge to over a hundred or two hundred dollars depending how hard you go. When I was in college that would've been ~$30-40. For every 3 times I went out with friends, they can afford only 1.
Live music and performance offers an experience that passive consumption, like TV and Radio, just can't emulate. If the prices come down the economics of music will make sense again. Until then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Critical are the communities and communal activities. Those have disappeared. We need to live in environments where people eat in communal environments not centered around nuclear families. That’s the critical piece that is missing and making everyone feel empty.
Music and dance is but an aspect of this.
Generally humanity evolved to live in tribes and that is where we are most content. In modern times the closest where I’ve seen this is living in dorms or places with shared kitchens and communal eating areas. This promotes the type of communities that make humans happiest.
There was a wave of business plans and startups that tried to tackle this problem by building apartment communities that are more “social”. One that exists nowadays is https://www.flow.life/en/. But these businesses get it all wrong because they lack the communal kitchen and eating areas. The environment needs to have a forcing function to make people form communities not have it as some optional social event. The former makes people much much much closer and the bonds much stronger. Anyone who’s lived in such an environment can attest to this.
Now that place is work. For me playing in bands is another place.
Says you. For me it is. I suspect for many others it is. I have restless legs syndrome. It’s a neurological disorder that makes your legs and feet feel like they have to move. A lot of people have it. Doctors prescribe drugs for it. What actually helps me? Dancing. This is just one of many good effects I get from dancing. My legs and body need to move. I’m not a good dancer. I look like an idiot. But I absolutely have to dance.
Everyone is going to have passions. Passions aren't critical. And dancing with someone you see once at a Meetup who never shows up again isn't how you make a community.
Eating is critical. Everyone needs food. That's why cultures and subcultures all have their unique cuisine. When you eat in a group it's almost inevitable that socialization happens. You gotta delineate from micro (you) and macro (the entire community) factors. No one's saying you cannot dance.
Why are passions not critical? Also what would we define as critical? People have been kept alive with IV only diets. So in that case food would not be critical either.
Nobody really needs food (or food-culture) to be kept alive. Food is just a substance we need to enjoy the rest of the important things ;)
Maslow's hierarchy is discredited but it works enough for this simple model. I feel I explained this well enough. If I struggle to keep paying rent (housing and security, the second layer), why would I place my passions, my esteem 2 levels up, over that?
It's possible to be happy and homeless, but not likely. I can't dance well if I'm hungry on the streets.
>Nobody really needs food (or food-culture) to be kept alive
Your biology disagrees, but I wish you the best of luck.
Food culture is the third level, belonging. I'd say it's more critical than your passions, but that's definitely where the pyramid starts to get hazy (hence the discreditation). You can argue a dance culture, but everyone eats food. Not everyone dances.
You can move without dancing. Dancing is a social feature, not a biological one. Dancing is efficient as a physical activity and a physical exercise but not critical. Food is critical. Dancing with food scarcity is just a waste of vital calories to survive.
Very confused on how so many are arguing that dancing is more important than basic energy. Guess it shows who has really struggled in life.
The problem as I see, given a choice, people rather eat/do/listen/feel things that they want, not the things they’re being forced on. In the past, you didn’t really have a choice and was forced to do what everyone is doing. Now, to live in such communities, you’ll have to get rid of the choice. Which also sucks.
In the communal situations you have choice. You prepay for the food per month and it works like a buffet. So to save money you should eat what's provided. But you have choice to forego it. This is very typical of dorm life in colleges and it leads to really close bonding with everyone on the floor.
I lived in this kind of kind of setup in school. And with all respect, no. Not even close.
My lived experience was that of someone that was the target of said groups to bond over bullying. The verbal abuse I could take. The spitting on my face, the punches to my gut that left me bruised for days on end, fine. No permanent damage.
But I had my throat strangled more times then I want to remember; hands, wires, cords, rope cutting the air off from my lungs and seeing the gray take over my vision. Blacking out over and over again as they derived whatever joy that they took in having my body slump still between their fingers.
And that was every moment I of my existence. No escape. No safety. No relief. I just had to endure and bear it, because what other choice was there? Who was going to help? Who'd believe the word of the wierdo over that of the model students? And they for their part, insist that that what they did was nothing wrong. I didn't die or was maimed, ergo, no foul.
