I'm a musician, and a lot of these ideas are familiar. But I wonder if the music scene is a little bit more mature or realistic (searching for a word here) about it. A work can go through a lot of different hands before it reaches an audience. People are fully aware of this. Yes, a few people get screwed, but others make an honest living as "technicians." It's been a reasonable side income for me. And except at the superstar level, the technicians might actually be doing better than the artists, especially if they can diversify their income sources a bit.
Even the instrument that I play... it bears the name of a master, but there's no secret about the fact that it was produced in a workshop, as the fiddles "made" by Stradivarius probably were.
I think music and its production is much more deeply intertwined with regular life than figurative arts.
Band is a thing from elementary school to college. So it's facially idiotic to the man on the street to call a single trumpet player "the artist".
The apparatus to deliver a major pop event is very visible, literally. And it's also obvious that the band didn't put up the stacks of speakers, run the mixing board, etc.
Whereas for a sculpture or painting, it just shows up. Voila! Often without any artist visibly involved. There's now a thing on the sidewalk, or in a museum or gallery.
There's probably a nice way to express this using the term "degrees of alienation", but I can't figure it out before I go back to work. :)
You're talking about making money, but no mention of making music.
A better argument is that art is getting more technical.
or even just that's it's getting physically bigger.
Also, when music is commercial it's still called music.
Art stops being art when it's made for money. It becomes illustration, design, decoration or some such thing.
Historically a lot of EU or American artists are pretty much trust fund kids. because if you need to think about money all the time... you can't make art. Art requires some modicum of genuine freedom and most people need money to find it.
> Historically a lot of EU or American artists are pretty much trust fund kids. because if you need to think about money all the time... you can't make art. Art requires some modicum of genuine freedom and most people need money to find it.
And this is why "Art For Art's Sake" was invented when the middle class began to encroach on the upper class's ownership of art and the ability to make it. After all, if your social inferiors can do something, is it really special? No. So either abandon it, or define it to be something those people can't do after all.
Even within noncommercial (e.g., academic) music, there is still certain amount of division-of-labor. Also, one person may perform multiple roles, e.g., composing their own music while also working for other musicians, doing production work, teaching, etc.
I suspect most musicians also don't draw a bright line between artistic and commercial work.
Even the instrument that I play... it bears the name of a master, but there's no secret about the fact that it was produced in a workshop, as the fiddles "made" by Stradivarius probably were.