What If All This Was Easier?
Are you suffering for your art or are you just being exploited
Today's post is quick and messy and angry.
Even during a "good" week trying to pilot my wet rag of a body and wandering hazy mind is a massive effort. I'm sure a number of you can relate. So I'm jumping right in to the meat of what I've been thinking about this week (and for many weeks tbh).
I love music. I love that people make it. And I'm tired of how the industry has made it harder and harder for people not only to make their work but to live and feed themselves. Streaming. Merch cuts. No health insurance. The constant demand for more and more "content" with less and less return. And then with all of that, one bag of groceries cost $70 in New York City. Maybe $50 if you really commit to eating only the cheapest and most basic of whatever there is. Rent for a single shitty room is $800 if you're really lucky.
I know being a musician has always had an element of roughing it. And it probably always will. Traveling that much is hard no matter how well you're taken care of. But here's the thing. Have our artists EVER been taken care of?
Reading about Black Flag crossing the country in a van many might call not fit for human habitation and eating moldy cheese sandwiches in Our Band Could Be Your Life I thought to myself "surely it didn't need to be that rough".
I've done the whole suffering for your art thing, working in live theater and film and television. It feels good to work on something that feels so important and urgent. Many of us find community through work that tells us it's the thing that matters most. It feels good to have a direction and to an extent it feels good to suffer. Putting in long hours of hard physical work, its a fast track to building a sense of belonging unlike anything I had ever experienced before. But here's the thing. Putting on a live show is hard. But it doesn't need to be THIS hard.
It feels taboo sometimes to ask "what if this was easier" but I'm going to ask it. What if this was easier?
And not only that, but HOW can we make it easier?
Ultimately music is experiencing the same thing as every other industry. Capitalism is always trying to squeeze as much money out of people as it can before throwing them away, but the music industry is largely without protections against this- and so musicians are particularly feeling the squeeze.
On the one hand, bigger people than me are going to need to start talking about how suffering for your art to this degree is not noble, or even part of paying your dues, its just exploitation. I can't see any reason why a record label shouldn't provide health insurance at a minimum. How many people become quietly disabled simply because they cannot access medical treatment?
If you're a musician I encourage you to start talking about this. To your band, your scene, to me!
In the mean time while I try to stir up this conversation, Cripple Punk Mag will be launching an experiment: Giving out micro grants to musicians in NYC, with the aim of helping people to invest in their art while they're living paycheck to paycheck. If the industry wont take care of its people, what will happen if we try to?
More on that soon.
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I second all of this… as a fan of music and a fan of a lot of small indie artists ❤️
The cognitive dissonance between people who consume art, music and writing on a daily basis, and then go on to disrespect and disregard us is craaazzyyy, and directly feeds into the exploitation of artists (of every "low wage" or unprotected worker tbf, but let's focus on art)
Like... Damn.