Maybe what you describe is great if you're part of the in group, and if so, great! Go and live in these arrangements then. But what you describe is a living hell for the people that become the target of torment for those groups where no where to run.
Battle, combat, bullying and tribal warfare are all outcomes when different group forming strong bonds. It's a part of human nature.
You're right if you are part of the group, that's the ideal. But if you're the target of said group it's better to be not allow these groups to even be formed so you can't be a target period.
That being said what you describe is less likely to happen in adult communities because the stakes are higher. When I was younger I was bullied too. I think what ended up happening is that I returned to school and smashed my bullies face in with a bat and if that wasn't going to end it I was going to knife him from behind. The bat was enough and he stopped bullying me, which was the smart thing to do because the hatred and rage I was feeling probably would've ended his life and ruined my own as well.
Once the stakes were higher everyone stops that bullying thing and that's basically what the adult world becomes. Higher stakes, jail time and actual assets and resources can be lost without mom and pop defending you once you're an adult. I understand you have trauma... but I think what happened to us as children no longer applies in the adult world.
In the adult world war behavior like this becomes actual murder and war. So I'm not saying tribal warfare doesn't exists as adults. I'm more referring to say where I live (an average US suburb in CA) where this kind of behavior will only happen to kids.
>Once the stakes were higher everyone stops that bullying thing and that's basically what the adult world becomes. Higher stakes, jail time and actual assets and resources can be lost without mom and pop defending you once you're an adult. I understand you have trauma... but I think what happened to us as children no longer applies in the adult world.
I disagree; you're thinking in terms of me being a random victim.
My bullies were quite cognizant of the consequences if they were caught. Alibis were often discussed, and they always made sure to pick locations that where unlikely to be interrupted or observed. But I think they picked me also because most importantly they knew that I was likely to keep silent. Coupled with a criminal justice system that has both hands tied and clogged with far more pressing matters, and an institution that have weigh the reputational damage vs trying to help and well...
And there in lies the rub. So long as the group either picks the victims carefully, they can keep going on. People's nature don't change all that much even as they mature IME. Just that thy get smarter and more careful about getting what they want.
Despite the fact that there are signs everywhere in the laundry rooms with a list of tasks that need to be done at the end of the session, from my experience, 50% of the time, none of the tasks such as sweep the floors, clean the filters of the dryers are done.
Most people simply don't care.
Same with the courtyard, people let their kids run free in it and at the end of playtime, the kids just leave all their toys, bikes, pushbikes everywhere so much so that if you want to go in the courtyard, you basically have to move things out of the way.
The parents are there watching their kids during playtime but it doesnt come to their mind that someone else might want to use the space. They have no consideration for anyone but themselves when it would take just a few minutes to gather all the toys and put them in a corner somewhere.
Then there is the noise, people leave their dogs alone and the dogs start barking for hours because it's scared and when you suggest that maybe they should take the dog with them, they act all offended as if you suggested something truly horrible.
Not to mention, the guy who decides that 2am on a Wednesday is the perfect time to blast music with his windows open.
So, no thanks , I have had enough of communal living. Most people just don't know how to behave in a community and I am tired of picking up the slack of other people and being see as the bad guy on the block because I ask people to follow some basic rules so that we can all live together peacefully.
That being said I’m aware the setup I’m talking about is more suited for single people.
Additionally, I currently live in an apartment where none of the issues you mentioned exist.
I don't think so. Why would I subject myself to that? I have lived in shared dorms while in college and the kitchens were nasty not to mention the toilets and showers. What makes you think this setup would be any different?
This kind of place can only work if the rules are followed by everyone and if someone steps out of line, then consequences need to happen.
> Additionally, I currently live in an apartment where none of the issues you mentioned exist.
Respectfully, I have lived in apartments practically my whole life, there is always someone who thinks that they own the whole building and starts making life a misery for everyone else.
I guess we can agree to disagree on this one.
I have a friend like you who wants everyone to live in "communities" with "communal living". He is just ultimately bossy and alienates all his friends (including me to be honest).
Try and force me to get to know my neighbours -- I simply will not. The last thing I need is someone trying to borrow "butter" or "dropping by" from 603 interrupting my desperately needed self time after working a 10 hour day.
Let me find my own friends and leave me alone to go out DANCING! And I'll find my friends no problem!
