Being a starving artist living on the safety net is more difficult with cost of living increases.
Lots of good music came from countries like England, Sweden, Australia which were reasonably wealthy and had some minimum level of social welfare. We lost affordable tertiary education and it is one less place for people to meet and form bands or experiment.
Young people looking at creative careers are seeing management everywhere turn to AI slop and looking elsewhere. Everyone is hoping to find work that can’t be outsourced, can’t be automated, has fair labour practices, won’t put them in massive student debt and will still be around in 20 years. The choices seem to be narrowing.
“Peasants do not deserve idle time, and art is only for the idle rich that can afford it.”
It’s too expensive to be an artist in this country. Used to be able to work a few shifts somewhere to earn enough for food, rent, art and a drink from time to time. Now a full time job barely pays enough to rent a shoebox. The soul crushing boot of neolibralism strikes again.
Yeah the only people who can afford it now are wealthy kids, trust fund kids.
There was once a time our decent social services underwrote the development of performing arts but that’s squeezed out now by housing and life costs.
It’s pretty obvious why it’s dying; the same reasons birth rates are falling. The major parties aren’t hearing it though.
