By modern media standards, failure is dull...unless you fail spectacularly. Then you might have a chance at redemption. Just ask William Hung or Rob Ford.

Sift through the titles in the Music section in any bookstore (online or in the flesh), for example, and the bio's will consist of people who have “succeeded” - at least for a while. They've risen in their career far enough to be a household word, or at least be associated closely with a household word. The height of their career might be decades or centuries ago – and hopefully during their lifetime (sorry, Schubert and Bizet) – but they enjoyed some notoriety. Nobody's going to buy a bio or watch a movie about a musician who's musical career went nowhere.
The result is that virtually 100% of the written and filmed accounts about the lives of musicians denote success.
The reality is that a tiny fraction - likely less than 1% -  actually get off the ground. The rest toil with no noteworthy results.
I'm not making any opinion statements about the success rate itself. It is what it is for myriad reasons, some bad, some good. I am saying that the public can come away with a rather skewed opinion as to a musician's chance of success. If your only exposure to a musician's life is the Buddy Holly Story and 8-Mile, you may come away thinking a reasonable amount of talent, smarts and luck assures a successful career.
I wish that were true – whether or not I considered myself a contender.
I can say that there are plenty of musical artists out there that deserve to remain obscure, at least in their present state. I've encountered many musicians who are seduced by the idea of becoming stars, or at least touring musicians, who remain derivative, uninteresting, unimaginative or just “safe”; they put none of their true selves into their music, and rely on self-serving, comic-book versions of their 'best face'. Many don't dig very deeply into 'the craft' of music, from recording to theory to stage presentation, and very few take any musical risks – or even know enough about musical structure to know what a risk is. Success stories in the business almost always centre on someone who obsesses about some or all of the above (obsession can sometimes do the work of self-discipline, with even greater results).
Yet – are there artists out there who do make exciting and valid artistic statements, have their music business act together and still spend their entire professional lives in total obscurity and poverty?
It is, unfortunately, more the norm than the exception – and it's not getting any better.
It's a bit early to tell whether the Age of the Internet will ultimately bring deserving artists their following as well as the financial compensation to avoid the artist's starvation; and it's definitely too early to count out the three remaining major labels. The corporate world will continue to hold some sway, with degree of malevolence directly proportional to the relative size of the corporate entities at work. This brings us to where I'd been aiming this blog from the start:
The music business has changed significantly over the centuries; and you'll notice I didn't use the word “evolved”. If you were a classical music composer living in the early 18th Century, for example, your chief source of income would likely have been patronage from a member or two of the landed gentry, plus whatever spare change you could pick up as a music teacher, a church choir director, or an instrumentalist in some orchestra. There were no records to sell, virtually no media to use, no merch booths at performances, no radio airplay, and there often weren't even “audiences” by our definition of the word. A gig might be an evening performance in the private salon of the Margrave of Brandenburg or the Earl of Salisbury or (if you had a hot career) the King of Prussia. You didn't often have to worry about maxing ticket sales.
I bring this up because 21st-Century World is starting to resemble 18th-Century Europe. There is a small, very rich Class of Privilege, and tons of under-employed musicians. A few of my friends now make the bulk of their income with 'corporate gigs' – for example, a local new car dealers' Christmas party. The pay is excellent, as is the calibre of musicianship. Granted, it's all cover tunes, unless the corporation is so well-funded they can afford to hire, say, Michael Buble (I use this purely for example's sake – I have no idea if Mr. B does corporate gigs, and he sings tons of covers anyway), but it sure beats playing for the door (minus the cost of the soundman, of course) at a local 60-seat pub.
Many years ago, a friend reminded me that I must always deal with the world as it is and not how it should be. If I had my druthers, music stores and venues would be thriving and lucrative, and there would be dozens of mid-sized record labels run by musically prescient executives, all vying to find and develop the best musical talent they could. Radio would be a bastion of variety and substance. Unfortunately, the situation is quite different...but is there a way for high-quality, enduring music to see the light of day in the 21st Century? Surely, there may always be a trickle of the stuff; but perhaps what is required is a modern-day Mark of Brandenburg. Patrons of the arts who 'sign' artists, develop and promote them as record labels (used to) do, but without the impatience or musical indifference of corporate shareholders. Weirdly enough, Supertramp got its start in the late '60's this very way – and didn't enjoy breakthrough success until two failed albums and a near-total line-up change caused their rich patron to walk away. One case is hardly data for a definitive conclusion, however, so this would certainly seem a way forward in the face of an otherwise soulless industry. Big, committed money versus big, impatient and indifferent money – I know which bet I'd put my money on.
Well – if I had any. I'm a musician, after all.


*Now bankers, they study statistics and aren't seduced by movies like “La Bamba”. Try getting a bank loan as a musician and you'll see what I mean. Nick Mason of Pink Floyd tried to get a house mortgage just after the release of Dark Side of the Moon. The banker asked him if he had any other collateral or assets that hadn't yet been disclosed. “Well, I've got a hit record in America”, Mason replied. The banker shook his head sadly. “Not enough.”