I'd say my need for professional musicians is much, much lower than the number who want to be professional musicians which is always going to push the earnings of professional musicians down. And sadly what level of professionalism I personally need is much lower than I think professionals on artistic arenas think it should be.
Tastes differ, of course, and professionalism is a broad concept.
But generally, if you want to listen to music that will be relevant for decades or centuries, you need quality composers and players who can translate the black squiggles on paper (or computer screens) into something listenable.
That requires practice, and lots of it.
To be clear, I’m not saying every musician has to have the same skill set. Each genre has its own quirks. Classical musicians often have trouble performing rock, blues or other popular music songs without sounding comedic. (I nearly wrecked a car listening to Pavarotti performing “The Thrill Us Gone” with BB King.)
OTOH, it’s probably rare for punk guitarists to play “Malagueña” properly.
I've fairly routinely had this whole discussion as it relates to photography. I discuss the complaints that professionally trained photographers dont get paid as well as they used to. Large numbers of digital, automated cameras have created "good enough" photographs that the public actually wanted. They had to settle for higher priced professional level photos because that's all there was before. The truth from my perspective is the wages the pro photographers had before were propped up by the skills necessary to use the tool(camera). When that dropped the price dropped both because they couldn't charge for those skills anymore and because the buyers on average never really cared about the amount of skill that it takes to setup good lighting, placement in a photo, etc. They mostly wanted a picture of their friend, kid ,business, etc in the paper as long as it was good enough(in focus, smiling, looking good). I suspect that is a sad truism in most of the arts. People buying the arts on average only care about good enough.
“Good enough” is a pretty vague standard.
I agree that technology has greatly democratized most forms of art. There’s a jeweler I work with who can’t draw to save his life- he
needs CAD programs to do his own stuff. Before then, he had to rely on other artists to illustrate his concepts.
And discussions similar to the photography ones you mention pop up frequently on the guitar boards I frequent. Most of the veteran players would agree that most listeners wouldn’t notice you missing a note or using the wrong gear, especially if you’re in a covers band.
But those same players will also assert that certain people WILL notice mistakes and differing aesthetic choices. And that number increases when it’s the performer doing their own stuff. And they go to great lengths to ensure their gear sounds “right” and their chops are tight.
No joke, a front row attendee heckled Adam Lambert
during the concert for not doing a Queen song like Freddy Mercury. Lambert responded something along the lines of “Freddy can’t be here, I’m the singer now.” (gaining a grin from Brian May) and continued with the show.
Making a living your entire life just on the arts is not realistic for 90% of the participants. People don't value it enough and the quantity of people who want to do it is so large that earnings from it will always be low.
I agree. But why make life harder for the average musician?
Passive income streams are one of many key ways to raise one’s earning power, and royalties are a form of passive income.
But a large portion of the general population seem perfectly willing to cut off poverty-level royalty income streams because a high-profile few make millions. That bugs me.
If you have $1m, you average 100k a year in S&P returns. That's pretty sweet assuming you do nothing else. Now some years you get nothing and others you might get 180k but historically 10% is your average.
Which is why I mentioned lotteries & windfalls, and why financial literacy courses for big payouts. Most people are not financially informed enough to properly invest money.
Again, only a little over 800 artists out of literally millions make that kind of money from Spotify.
Contrast that with the royalties each member of a newly signed 5-piece band whose debut album goes gold receives receives: they’re still going to qualify for food stamps.
The general public would be well served by having a serious home economics course in high school. I'm going to worry a lot less about the 5% who get a windfall and fail to manage it vs the much larger number of folks living paycheck to paycheck while still earning a living. You fix that and you probably don't need to worry about the windfall folks.
100% agreed.
I’ll note that the American public educational system has cut a LOT of programs that used to prep kids for becoming functioning members of society, largely because of underfunding. (Some of which is demonstrably malicious.) Home-Ec, Government, Shop/Woodworking, and others from my ancestors’ and my school days are becoming increasingly endangered, and are completely gone from some districts.
One (non-financial) example: I was in my regular barber shop (on a busy day) years ago when the topic had turned to that exact discussion: school programs that had been cut. I said that I’d bet every guy over a certain age had been taught a particular song, regardless of where they were from. I started vocalizing the instrumental “Cherry Blossoms”.
And every guy over 30 joined in.
Nobody younger had a clue.
At that size and location it's mostly about the people and food than trade dress.
Agreed, to a point. Food & customer service are what keeps a restaurant going for years, decades and more.
But if you’re changing ownership, keeping the trademarks and trade dress help you retain your customer base. Changing things during a transitional period can be done, but it definitely makes things more difficult.
(Of course, if your customer base is small and/or shrinking, altering the trade dress might be a catalyst for improvement.)
