Blog #6

Is it harder to be a successful musician nowadays?

Since the age of 13, I have been educated by some incredibly talented musicians, each with their own ideologies on this very question. Throughout my musical education and adolescent years, I was often told by adults, from all walks of life, about the so-called ‘Wreck’ that is the modern day music industry. This often made the idea of making music for a living seem very daunting.

Well, I’m writing this blog today to tell you that this simply isn’t true. In fact, I would argue that it’s quite the Opposite. But first, in order to give you some context here, let’s go back to the so called ‘Golden Age’ of music, the 1960’s. Back then, in a world without the internet, bands and artists were limited in means of promotion and communication, and without enough financial backing they lacked the sheer resources ad infrastructure that they’d need to exist in mainstream culture. Instead bands would have to just sit and hope that they create enough buzz to attract a record label.

With modern day technology and the internet, musicians no longer worry about such things, as today musicians can literally reach the entire world with their fingers tips. This means that luck has a much smaller role than it did before the internet came along. Take chance the Rapper for instance; Last year chance made $33,000,000 after selling out arenas around the world and reaching 100,000,000 listens on Spotify with three separate songs of his. This would be a huge achievement for any artist today. However, what makes it even more impressive is the fact that he’s still an unsigned artist. Yep that’s right, the 5th highest earning hip-hop artist last year, according to Forbes, doesn’t even have a record label helping him.

Without the need of record labels, musicians really have very little in their way. The tools are there to be used, and it seems that the era of the record label may be coming to a close.

George Capon (Guitar Teacher in Sale)