You’re the same as your friend. You called my idea stupid. I forgive you but this style of conversation leads immediately to conflict rather than thoughtful discussion. You are just like your friend and you likely don’t realize it.
That being said I can’t agree with you. Men typically don’t like to dance. It’s not a thing. Eating is a thing. Agree to disagree but I don’t think your pov represents the general consensus.
Not sure where you get your stat from anyways -- seems most of my local Latin dance groups have loads of men (more than women) sitting on the sidelines waiting for their chance to show their stuff : ))
Any city will have ballroom, swing, salsa, tango, etc...
Even in rural areas you will find line dancing.
This is aside from informal dancing at bars and clubs which exists in every place I've ever lived in (6 countries in the Americas so far)
I go dancing regularly??
I have three tickets next week to see <$30 bands.
I can’t relate to any of this.
Why are we making predictions on society based on hopes, anyway? If your goal is to find a cozy little dance floor and you're in a populated enough city, the you'll find whatever genre of dance you want with a small few core people. You just need to hope you like that core.
But that's not an option for everyone be it due to their living situation or the rising costs of everything.
And again. Anecdotes. There's no dance parties in my town. I need to travel 40 minutes to another city and pay $20 for 3 hours of dancing every month. Not worth it for me in any regard.
It sounds like your town just sucks, and you should move to one of their towns. You can't expect all towns across the country to be equally good for all interests.
I'd also need more than two opinions on unknown towns before I'd consider that. Maybe they're both on San Francisco paying 3x in rent. Literally can't afford that move.
Then why is it okay to say the opposite and ignore the average experience? I don't understand the double standard here. If we base anything on extremes everything sounds amazing or awful.
And I wasn't speaking for myself. I'm simply referencing the article where someone took the time and effort to make an entire book based on this phenomenon. What compelling reason do I have to take these commenter's words over the authors? (no offense to the commentors).
>so if the area you're in doesn't meet your expectations for cultural activities, perhaps you should start looking around for a new place.
If that's important enough to you, sure. But this feels like a very unsympathetic and potentially non-viable solution for most of the population.
We're not all single people with 6 months of saving ready to not renew an apartment lease. Some people have families, some people need to be around certain scenes to get steady work, some people can't afford to move, etc. Everyone has passions but most people won't throw their lives away to pursue that passion.
e.g. I want to one day seriously study art, but the circus of a job search, paying off my debt, and rebuffering my savings comes before I start browsing for classes. Proper responsible living means delaying your immediate urges and passions to keep yourseof afloat.
People have taken the time and effort to write entire books about all kinds of complete horseshit; there's plenty of books with all kinds of medical quackery like homeopathy, for instance, fad diets, I could go on and on. Someone writing a book about something doesn't mean there's any reality to it at all.
Honestly, I think it would be extremely difficult to assess the state of live music in America these days compared with some past time decades ago, in a fair and unbiased way. It's not like it's something the census keeps track of. The best you can probably do is anecdotes, and then you might as well listen to the commenters here too. Even anecdotes are suspect, since peoples' perceptions differ: an older person who enjoyed dance style A 30 years ago might say "there's no dancing here any more!" if style A is out of vogue, and style B is now popular among young people he has no contact with.
>We're not all single people with 6 months of saving ready to not renew an apartment lease. Some people have families
Many decades ago, Americans used to be more mobile than they are now. They absolutely would pack up their entire family and move many states away. Now it seems Americans don't do that much. Here's a relatively recent NYT article about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/us/american-workers-movin...
You realize how wishy-washy this sounds right? "authors write bad too just trust anecdotes. But anecdotes are bad too"
Do you have any sort of input here whatsoever or just want to say all data is fake? Yes, it could be a lie. But there's been enough researched literature on this that I'm inclined to agree.
And yes. You can in fact track this, even if it's not easy. Statistics rarely has the blessing of a Census. That why we have centuries of survey techniques to get close to it. Dismissing thst for a few anecdotes which you also didn't trust just feels contrarian for the sake of it.
> Now it seems Americans don't do that much.
I'm not surprised. I knew the reasons before I even opened your article:
> Slowdowns in the housing and job markets and delays in marriage and childbearing pushed their relocation rates down substantially.
>low-wage jobs, after adjusting for the local cost of living, pay about the same everywhere.
