The Decline of the Working Musician

Before the gig economy consumed a third of the workforce, it was mostly musicians who worried about gigs. There are debates about the origins of the word—some believe it derives from an eighteenth-century term for horse-drawn carriages that may have doubled as stages for performers, while others contend that it was adapted from a Baroque dance called the gigue. But the “gig,” as shorthand for a casual, one-off paid performance, entered the popular lexicon during the Jazz Age of the nineteen-twenties and thirties. There was a mystique to the gigging musician wandering the big city in search of work, because this work was creative, improvisational, at times transcendent.

Young people who came of age before the twenty-first century, Franz Nicolay argues in a new book called “Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music,” could be forgiven for assuming that working one’s way up from gigs to a steady job in music was a plausible career path. You might not make it as a chart-topping star, but there were still opportunities for “band people”—the “hired guns” or “side-of-the-stagers” who offered structure and support. Music was everywhere, and there had to be people to play it. Nicolay’s book details the lives of working musicians, especially those far from the spotlight: background vocalists hired for uncredited recording sessions, rhythm guitarists playing on freelance contracts. Not that the spotlight in question shines all that brightly to begin with; most of the dozens of artists Nicolay spoke to work in commercially tenuous realms, such as indie rock or punk, in which a band like Sonic Youth represents the imagination’s zenith.

But anyone who has streamed a song on their phone for free can sense that something has changed. “Musicians,” Nicolay argues, “were the canaries in the coal mine of the precariat”—the original freelancers making do. “Band People” might be one of the least bacchanalian books ever published about the rock-and-roll life style, but also one of the most honest. It’s a collection of stories about how musicians who have made contributions to songs beloved by millions, and who have played alongside David Bowie or Madonna, simply get by.

Nicolay understands the industry’s highs and lows, having been a member of the Hold Steady, a rock band known for its elaborate storytelling, and of the carnivalesque punk band the World/Inferno Friendship Society. In 2016, he published “The Humorless Ladies of Border Control,” a funny and sharply observed account of touring in Eastern Europe. He is particularly lively when discussing the alchemy of bands in his own terms. “Every band is a foreign country,” he writes, “with its peculiar customs and dialects, slang and standards. But every band is also (when it works) a small business, a romance, an employer/employee dynamic, a hierarchy, a creative collaboration, and something between a family—siblings or cousins, sometimes literally—and a gang.”

Nicolay makes these gangs sound like a lot of fun, while also demystifying them. Some band people prefer hierarchy and assertive decision-makers; others aspire to a more chaotic kind of democracy. Some envy the star; others feel sorry for him. Jon Rauhouse, a musician who tours with the singer Neko Case, is glad not to be the one that interviewers want to speak with—he’s free to “go to the zoo and pet kangaroos.” Band people are often asked to interpret cryptic directives in the studio. The multi-instrumentalist Joey Burns recalls one singer who, in lieu of instructions, would tell him stories about the music—he might be told to imagine a song they were working on as “a cloud in the shape of an elephant, and it’s trying to squeeze through a keyhole to get into this room.”

Many musicians prefer the “emotional life” of the band to be familial, rather than seeing their bandmates as “a handful of co-workers.” And despite the collective dream that brings artists together, the critic and theorist Simon Frith argues, “the rock profession is based on a highly individualistic, competitive approach to music, an approach rooted in ambition and free enterprise,” which feeds perfectly into a quintessentially American zero-to-hero dream. This, Nicolay suggests, is what makes the prospect of, say, “a hypothetical union,” which might negotiate fees with a club on behalf of musicians, unimaginable.

“The idea that openly discussing money is coded as ‘uncool’ is one of the tells of economic privilege,” he writes, “especially in indie rock.” (He leaves open the possibility that these dynamics may differ in spheres outside his expertise, including hip-hop.) But some of the musicians Nicolay interviewed seem hopeful that they might defer the discussion altogether. “I was afraid of maybe not enjoying drumming or music as much if I monetized it,” Ara Babajian, who has played with Leftöver Crack and the Slackers, admits. But there’s a deeper issue around how songs function as commodities. “The original sin of song copyright in America is that it wasn’t set up for a context of collective creativity,” Nicolay writes. Songwriting credits are often split between lyrics and music. Drummers, for example, traditionally have a much harder time getting credit for their contributions, because the cultural and legal framework for pop music values melody and harmony over rhythm. Nicolay notes, “Credits on a song that remains popular even as an act breaks up or retires is as close to a 401(k) as a band person is likely to get.”

