Why Only Rich Kids Make It In Music Today

[bermudagold]

[Bunny_boy]

I see that Ricky B is ahead of the curve again.

[viraven8]

Not completely true. Game Development is proof of musicians gaining income and popularity without being rich.

In 2026, you stand out through hybrid development, not by being avant-garde or being the "Beethoven" of your genre.

Be a content developer while making music, or make music for games/moviies. An artist who can make animations and music at the same time is more powerful than a skillful Piano player who can play Chopin/ Liszt perfectly. (not more talented, just more capable of income)

Obviously Serendipity will always play a huge role in Art, especially for the rich musicians. But it's not 100% just that.

[foosnark]

Not completely true. Game Development is proof of musicians gaining income and popularity without being rich.

I was a software developer in the game industry and can tell you it usually pays less than most other industries, while also offering much less than average job security.

Where I worked, sound in general was an afterthought, and music lower than that. I had exactly one opportunity to provide music for one of our games, and I got no particular credit/appreciation/status for having done so. In fact, I hadn't been given any sort of specifications other than "menu music, short loops"; but they had nothing that would play compressed file formats and had an extremely small limitation on the installer size... so they took my WAV files, downsampled them to 8Khz mono just like all the other sounds, and thought that was good enough.

(Granted, getting shafted that much isn't typical, but poor pay, long hours and unpaid crunch time, and frequent layoffs? Absolutely the norm.)

Instead of that mess, I work on engineering software, am fairly well paid for 40 hours a week, then go home and make whatever music I want to make and I'm happy. I don't have to do soulless "content creation" nor work for a tyrant with poor planning skills and a massive ego

[Zeisner]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

[zerocrossing]

This is true, and now you have to pay for social media marketing.

[vurt]

I see that Ricky B is ahead of the curve again.

it's the social media curse, you can't just present information, maybe with a bit of humour, the odd anecdote and such, now it has to be "how can we divide the room? gotta get those clicks..."
division in the title (the video can even prove the opposite tbh) means arguments in the comments, engagement pays! kerching!

[bermudagold]

I see that Ricky B is ahead of the curve again.

it's the social media curse, you can't just present information, maybe with a bit of humour, the odd anecdote and such, now it has to be "how can we divide the room? gotta get those clicks..."
division in the title (the video can even prove the opposite tbh) means arguments in the comments, engagement pays! kerching!

but when has that ever not been the case...from speeches in the romans senate to shakespeare plays...people have always developed hyperbolic, sensationalistic, clickbait to get people to engage in debate...even if that requires pushing buttons to trigger an emotional response...humans are simple creatures that require constant motivation...but rigorous debate is at the core of all human enlightenment and societal progress no?...if humans were more mature and evolved they would probably come to the town square voluntarily but alas

[bermudagold]

i think the central point holds water because nepotism has always been a huge force multiplier in probability of success, mostly because the largest predictor of future success is access to resources in all their forms...access to networks of all types and access to capital of all types...a historical example that unequivocally proves this is the renaissance...the renaissance would not have happened without the creation of the patronage system and infrastructure...talented people had the opportunity to pursue artistic and intellectual pursuits with rigor towards mastery, because they didn't have to spend every waking minute thinking about surviving the next minute in a much more unforgiving world...without the opportunities that access to the patronage system provided, the leap in enlightenment of the renaissance would have never occurred, and most of those famous names you would have never heard of

[Milkman]

This is why the world, specifically the western parts of it, need a better economic system. I know many of you cant talk about it openly for fear of "commie" or whatever, but that propaganda can only hold you back from seeing the reality of social economies for so long. Meanwhile the non social (paywall everything) economies have done SO well for themselves, havent they. I wonder why they all regularly self destruct, do genocides, etc? Maybe its that top down, hierarchical, systems awash in hereditary dynasties, human rights violations, and monstrous dark ages exploitation belong IN THE DARK AGES from whence they came, and not in this, what's it called again? Post enlightenment, reconstruction period? Post enlightenment, indeed.