> the economy is now less flexible, with prosperity clustered in larger cities and with businesses and people moving less.
The funniest parts are these experts baffled why this is affecting everyone and not just younger people. Almost like they forgot moving isn't a free and easy endeavor and people stick to the familiar.
They didn't quite nail down that no one wants to move across the country only to be laid off in 6 months, but they are at least hitting the dartboard. You want people to be able to move? Pay them so they can live in wherever they move to. That simple.
Until then, we're stuck and losing buying power and won't uproot what stability we have left for hopes of finding a bar woth love music that may or may not cease doing so in the next year or two.
But I was really focusing on more recent times than that: it was still true within many peoples' lifetimes, though it wasn't nearly as risky as the covered wagon days.
Gig musicians at non-music venues are definitely fewer but a lot of musicians still make their most consistent living playing regular gigs at bars and coffee shops and such.
I think before radio, sitting around and reading a book was pretty normal. Back then a lot of people lived in places where visiting the neighbors was a lot harder than it is now.
Their anecdotal experience is more a reflection of their own preferences.
The venues in my suburban area have only grown over the past 10 years and new venues have opened.
I'm glad it works out for you, but you aren't society.
I would love to actually be able to dance/move at packed shows. Not to mention the absolutely lame rise of seated only shows. Orchestral music, ok, but sitting down at a rock show is neutering the experience for me.
I regularly see live music accidentally just by showing up at various bars and breweries. We have several groups doing local theater. We have two multi-day music festivals in the summer, and at least a dozen more within a few hours drive.
There is plenty of live entertainment for those who want it. If I had to guess, I would say that there is maybe two nights per week where there isn't live music, but if you add in trivia nights, rec center activities, etc. You could easily fill your schedule any day of the week
Muzak was a thing long before that. So I don't see how that can be the cause.
I often think about how we replace things with technology and say it's better. Bread is another example in my opinion. Towns used to have bread makers, well respected and well paid. Now, at least here in the USA we replaced the bread makers with machines. We got rid of the bread makers and ultimately replaced them with engineers who design the machines and repair men. Even they've been replaced, once designed there's no need for the engineer and it's often cheaper to buy than repair so the repair man too went away. What we're left with is subpar bread. How is any of this progress?
But that would requires trying to make good bread. Not trying to make something passable for an American (and barely edible for a French) with the highest profit margin.
I think you're on to something vitally important with this. I think about it often.
Bands are actually playing more live music today than they did back then, to help replace the revenue they used to get from recorded music.
My friend who used to make nothing today makes a lot by doing tiktok videos and offering private lessons for good money.
If you want to perform live and make living as such yeaa opportunities are less there.
When I stop for more than a couple of weeks my vitality and zest for life clearly diminish.
This was, and still is, a HUGE shift in the way I live my life after moving careers from software development into music composition...
Even as a film scorer, who has jobs that last for a long time and include many personal conversations with the film makers, you're not guaranteed to get back-to-back gigs, so when you're done with one score, what's next? It's not like there's always someone handing you jobs if you're doing this by yourself. But that's my preferred angle, because the jobs do last longer and there's a more regular (and higher) payout. It just takes a lot of back and forth with the people making the film, in order to get the vibes just right.
I know a good number a professional musicians who have made it to the point where they can live off of music without constantly working, every single one of them started out the same way, playing every single show they could regardless of pay or location. This started to change around 2010, the venue I used to do sound for primarily targeted musicians who were starting out either on the local scene or national scene (just starting to tour and trying to make a name out of their home town), by 2015 music was mostly done there because the 19 year olds who had only played a few shows were not happy with $25 and a meal to sit on stage with their guitar for an hour, they wanted $100 and expected to play to a full room.
The boom in home recording also probably played a role, the starting out musicians are often resistant to it because they see it as pedestrian and not for serious musicians, musicians record in studios, not at home. Record on anything anyway you can and bring a few dozen copies to sell at those poorly paying gigs.
they literally cannot afford to do such things unless they are already homeless. It could have been an okay side hustle as recent as a decade ago. But today you're not gonna do much more than grab grocery money without being in a very specific scene. That meal you mention can easily cost as much as what they were paid for the gig.
It's been declining for decades, no doubt. But when the economy starts getting hard, "passion projects" dry up. being paid $100 a week is much closer to a passion project than a side hustle at this point.
