I'm sure I have written about this before a few times, but it is only possible for a very few musicians to make a decent living. And here is an illustration:
At 43, opera singer Andrew Potter has finally made it. His voice is at its peak. He's making more money than ever, booking lots of gigs. But in an open letter to the opera industry last month, he announced he's retiring from the stage.
POTTER: We just have to start telling the truth, and that is that unless you're in the top 1- or 2% of singers in the world, this is not something that you'll be able to sustain a family with.
ATKINSON: Potter is good but just outside that 2%. Last December, he sang in a metropolitan opera production. And for him, that's when it became clear he could barely afford to do this work.
And opera singing is probably, along with orchestral conducting, the most lucrative niche in the classical music world. If you are a classical guitarist, the odds are much, much worse. Out of a few hundred thousand classical guitarists in the world, how many make a good living? Back in the 80s when times were much better for classical guitarists, about five. Not five percent, no, five people: John Williams, Julian Bream, Pepe Romero, Narciso Yepes and maybe Christopher Parkening. I don't think the top five now are doing nearly as well. I could speculatively estimate that Pepe Romero might have made $500,000 US a year, which is a darn good living for a musician. The others perhaps a bit more or a bit less. But that is five artists out of, well let's conservatively estimate the world classical guitar population at 100,000, so that is 0.005%. If I had known those were the odds I would have done a degree in philosophy instead.
Γνῶθι σεαυτόν!
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