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Comment by fragmede | Hacker News Reader

What's the market for a talented saxophone player in a major metropolitan area? It's not zero, but thanks to Spotify, it's not as big as before the advent of recorded music. Recorded music didn't just up the game, it completely changed it. Now you have ultra mega stars that make economic impacts to an area when she tours, but the market for a talented saxophone player in a major metropolitan area just isn't what it once was. I'm not arguing for labor laws, but we'll just have to see where this goes.

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I would argue the biggest issue for talented musicians is economic inequality and the rapid increase in the cost of living. If you want to do music as a main job you need to survive on your partner's income or have generational wealth. There's just no room for someone who is talented to keep themselves afloat playing gigs without having 10 roommates and a day job.

The biggest issue for everyone is economic inequality. You could make the same point about an increasing number of mainstream jobs.

The underlying question is: what are the values of the culture? Predatory selfishness is thrilling [1] for the winners, but ultimately self-defeating - literally suicidal from a sustainability POV, physically and socially.

The neoliberal definition of "freedom" is exactly synonymous with predatory selfishness, so everything else can only suffer.

But it's not everyone's definition of freedom. Plenty of people have other motivations, and this economic model aggressively disenfranchises their values.

[1] In a surprisingly unsatisfactory way.

Er, Taylor Swift?

Your analogy is wrong, Spotify, or really the phonograph, didn't put musicians out of work. The television did, because once that came along "just" playing well wasn't enough to be a star, on camera presence became more important.

I think the automobile put the saxophonist underemployed. As people moved away from the city core in the suburbs live music venues suffered. The radio, recorded audio,and TV cemented it, but people would always frequent live music if the venues existed. And they do - where there are enough fans to support them. This is why we have a lot of live music places in NYC, etc, even with Spotify and instant gratification.

But I also don’t think the life of the musician is all that dire, at least compared to the portrait artist and tunnel digger. There are plenty of jazz clubs in any major city, and live music that pays enough to at least supplement a day job is a thing. Even at the height of live music your average musician would have needed a day job to get by.

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