Or already rich
Unless you are working two full time jobs or the like it is easy money and affordable, broke teens working 30 hours a week washing dishes manage it. You may only make $50-$100 a gig starting out but you make it in an hour or two and as soon as you start drawing a crowd you will start getting better gigs.
what entry level jobs are you talking about? The horribly low Federal minimum wage is $7.25. minumum wage part time would come to $600/month. That's the extremely conservateive bar minimum I'd consider for anything to be "paying" (extremely poorly, but making something resembling cash flow).
So with that metric: what scene are you in that brings in $600 in tips or 6-12 gigs a month?
>You may only make $50-$100 a gig starting out but you make it in an hour or two and as soon as you start drawing a crowd you will start getting better gigs.
Not even close to reasonably paying and you greatly underestimate how hard it is to draw a crowd these days.
I'm treating this as a means to live, not some little hobby you do on the side. This isn't even close to an "entry level". my first gigs in tech had me making $12/hr for 20 hours of work during the school week, and people would rightfully call that way below my worth. But it passes my metric of $800/month, so it can be considered "entry level".
Why only in tips? $100 weekly gigs are not terribly difficult to get these days especially since no one wants to do them anymore, that is $400 a month right there without tips or merchandise sales. 6-12 gigs a month is also not difficult to manage, two gigs a week is very doable and most every musician I know who did the weekly gig also did a show on the weekend somewhere else (weekly gigs are almost always mid week). Why does it have to be a single scene? almost as arbitrary as it being tips only. Beyond that if you play regularly you will get more gigs without trying including private parties and the like, you will get asked to sit in with other bands, be on their recordings, session work, etc, it all adds up. But I was referring to hourly rate, not monthly earnings. Entry level has nothing to do with pay, it's the level you enter at for the field and for some jobs this is an unpaid internship or or poorly paid apprenticeship, doesn't matter what you think it should be.
Drawing a crowd is not difficult but you need to learn to read the audience so you can play to the audience first, one of those things the poor paying weekly gig is great for, you can't expect to draw an audience solely for being you.
>but you need to learn to read the audience so you can play to the audience firs
And you uncovered the issue: musicians can't just use raw talent most of the time, they need to also be an entrepreneur. An entirely different set of skills independent from music itself. Thars why most indies in any industry can't make it. You need to mix two ideas of art and product which are almost diametrically opposed to one another.
And it's a shifting formula. Because what's desired in art shifts constantly. It's a job in a job to get what's probably not even paying rent unless you're Low COL.
Most people can't do most things but the vast majority of people who succeed at their goals in life have one thing in common. Lots of people in this world and to make a living as a musician you only need to connect with a tiny fraction of a percent of those people. If you honestly like the music you make odds are there are enough people in the world to support you in making that music, but you need to find them if you want them to support you.
>And you uncovered the issue
I addressed this already, my use of the phrase "paid internship" was not accidental.
>unless you're Low
I lived in Duluth for awhile around the turn of the century. Low worked their asses off with endless touring for the better part of a decade to make their name and kept it up until Al and Mimi had their daughter, but Al kept playing constantly. Every Saturday it was The Black Eyed Snakes and a couple other bands at the NorShor, Tuesdays was experimental Tuesdays the experimental open mic he ran, plus sitting in with random bands, doing random shows, running his label, organizing shows, recording bands, doing all the stuff for Low, endless short lived side projects, being a dad, he never stopped working from what I could see. Charlie Parr spent a few years doing the poorly paying weekly gig every Wednesday at The Brewhouse, he got $50 and bottomless coffee to play for 3 hours to maybe a dozen mostly uninterested people until he figured out how to get them interested and then he packed the place every week and started making his name. Haley Bonar/McCallum used to serve me coffee and make me sandwiches at Amazing Grace, she put in years toiling away in obscurity before making it. Lots of good memories from those years, need to get back there, been too long.
> I lived in Duluth
I had to retrace the thread to be confident, but I think you leapt to Minnesota-local from an oddly-capitalized fragment of the phrase "low cost of living".
Nevertheless, I enjoyed your personal perspective on the scene history there. :) I can echo your observations from the Boston scene -- e.g. when the one song gets used in a movie or TV show, and new fans of the "new band" have no idea about the years of hard work and crap jobs and crap roommates that were required to get the opportunity.
