File this under – If it was easy anybody could do it. Stay positive, be smart. Leave the trailer park mentality behind.
Here’s the story…
Andrew Moore, 25, is at an impasse facing many up-and-coming rock & roll musicians. Becoming a full-time touring musician has been his dream since he first picked up drumsticks at age nine, but the state of the music industry has forced him to split his time between music and a more traditional career.
“I have a full-time day job. I do weekend touring here and there,” said Moore, who pounds the skins for the Connecticut-based band Tier. “Music is the dream job.”
The age of the internet and the decline of record labels have created a dichotomy in the music industry: it’s never been easier to make your music public, but it’s never been harder to make money off that music.
“It’s almost like the economy — there’s a vanishing middle class,” said Parke Puterbaugh, music journalist and professor of rock history at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C. “I think things really started to go south for musicians in general with the onset of Napster and peer to peer file sharing that made it possible to obtain music without paying for music.”
With Spotify, Bandcamp, iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, and personal blogs, it has never been easier to make music and get it out to the public. The flip side of that is this: It has never been harder to make money off that music. Ask any working rock & roll band. […]
