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by doytch 681 days ago
> Using this "cross-verified database," we find that music stars have one of the shortest lifespans of any profession, with an expectancy comparable to boxers, military figures, and race car drivers.

Although according to the chart directly below, the life expectancy is more comparable to chess players and poets. Probably isn't as fun a sentence to write though.

2 comments

Disagree. A profession lasts for how much time you receive money for your activity. Music stars receive money for their songs during their entire lives (and part of the lives of their children).
depends how much you receive. If they receive the same amount of money you might expect someone to get if they are picking up cans they see laying about and recycling them then I don't think it really applies as a profession.
Waiting for the yearly royalties of your songs is different than picking cans because it don't require any effort. All free money is still money. And in the long term still would be much more that a scientist receives for publishing an article.

Stardom duration is also relative as you are always losing fans and earning new fans. Is more like an echo machine. A good videoclip is paid once but the people will want to watch it for decades.

>Waiting for the yearly royalties of your songs is different than picking cans because it don't require any effort.

is this one of those xkcd mentos moments here? You are not familiar with any situations where artists have been screwed out of royalties, underpaid, lied to etc. and have to spend time with lawyers to get their loyalties.

Given the well known financial reporting patterns of the various media industries any artist who does not put any effort into getting their royalties is an artist who essentially does not get their royalties.

>Stardom duration is also relative as you are always losing fans and earning new fans.

I mean you are saying these things but they seem to go against the data in this study as well as the data provided by people who also make references to their experience in the relevant industries - do you have any data and or experience to back this up or are these just your opinions of how it must work based on reasoning about the problem using nothing but logic to derive a conclusion?

Because I too would expect it works the way you say, but I would default to expertise of others who say no you are misinformed about how the situation is in our industry - discounting outliers like Taylor Swift.

You're not wrong lol