Still, I loved those years.
I did. I was done with the thread by that point and put zero effort into parsing the acronym, only responded because of the nostalgia. Half suspected I got it wrong which is why I left "COL" out when quoting, figured I could feign ignorance since I was staying on topic and point.
Is "intern" a different meaning where you're from? For me, it implies an opportunity to learn under a company, where learning is a primary objective over proper payment.
Who are these teachers you're learning under? Where and how are you finding a teacher in music that you aren't paying for but is paying you to learn?
>Low worked their asses off with endless touring for the better part of a decade to make their name and kept it up until Al and Mimi had their daughter, but Al kept playing constantly
If you haven't noticed, the world's gotten (ironically) much less connected over the last 20 years. I can barely get my friends out for lunch. People who already know and assumedly like me. It's simply gotten a lot hard to do that 80's style of living in a van, paying $1-2 a day for food, and playing your passions until you can move to a semi-normal standard of living.
It's not impossible, and I appreciate the pun. But that lifestyle wouldn't really be possible in urban America. Not even a matter of "I don't want to live in a van". Those cities just got a lot more hostile towards loitering and theft is on the rise. A van is just putting a target on your face for someone, legally or for illegal preying. Even just being on the streets because of no homes can get you arrested with where current legislature it going in my area.
its just gotten rough. If you don't have parents supporting you, it is literally a dangerous lifestyle.
Well, it's been said 80% of success is showing up :)
What gig? For that matter, what audience? I was in a band in the 90's and we could find poorly paying gigs to a relatively full venue on a semi-regular basis. I took a long break to raise some kids and just got back into it in the past couple of years and... there's nothing out there any more. Nobody's hiring musicians because nobody's listening to them.
Not a new observation.
it's actually much more persvasibe and happening to pretty much all culture
I refer to the siloing of our tastes; or rather to how we can now develop rarer tastes by means of massively increased connectivity
so it's not just pop music, but all of what it means to be "mainstream culture" that's weirdly getting siloed and more rarified
Same reason so many pro athletes now are poor immigrants.
Music is the thing I love more than anything. I love writing it, releasing records, playing shows, and connecting with people on an emotional level. Never once have I considered it possible to have a fruitful career as a musician, despite seeing more success as a musician than most can ever dream of. Additionally, the industry (like many others) has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. In many ways, it has put much more power back into the hands of artists: you don't need a huge studio/record label/promotion to release a record. You can just release records, and promote them yourself. The flip side of that is there are SO many more people releasing music these days, which makes it really difficult to cut through the noise if your music is halfway decent.
Finally, recommendation algorithms have truly transformed the landscape of content creation, likely irreversibly. I get messages _daily_ from people who have "hacked" the TikTok algorithm, and can get my bands plays. There is an entire cottage industry of algorithm "hackers", some of them actually have results too.
One odd anecdote: I love Alex G. I've been listening to him for over a decade, and have flown out to see him play in places like New york/Austin TX. A few years ago he played in Seattle, and the entire demographic of the audience seem to've changed overnight. Way younger, more "mainstream" looking kids, filled the Showbox in Seattle. The strangest part was that no one seemed to know the words to his songs anymore. I did some digging, and he'd gone viral on TikTok. A few of his songs went absolutely bananas on there, and it completely transformed his fanbase. They knew the words to those songs, but not his entire set. Is this bad? I have no idea, but the trimming down of content into bite sized morsels _feels_ bad to me, and I believe it will dramatically alter this next generation's baseline attention span. Again, not a moral judgement, just a factual claim.
I think one thing important to consider here is that part of the experience of enjoying music is not necessarily how good the song is, but how much, and how many, other people are enjoying it. People often listen to (mediocre) music simply to have a shared emotional experience with others.
Imagine bonding over gruel, because everyone else is eating it and you can’t connect with them unless you are able to discuss the consistency and mouthfeel of the gruel.
Pop music isn't gruel. A lot of it may be slop, but it's deeply appealing. Somebody somewhere solved for what "works", and a million copycats cloned it with minimal effort because it works.
So don't think gruel. It's more along the line of... McDonald's. Bad food, but it's appealing. And people do bond over it, or at least they used to before people stopped caring and fast food places became utter hellscapes. You still see kids bonding over McD's in Japan.
