WHY MUSIC PSYCHOLOGY?

Social and Psychological Survival for Musicians

The public has little idea of how hard a career in the performing arts is. Musicians in the 21st-century labor twenty times the roles of musicians in the 20th-century, often underpaid or completely unpaid. New York venues famously do not pay musicians unless it is a ticketed event. Radio and press do not pay musicians. I repeat, radio and press DO NOT pay musicians. The shiny screens of performances that you are watching do not mean the performer is paid. (Unless it is on Broadcast TV.) Instead, musicians must pay PR and booking agents to help them connect with their audience. This is called the “pay to play” industry, where musicians self-fund their albums completely, sacrificing stability and security to practice their performance craft and provide entertainment for very little (earning 0.0038 cents per stream by places such as Spotify, despite the average cost of 10k to produce and release a quality album). They often silently post and promote their next show or album in the hopes of reaching people, in between performing taking selfies to make it look like they are ‘making it happen’ despite dismal turnouts at venues and internal dejection from empty venues. And in the meantime, the ‘music industry’ is full of internet and tech companies claiming to help musicians by providing exposure, or optimizing their internet reach - but in actuality, these people are building their business on taking cuts from the labors and start up business costs the artist is paying to make their work. Because artists are decentralized (and often disinterested in government funding that requires censorship), they have little power to change the landscape.

It requires money to record, promote and distribute music. A LOT of money. According to my survey of NYC-based or veteran musicians, 86% of musicians have released their own music online, and in 2019 made an average of $27k annually (mean age of 45.3 years), $13k in 2020. That is not a lot to live on in a city like New York, while saving money to produce and release original music. In 2020, my survey indicated musicians earned 50% less than pre-pandemic, on average 13k from music earnings, showing an absolute need for state and governmental support. However, federal PUA benefits and unemployment assistance in New York State ended in September 2021, leaving musicians scrapping to find stable avenues of income despite the Omicron virus shutting down another six months of touring income subsequently. Oh, and not to mention the hurdles of proving their professional work to the IRS, Department of Labor, or other income checks required for basic necessities like securing a lease on a place to live. Most musicians make income in cash, and wherever they can - estimably only 15% comes from 1099s. This means taxes are an endless headache requiring 40 unpaid hours of labor alone to document and file their taxes to the IRS.

And, ah, yes, the complications of taxes for freelancers. This is likely why only 60% of musicians received unemployment assistance in the pandemic - the hurdle of qualifying on paper for an industry that does not get paid in W2’s was too great. A staggering 35% of musicians did not even apply for unemployment benefits. With an average income of 13k in 2020, how musicians have survived the pandemic is a wonder, but perhaps we cannot be surprised for their resilience has historically superceded all.

But that doesn’t make it okay. While musical work has long been exploited by digital technology and streaming services, to make matters worse, Covid has ravaged any hopes of having stable touring income, not to mention virtual teaching and zoom fatigue hitting hard - confronting identity-as-musician-by-music-income. Some scholars suggest capital exploitation mythologizes creativity as belonging to a few so that the machine can exploit this labor to sell to the masses (Toynbee, 2017). An understanding of social psychology can aid musicians to thrive together and relieve individual pressures suffered by so many silently in the competitive gig atmosphere of places like New York City. Because musicians are often socially and subliminally subjected to equate their self-worth and identity based on how well they perform and how many people attend their events, a particular need for writing, education, and research are important to benefit members of this community.

These are the reasons I went into research and discovered music psychology. After repeated literature reviews, I found so many studies on the mental health and wellbeing benefits of music, but few studies on the wellbeing of musicians, and far less on the wellbeing of jazz musicians. This is why I devised my mixed-methods study of mental health and wellbeing of NYC jazz musicians, possibly the first study of living jazz musicians’ wellbeing completed.