The book is unusual for the music genre in that it doesn’t compel you to seek out the songs of all the people Nicolay spoke to. But you come away wishing that they could all succeed, at least on their own terms. Some of the musicians have mixed feelings about their chosen careers. “It depends on the day,” Babajian tells Nicolay. “Today I feel like a tired old whore. Some days I feel like a god. Most of the time I feel like an ambitious T-shirt salesman with entitlement issues.”

Except for a few afternoons in my late teens and twenties, hunched over guitars and samplers, I’ve never really played in a band. This makes me precisely the type of person who has glamorous assumptions about what it must be like to be in one. Working as a journalist, with occasional glimpses into life on the road, in the studio, or backstage, has done little to disabuse me of my fascination. Even the boring parts—watching people kill time, waiting around to play or for inspiration to strike—seem freighted with possibility. The fact that people make music together has always appeared to be proof that community is possible. Reading “Band People,” I was struck by the amount of work required simply to stay collegial with one another—the division of labor, the sheathing of ego, the grace.

Nicolay, who is in his late forties, acknowledges that these are all rather “bloodless and unromantic” approaches to thinking about rock—an art form that remains synonymous with a kind of excess even though it has surrendered its status as the lingua franca of youthful rebellion. He identifies what he sees as the “apparent prudishness of younger musicians.” Where rock music once rationalized devilish behavior, he writes, “a generation raised on new language about sexual propriety and fearful of online public shaming for off-the-clock behavior” is more cautious than debauched. There’s a hint of judgment there. But the pragmatism of young artists could be, in part, the product of growing up in uncertain times, with a hollowed-out and faddish music industry, which forces them to shoulder more responsibility for their careers, from the logistics of booking their own shows to the consequences of their bad behavior.

Many of Nicolay’s interviews took place in the mid-twenty-tens, and, although the musicians he spoke to are honest about the particularities of their situations, they seem to have had little sense of the changes still to come: the complete domination of Spotify and the shrinking of streaming royalties, the pressures of social media and its near-constant demands for engagement. There’s still money in music today, at least at the very top. Spotify reported its most profitable quarter ever this summer, Taylor Swift is winding down the highest-grossing concert tour in history, and, in the past few years, superstar artists have found new revenue by selling the rights to their music. Hipgnosis Songs Fund, a company based in the U.K., made news for paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the back catalogues of Justin Bieber and Shakira, among others.

But, for those just starting out, the opportunities for a sustainable career—for joining Nicolay’s “musical middle class”—appear to be vanishing. There’s probably never been a better time to share a song you’ve made, and yet it’s harder than ever to get paid for it. A stream on Spotify nets a performer about a fraction of a penny—and those royalties accrue only if a song meets a minimum threshold of a thousand streams in the previous twelve months. Last year, it was estimated that about two-thirds of the songs on Spotify would not reach that threshold. For some, access to the world’s listeners is a worthwhile trade-off. Music can remain a cherished hobby; you can’t sully a passion with money when there is none to be made.

And yet the dream of leaving gig work behind for long-term work still appeals to many. One of my favorite albums of the year so far is “Mucho Mistrust,” by Fake Fruit, an Oakland band that always seems to be hurrying through its twitchy, shambolic songs. Its singer, Hannah D’Amato, has spoken of managing her band during breaks from her day job as a nanny. One moment, in the band’s songs, she is brash and unfazed, stridently commanding the punk chaos; seconds later, she surrenders to the harsh swells around her, angling her voice into a scream or a yodel. She sounds as though she’s been conditioned to prepare for anything. “My well of patience has run dry / Don’t even try to ask me why,” she sings coolly, the sources of her distress too numerous to name. Instead, she turns the blame inward, a common response to losing at a game that’s rigged. “The fault is no one else’s but mine / Don’t think I haven’t tried,” she continues, repeating the last word seventeen more times, until it sounds futile. ♦