The Increasingly Pivotal Role Music Plays in Our Lives
The fact that there is relatively so much competitiveness and so little money in music is a hint at its significance.
Music is a kind of paradoxical art form, somehow constantly dying yet also surviving, in a strange, undead, immortal state. How can this be? What is the nature of this reality?
Professional musicians, aside from an exclusive circle of elite superstars, are making less and less income, often having to work second jobs in order to support themselves and their families. Because as music itself gains popularity, so does the competition.
What allows artists to thrive commercially is based largely on marketing politics rather than artistic truth. Art essentially defies material commodification.
Therefore, the commercialization of art often leads artists to compromise their main goals (such as freedom, individual expression, creativity, innovation, and originality) to market themselves to a mass audience (where such values are watered down or disregarded).
Musicians are forced to conform to various genres, scenes, trends, contracts, labels, and so on, so that they can fit in with the rest of the artists in that category and make money. This kills them a little bit…
