[gomox]

I have a few friends that are aspiring musicians with what I consider to be a high quality product, and they both struggle to make a living out of it, bankrolling their music endeavors with side gigs or similar avenues.

In the age of the Internet, it seems clear to me that from a macro economic perspective, the only scarce things a musician can provide are (a) experiences and (b) physical goods. It seems like no small/medium artist can expect to make a living out of YouTube views or Spotify plays.

Is anyone here that is more knowledgeable about the industry able to comment on what tech-enabled avenues exist (or may come into existence in the short term future) for younger musicians to make a living? Crazy ideas are OK (for example, I think VR live concerts might be a thing at some point, but I don't have enough understanding of the industry to tell whether something like Ujomusic makes sense).

[Retric]

It's highly competitive out there, but let's say you are in the top 5% of musicians which have real talent but can't make money.

Ultra specialization is one option. It's easier to make it as a Christian Rocker than a regular Rocker, but the rabbit hole goes really deep here.

Become part of someone else's content creation process. From video game soundtracks to a song writers demo tapes, many people want to turn a written song into music and while you generally don't get residuals you can still make decent money this way.

[darpa_escapee]

> it seems clear to me that from a macro economic perspective, the only scarce things a musician can provide are (a) experiences and (b) physical goods

As someone who is close to people in the industry: this is very true.

If you aren't a top act, money is made through merchandise and gigs like writing and recording music for video content, events like weddings and if you're lucky enough to get your act to the point that businesses will pay you to play at their venue, shows and touring.

There are businesses who approach musicians with the 'free shows at our venue for exposure' or 'perform at our venue and possibly collect on ticket sales' angle. Inexperienced or desperate acts will fall for these.

> Is anyone here that is more knowledgeable about the industry able to comment on what tech-enabled avenues exist (or may come into existence in the short term future) for younger musicians to make a living

By necessity, musicians need to look at these tech platforms not as sources of revenue, but as marketing platforms.

[jv22222]

> By necessity, musicians need to look at these tech platforms ... as marketing platforms.

Yes, that's exactly the way to look at it.

But, even to get noticed on those platforms you'll need to do marketing. So, now there's two layers of marketing!

[gomox]

Thanks for your input. One takeaway from talking to my friends is that the "play for free for exposure" also happens at some very high profile venues that I wouldn't have guessed did that kind of thing.

[WalterBright]

Consider a dancer. Being any good takes years of training. But even the very good ones struggle to make any sort of living from it. (Take a look at the dancers in the background of any music video. Do you think they get paid much?)

Why should musicians be different from other artists?

[gomox]

I actually know a girl that does that and she gets paid just fine. She also has her own dance studio.

The musicians I talk about are much more notable than the dancer in their own field, as far as I can discern. But the dancer does not work for an industry nearly as intricate. She dances, and she gets paid for dancing.

Finally, I don't expect musicians to have it easy. Just asking for ideas.

[WalterBright]

If you're really good, you can charge $50/hr for private dance lessons. Subtract the cost of the dance studio, and it's not much. If you're at the top, you might get a gig for a couple years at the ballet. Might.

[dragonwriter]

> If you're really good, you can charge $50/hr for private dance lessons

That seems a little low for even a minimally qualified instructor, IME (though I suspect the form of dance has a big effect on the potential market.)

> Subtract the cost of the dance studio, and it's not much.

That, on the other hand, seems spot on.

[rohitb91]

Or group lessons in a studio.

[Dirlewanger]

>for younger musicians to make a living

I don't have any stats, but even 30 years ago it was hard to stand out/make a living as a young musician. Why should today be easier, especially when there's several orders of magnitude more choices to contend with (additionally with albums/concerts being relatively cheap due to downward pressure from the Internet)? One could argue that streaming payouts aren't as fair as they should be, but that's an extension of album royalties from yester-decade.

[gomox]

Not saying it should be easy, just asking for ideas that could provide monetization choices for talented yet mostly unknown musicians.

[test6554]

Which is why parents tend to steer their children away from becoming/dating a professional musician.

[joveian]

I'm not a musician but have had a bit more interest in the industry than the average person, so I'll give my crazy ideas on the off chance it might be helpful.

Both Bandcamp and CD Baby seem popular with independent musicians as a way to make some money selling music, although I'm not sure if anyone makes a living from them. They can at least provide non trivial income in some cases. One thing I like about Bandcamp is when musicians offer a discounted "buy everything from this musician" option and at least personally I will spend more money more easily when that is an affordable option vs. needing to try to find music I like best to actually purchase. Soundcloud is popular for discovery. I'm sure your friends are already some of the amazing musicians on these platforms that somehow can't get a wider audience for no obvious reason.

I didn't like this article that much, but I think one thing that seems right to me is how important film is in turning excellent musicians into popular musicians. Computer games should be the same, but for some reason the industry accepts a half dozen 30 second loops as being acceptable music for games that take tens of hours to play.

Hopefully this situation will improve, but meanwhile there are occiasional games that have the explicit goal of promoting music and a few that just happen to use better music. Three I can think of are Beat Buddy, Symphony, and Braid. The creaters of Beat Buddy explicitly had the goal of promoting music and I'm fairly sure they worked directly with the musicians. I'm fairly sure Symphony also had music promotion as a goal but I'm not sure if they worked directly with the musicians or not. Braid just used music from Magna Tune, but the musicians got exposure from the game. I'm not sure if any of these cases necessarily translated to income, although I suspect it did in some cases at least (maybe you could ask some of them or see if they have talked about it publicly if you wanted to look into this further).

There is also a risk in working with game developers, since the music industry likes to categorize musicians in strange but limiting ways and almost no one wants to be categorized as a game musician (same, to a somewhat lesser extent, with film). Also, the route to gaining popularity via games would likely involve indie games and it can be hard to figure out if a particular developer a) will actually be able to produce a game that meets even the low technical standards of the game industry, b) that the game is fun in some way, and c) that more than a tiny number of people actually buy the game. Even better funded game projects often don't work out for various reasons. So a lot of risk but also a lot of opportunity since good music (not typical game music) can really improve the experince of a game. Unfortunately, both game and film producers seem to often want music to be bland and annoying so there is an extra challenge in finding someone who appreciates the value good music can add to a project. To be fair, sometimes other audio need to take priority, particularly in film, but IMO most games would do better making good music the focus of the audio experience. In film there as at least usually the credits music for arbitrary music that matches the mood of the film.

I think with indie film makers it would likely be easier to evalute the ability of the producer to complete the project, although still no guarantee that many people will ever see and hear the result. If working with independent film or game makers they will not be able to pay much of anything up front, so it would potentially still be a lot of work for a tiny chance of more exposure, although both films and games often get music from a number of sources which can lower the amount of work for each musician involved. To the extent that they are already doing a lot of work for a tiny chance of more exposure it might be something to consider, making choices with some idea of where they would like their income to come from in the future. I'm not sure how a musician would go about trying to find such a collaboration, but I would guess there are online forums where it might be possible.

For that matter there are professional musician forums; I don't know particular ones to recommend, but if your friends haven't looked at them yet they might find better advice there.

[gomox]

Thank you very much for your detailed reply. I will look into these things further.

[mikec3010]

> a musician can provide...experiences

This is how my dad made a living his whole life, playing upscale weddings in a string quartet. The barrier to entry is fairly high, though. Violins and such require a decade or 2 of practice.

And unless you run the group, there's not enough work for a regular, full time income.