I’m not sure that the “rockstar” concept is dead. The top spaces are just being shared among fewer performers. And more of the business is trickling towards them than the smaller acts than yesterday, and the same will be true tomorrow. It’s been going that way since they started printing sheet music. As distribution (of pretty much any product) becomes more efficient, it’s easier for the most marketable acts to become well known outside of their original region, and when that happens they’ll take over a lot of market share from the local guys in other regions.
Music is the type of field where everyone and their brother gives it a go, and so the market is very, very deep. But most of it lacks the mass appeal needed to cause viralality. Today more than ever, it’s possible for marketable acts to catch on in a big way. And the big acts do really, really well. But that’s always been the case. In music as in other similarly competitive fields (professional sports, acting, startups, writing novels) being average means that you basically aren’t making a living, whereas the top people are really raking it in. It’s a well-studied market dynamic. (May have been mentioned in Freakonomics, although I can’t recall exactly).
Point being, in such fields average is almost always broke, and if you’re making it, you’re likely to be really, really making it. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it is exacerbated as technology continues to enable more efficient marketing / distribution for the most popular acts.
Music is the type of field where everyone and their brother gives it a go, and so the market is very, very deep. But most of it lacks the mass appeal needed to cause viralality. Today more than ever, it’s possible for marketable acts to catch on in a big way. And the big acts do really, really well. But that’s always been the case. In music as in other similarly competitive fields (professional sports, acting, startups, writing novels) being average means that you basically aren’t making a living, whereas the top people are really raking it in. It’s a well-studied market dynamic. (May have been mentioned in Freakonomics, although I can’t recall exactly).
Point being, in such fields average is almost always broke, and if you’re making it, you’re likely to be really, really making it. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it is exacerbated as technology continues to enable more efficient marketing / distribution for the most popular acts.