We need new economic systems. This much is 100% clear, and then we can talk about ALL OF THIS over again, and give it another try. Art is a human behavior, not a product, and we have to literally rebuild this unethical society before it ends us all. And I know most of you can see that writing on the wall now, and its not just a "few commies" or whatever. Its most major science institutions across the entire earth.

[Bunny_boy]

I see that Ricky B is ahead of the curve again.

it's the social media curse, you can't just present information, maybe with a bit of humour, the odd anecdote and such, now it has to be "how can we divide the room? gotta get those clicks..."
division in the title (the video can even prove the opposite tbh) means arguments in the comments, engagement pays! kerching!

Oh god yeah, noone seems to be immune from the provocative video titles designed to stir up arguments for the sole reason of generating money. It undermines whatever they are trying to say (unless the actual point is just to create an argument).

But what I meant by my rather obscure comment is that wor Ricky is about 5 years too late with this video. If you Google UK working class musician issues you get loads of hits (possibly referencing the same thing, mind) about the difficulties being a working musician in a post-brexit, austerity world. It seems similar to being an intern - really good if you have an additional, separate source of finance to make up for the lack of money. Plus of course the lack of opportunities in a system that is class-based.

[Bunny_boy]

This is why the world, specifically the western parts of it, need a better economic system. I know many of you cant talk about it openly for fear of "commie" or whatever, but that propaganda can only hold you back from seeing the reality of social economies for so long. Meanwhile the non social (paywall everything) economies have done SO well for themselves, havent they. I wonder why they all regularly self destruct, do genocides, etc? Maybe its that top down, hierarchical, systems awash in hereditary dynasties, human rights violations, and monstrous dark ages exploitation belong IN THE DARK AGES from whence they came, and not in this, what's it called again? Post enlightenment, reconstruction period? Post enlightenment, indeed.

We need new economic systems. This much is 100% clear, and then we can talk about ALL OF THIS over again, and give it another try. Art is a human behavior, not a product, and we have to literally rebuild this unethical society before it ends us all. And I know most of you can see that writing on the wall now, and its not just a "few commies" or whatever. Its most major science institutions across the entire earth.

Under Thatcher in the 80s was the Enterprise Allowance Scheme which allowed unemployed creative types to get on with it, along with payments from the government. It's still quite astonishing that a govt that didn't believe in social cohesion and that free-market deregulation with a very small state was the the only way could contribute to the careers of so many musicians and artists.

[TechHaus]

It's awesome that canada gives artists money to record.

https://www.factor.ca/

Meanwhile here in the USA we cut funding to NPR and PBS and give military helicopter rides to Kid Rock.

[Constructed Identity]

Nothing new about this. I when I lived with a friend in Yonkers, I looked into internships at studios (the major path to breaking into the industry) they are all unpaid in a city where the average rent in 4k a month. Similar in LA. Just paying for practice space in most cities is unattainable to most teens.

[zerocrossing]

Nothing new about this. I when I lived with a friend in Yonkers, I looked into internships at studios (the major path to breaking into the industry) they are all unpaid in a city where the average rent in 4k a month. Similar in LA. Just paying for practice space in most cities is unattainable to most teens.

I was one of those unpaid interns, though after the 3 months were up, they started paying me minimum wage. It was about enough to get back and forth to NYC. The project went on break, and with no source of income, I had to get a job. There was nothing but a place that wanted someone to babysit tape duplicators over night.

I took jobs in retail, and continued to show up at studios with my little resume. I must have looked like an idiot. Most were nice, but no one ever called. I thought my internship would have opened up some doors for me, but no. I did random things over the years. Live sound, produced an EP, some studio work. It was never enough to pay the rent. I remember the one guy I know who did get a steady gig in a studio still lived at home. Another guy I worked for had a trust fund that made it so he didn't have to work, but he liked having a recording studio.

I really do think that the majority of people who end up making a career of it have a support system that's willing to provide that support until it happens. I often wonder what would have happened if I could have just hung out during the 3 month break and went back and continued working on that first project and accepted my minimum wage until it got better, but my family was the "sink or swim" kind of family. So I mostly sunk with a bit of floundering on the side.

Oh, and all of that was in the 80s and 90s, when there was still a robust recording studio world. I imagine that world barely exists today.