This thread makes me think I should be listening to more Coldplay!
Stick to their first two albums, they are old, all the rest is shit.
Yeah, they actually don’t need to be paid to make music. They may need to have a job, but that job doesn’t have to be music.
Most musicians will happily play all day long if the mood strikes them, no money necessary. It’s fulfilling to them, so they do it. The cash becomes really important when you want that musician to start and stop at a particular time, take their equipment somewhere and perform it at a particular place, with these particular musicians and instruments (both of which they now may hate), and play the songs you want them to play.
Heck, the Velvet Underground’s first drummer quit because they took a paying gig. Musicians are gonna musician - and if you think you have to pay one for them to do it, you’ve never lived with one.
Still waiting on the action plan from those who think this is a crisis.
That is easy to say, but IMO having to take 1 or 2 more jobs on top of practicing 8 to 10 hours per day (plus however long for travel, marketing, etc) starts to cramp one’s style.
All that stuff is no less than what a professional musician has to do all the time, whether or not that wedding or club gig is that exciting in the large scheme of things.
I think they’ll keep yelling at clouds. 
Most musicians don’t really get into it thinking of it as a stable career. Even if you make a living at it, it’s a ton of hustle. If you want to not have 1 or more extra jobs, don’t make it your job. That was consistent advice from musicians when I started learning, and that was decades ago. I took it, and now I just play what I want. If I can convince someone to pay me for it (it happens), all the better.
I’m not talking about practicing. I’m talking about simply playing and enjoying playing the instrument. If you don’t do that and you’re a musician, you picked the wrong endeavor. That’s what a musician will do for free. The rest of it is nonsense you have to do to get paid for what you’re willing to often do for free.
The real mystery is how the most creative and artistic generations of all time (boomers and gen xers) managed to raise such talentless and unrefined children who are destroying all forms of art.
Probably all the drugs.
(Lack of)
Threadshitting? Joking?
WHOOOOOOOOOSH
It’s a very whooshy post. Gen Xers and Boomers probably are not the most creative generation; perhaps just the most self-congratulatory (and not even this). Art takes time, talent and the will to experiment. Maybe young’uns suffered from helicopter parents and focus-stealing technology (although probably less often than they’d have you believe). But they are not destroying art. I thought that was the Dada dudes, and even then there was still a partial renaissance.
The Dada dudes in a way wanted to destroy art, but created and inspired a load of great art in the process.
Epater le bourgeoisie!
Done participating in the hijacking of my own thread.
It’s kind of the commoditization of talent…more people can make professional sounding music, so the per person payout is lower, and the audience for each artist is smaller.
FWIW, the show was tonight and it was awesome. Definitely worth catching. Didn’t care much for Volbeat, the co-headliner, but the opening band, Twin Temple, plays a “Satanic doo-wop” style of roots rock that was very fun. Worth catching the show if you can.
It’s the Boomers and Gen-Xers who are running the music business today. If anything, it’s our fault it’s being run into the ground.
I don’t know. Boomers especially seem to think they were the most creative generation.
Some do. In music, they have a partial argument. In general, Generation X was defined by Coupland in a book about cynicism and McJobs. Another generation stylized itself as the “Greatest Generation”, not the most modest moniker, methinks.
However, human history is long and many older civilizations were more perceptive, talented and intelligent than some suppose. Music and other artistic preferences change, but if the test of genius is the recognition of works lasting hundreds of years, may be premature in certain cases. Instant classic? Not yet.