[vanadium1st]

Outside of my regular job, I am an indie folk music artist, trying to rise in the local music scene here in Dnipro, Ukraine. Even though learning to be a musician from scratch in my 20s was a hard process that took years and years, by far the hardest part of it was trying to establish a passive income, so I could have enough free time for practicing, performing and writing music.

A lot of my talented peers are so much better then me in all of the music and performing stuff, but can't find enough time for it between regular boring work. Woody Allen said that 80% of success is just showing up, and it seems true. But now I see how a lot of talented people simply can't afford to show up. They are missing open mics and performing opportunities because they can't skip another shift as a barista, they can't find time for rehearsal because of soul killing the low paying bank job. I keep thinking about all the beautiful songs that are left to be unwritten.

I guess the life of artists was always like that - either you are struggling, or you have a source of passive income that carries you through the development years. And I do think that this moment in history is as full of opportunity as it ever was. Still, it was a surprising discovery for me. I really thought that at least at the starting level it would be mostly about who plays their chords better, and it surprisingly isn't.

[boredemployee]

I believe in the statement by Albert Barabasi who says that to be successful in art all you need is a good network, nothing else.

[sidlls]

That’s true for almost any field.

[boredemployee]

Not for fields that require some kind of performance

[munk-a]

So it's good for some fields other than performers?

I've met plenty of stock brokers and engineers that skate by on credentials - I try to avoid them professionally because they tend to produce workplaces with exceedingly high demands and low compensation due to the drain they introduce on the system... but they continue to exist.

Heck, HN has many time had discussion on C-level folks who basically revolving door their way from failure to failure and still get huge golden parachutes when they sign on to a new company even though their performance history is trash.

[sidlls]

Even fields that require performance can have strong networking requirements. Academia, software, traditional engineering, etc. One’s reputation is rarely purely or even strongly reputation based

[spywaregorilla]

Is the local music scene up and running? Aren't you like 100 miles from the front?

[vanadium1st]

Yeah, it's weird. The music scene is as live as it ever was here, along with all other parts of the normal city life.

It's not really a new situation for us. This war continues for 8 years, and all this time the front was about 200 miles from us. During this new phase of the invasion the frontline got a little closer to Dnipro, but not that much.

Regular life here stopped in winter-spring, when we didn't know which cities will withstand this phase of the invasion. Tragically Kherson, Mariupol and many others are lost as of now. But we in Dnipro were lucky enough and life kind of continues here.

There are changes of course. Practically no artist in Ukraine gets paid now at any level. Every single concert is for charity, gathering funds for arms or refugees. And, as with all other life, there are constant interruptions of air raid sirens.

Other than that, music scene lives as usual. People still go to concerts and artists still perform. Predictably a lot of sad sad songs gets written now, but honestly no one really wants to hear them - everyone here gets enough negativity from everywhere else. The best bet is to stick to the happy and hopeful stuff.

[bsder]

I really do wish we had "basic income" in the US. Besides helping out the lowest socioeconomic class, it really seems like this would benefit artists, too.

[RestlessMind]

Saudi Arabia or Scandinavian countries have generous welfare. What have their populations achieved?

[bsder]

I'm quite shocked that someone on HN would overlook the absurdly disproportionate to their population of the contributions of the Nordic and Scandinavian countries to the open source ecosystem.

And, let's take a stronger look at the UK, for example. Can you name a few people who were on the "dole"? I can start with J. K. Rowling and Noel Gallagher, to start.

[RestlessMind]

> the absurdly disproportionate to their population of the contributions

Any data about overall artistic / entrepreneurial output comparing Scandinavian countries vs others? Asking genuinely.

[plonk]

Some Finnish guy made a small mark in the history of operating systems a few years back. You might have heard of him.

[RestlessMind]

I have heard about only a handful of Finnish artists and entrepreneurs. Nothing remarkable stands out there compared to other countries without UBI or a generous safety net, as is the context of this whole thread ("UBI would benefit artists").

Have you got any data about how Finland stands out in artistic output vs other countries? Or just random anecdotes which can be found even in countries without any welfare.

[qaq]

Well the COVID gave a taste of it still can't put inflation under control from that experiment.

[ornornor]

Is it from the couple thousand stimulus checks or is it from the billions companies got for free?

[qaq]

was inflation mostly in industrial equipment or consumer goods?

[RestlessMind]

Inflation was also in service sector (eg. restaurants jacking up prices due to cost of labor). Before implementing UBI, let's have an alternative system for jobs like janitors, restaurant workers, mall/retail workers etc.

[ornornor]

Doesn’t one trigger the other in a vicious circle?

[qaq]

Increase in production capacity triggers inflations of end product prices?

[2-718-281-828]

> I guess the life of artists was always like that - either you are struggling, or you have a source of passive income that carries you through the development years

Most importantly ... wealthy parents ;)

[999900000999]

Wealthy parents, wealthy partner. I wouldn't really mind, if I married a girl and she decided after we had kids that she just wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

And she like paints or something. But that notion also devalues domestic housework, which is just as valuable as typing all day to make ad revenue go up.

But I would still like to think a stay-at-home parent could carve out more time for their hobbies. Particularly once the kids are in school.

Being a music person like me, I totally would love to have classical pianist as a wife and just come home every day to hearing classical piano.

[perfmode]

Thanks for sharing. Do you have any music online?

[vanadium1st]

Thank you for your interest. At this moment I am only performing live and am not proud enough of my performance level to record it and share it online