Disagree strongly with #6. It's too easy to find counterexamples of brilliant artists who've created immeasurable value and died penniless. Market value != intrinsic value.
I think he is just trying to break the perceived reverse connection between artistic value and economic value for his impressionable audience who presumably strive for artistic value first.
The girls selected by the pretty sorority will likely be dumber than average but that's not because they are pretty, it's because of the selection criteria.
An attribute used in a selection requirement is easily misidentified as a causal factor. Pretty does not have to cause dumb. Popularity in and of itself does not have to cause bad music. Neither does starvation cause great art.
I must temper this conclusion with a joke: "I used to like the Chilean Miners when they were underground. Now they're too mainstream."
This is fairly fascinating to me - I'm a musician as well and love this stuff. What would have happened if John Coltrane, for example, had done what Miles Davis did and focused on the business side more?
I wonder, though, if perhaps you are nit-picking on a pithy title? "Be valuable" doesn't have to mean "learn business at the expense of creating value in your music", does it?
Your work may have value, but you won't know for sure; you might just be heading down the wrong path and producing crap. Getting paid gives you an axis to measure your efforts upon, which gives you a direction to hill-climb.
The girls selected by the pretty sorority will likely be dumber than average but that's not because they are pretty, it's because of the selection criteria.
An attribute used in a selection requirement is easily misidentified as a causal factor. Pretty does not have to cause dumb. Popularity in and of itself does not have to cause bad music. Neither does starvation cause great art.
I must temper this conclusion with a joke: "I used to like the Chilean Miners when they were underground. Now they're too mainstream."