Time signatures, instrumentation, arrangements, chord progressions, etc are the base gruel that forms the core of almost all (western/popular) music.
The "new" contributions of most artists are more like flavorings or spices with the occasional unexpected twist on the base. And, critically, this is necessary to find an audience.
Even bands that "change music" are just permuting on the basic gruel. And, usually, just popularizing the permutations that other bands have tried first but were too early/didn't break out of their local audience/etc.
Often these permutations only get popular because they bring with them a new and appealing (or under-represented) aesthetic. It's not even really the music, necessarily.
There are exceptions, there are some real musical innovators. They rarely get popular though, no matter how much respect they earn from their peers.
This has always been true for recorded music. Originally people would buy mostly singles after hearing a song on the radio, then maybe listen to the B-side too.
Listening to complete albums was only popular for a short while before streaming brought single songs back to prominence as the main way people consume music.
So maybe this is normal as we get older? I didn't know this had happened with Alex G but I'm happy to hear about his success -- to me that's the main thing that matters, however an artist finds their audience.
I was recently told by a guitar shop owner that he sold more PAs than anything. Why, I asked, is hard to get gigs now?
"I'm playing 3 nights a week", he said, "1 with my Beatles cover band, 2 general covers". His band was a twosome with backing tracks. £350 a night, split 2 ways. I was suprised you could do that well in such a remote area, but it would be a good start towards a living.
It hits you like a ton of bricks.
This is a local Bay Area band and all 3 members are exquisitely skilled in more than one instrument.
> It hits you like a ton of bricks.
This. Such an effect... And looks like it's not only about music but more general thing - when something of quality materializes...
You see this in Hollywood with the stremaers now underpaying the people that make TV shows and movies possible, offshoring to save a few dollars, reducing the number of writes on staff and so on.
I'm not surprised to see the same forces at play for session musicians and so forth.
This is a systemic problem. Companies will happily kill an industry to increase short-term profits.
What holds this system together is that too many people believe that they will ultimately benefit from the exploitation built into the system plus people who love the creative skills they've spent years honing willing to work for pennies to stay in that industry. You see the same dynamic in the video game industry.
Labor demand is structurally lower than supply. That's the state of the modern world and it could have been a good thing. Instead, even important unsexy work is systematically demeaned and marginalized by this fact. See: unskilled labor -> essential workers -> unskilled labor. The proceeds are boiled away and condensed onto financial assets, which serve the purpose of paying rich people for being rich in proportion to how rich they are. This establishes, reinforces, and perpetuates a class hierarchy where the people on the bottom must constantly pay to exist while the people on top constantly get paid to exist.
Also on the entrepreneurship side, more public support for small to midsize companies that share capital and power with their workers.
Plutocracy and oligarchy (what we have today) and the modern serfdom they rely on suppress the creative and industrial talents of workers.
On the indie side, I'd much rather take my hopes to transfer that talent to makig the next hollow knight than the equivalent in music to be the next Bieber. I'm not going to call it a meritocracy, but games (for now) still have a reasonable monetization model. I hope by the time I can make my own game that that's still somewhat the case.
From my understanding Hollywood is being killed by the outsiders - TikTok et al influencers taking viewers away from Hollywood. The corporate owners are cutting costs, but it's primarily to survive. And the reason that TikTok influencers would be killing Hollywood is simply because Hollywood has (had) the money, fame, and influence, and the TikTok crowd wanted it. It's creator-on-creator violence in a fight for status.
But I play lots of gigs on the streets and similar. My favourite is the rehearsal in a public space that accidentally turns into a gig. Life-changingly wonderful stuff.
Tough life being an actual pro musician, although there's an OK living to be made in teaching for the right people.
There was also a guy who played blues guitar in Downtown Crossing, presumably as a busker with a permit. I waited a couple extra trains more than one evening to enjoy the music.
[0] Bandcamp: https://theloosehandleband.bandcamp.com/album/the-loose-hand...
There's a few local bands. Most notably to my mind, we have a periodic jam band that appears with varying configurations at one of the beachside changing rooms around here. There was this time when it was busy at summer tie, we had a decent sized group, and a couple of very well credentialed jazz musicians there. One of the nearby South Pacific Islanders came up to us and asked if he could sing with us. Between him and the band, we did this joyfully insane version of Kenny Rogers The Gambler. People were videoing it, but I've never seen any of the footage.
When I was discussing with the owners of the bars, I always asked "why us?". They would often say that we were the only ones that did not look desperate to get a gig.
And that was true: we all had high paying jobs, they even self produced a few CDs for fun (and Christmas presents). The band was always for fun because nobody relied on it for their life.
When I read many comments here I realize how lucky we were.
I cannot for the life of me find where the heck that was said, but the sentiment makes sense when you see how competitive that side of the industry is. And that those kinds of positions are one of prestige, from people who can afford to practice all their lives and be in a certain scene to be considered. But you aren't making money from it.
I can imagine a similar sentiment even with small time bands like this.
Can I survive only on weekend gigs? No. But then again, I can't go without them either. Most of the time I look at it as a part-time job.
There are half a dozen venues within a mile of me that have 3 bands a night five days a week. I also work with musicians that have full schedules of church gigs, weddings, etc on top of symphony and opera appointments. This is in a city smaller than NYC. I cant imagine NYC is any worse?
I can say that in the SF Bay Area, since 2000, probably three out of four small venues that used to host live music either have shut down completely, or no longer have live music. Maybe in lower COL areas it's easier to keep these venues going.
The rise of cost of living in urban environments has outpaced inflation quite substantially (certainly the real estate prices have) for quite a while. The colloquial gentrification cycle of gays -> artists -> college kids -> yuppies -> rich people requires a poor neighborhood as a starting point (usually a white one)... there's seemingly none of those starter neighborhoods anywhere in major cities, so the art and music has left the major cities.
Recorded music killed people playing music to entertain the rest of the family. You used to teach your kids how to play instruments so they could entertain your guests or have a good time during a boring day. We can still do that, playing music alone is fun, and playing music together can be transcendent. Singing in harmony or in unison is intimate.
There's an athletic element. I'll always want to see somebody, in person, playing music live. It's like watching a juggler. What we've done is isolated music to these horrible alienating mass consumption venues, rather than it coming out of every bar, and every other restaurant, and from the street, and in people's homes. It's a debasing and commoditization of music, helped by the introduction of artistically unintelligible lyrics in the 60's, and draconian, authoritarian intellectual property laws that demand that you never play any song that you hear, you have to create new product.
And as above, this goes for movie entertainment, too. People will always want to watch plays, they're assemblages of memorization, vocalization, and coordination of movement. They astound. You can do it yourself: you can memorize a poem and bring it to a party, or you can come up with a skit. This is how people entertained themselves before being colonized by the tyranny of mass-produced recordings.
I don't know if it's clear from the above, but I hope AI completely devalues recorded music, and ends the celebrity worship industry that is built up around it. Generated music will be everywhere, and it will feel like slop. Watching someone in front of you, showing you what they can do, will never be devalued. Joining in because you know the song will bring back the feeling of the Irish and English broadsides that we derived this pop stuff from, through the blues, and that we enjoyed together for centuries.
Going to a concert in an arena and sitting half a kilometer from a band to listen to them play is dystopian. People who lived through a time where the production of music was commonplace and pervasive, not just its consumption, if they were teleported to this era, with its paid streams through earbuds, would be depressed.
edit: was a professional touring musician for a number of years a long time ago.
I agree with some of what you said, but no. People love being part of a huge crowd all doing the same thing, like it or not; a mass gathering has a power all of its own, the bigger the better. Unfortunately - or maybe not - that means winner-takes-all dynamics are inevitable.
Yes, but not a good living.
That's when professional musicians were musically "literate", so many acts showed up with just their soloists and boxes with their "charts". One rehearsal and the show was ready to go.
https://boundarystones.weta.org/2017/03/21/when-chuck-berry-...
i recently discovered bandsintown which has been really useful, but doesn't cover everything.
I try to support bands I follow as much as possible (buying merch, streaming their music, and going to shows). However the jump to a recurring subscription is a hurdle. Bands seem to still be in the record -> tour -> hiatus cycle and I imagine that needs to change if they're releasing music over the year.
"New York doesn't matter." That's the fucking story. The decline of the working musician: look in the mirror guys.
Turning a hobby into a profession? Very, very few people can do that. Of those that do, many find that it ruins their enjoyment of the activity.
tl;dr: Fewer professionals is a good thing.