I'd make the argument that while artists haven't yet been replaced by technology, it's clear that technology has made it much harder to be an artist. Because of the internet, and the fact that we're so globally connected now, art is just a lot more competitive. Nowadays, there's just so much music available online for free, even just on YouTube and soundcloud, it's a lot more difficult to be a musician. You're not just competing against something that's been given away for free, you're competing against very skilled artists, skilled enough that even 10,000 hours of practice might not bring you to their level. I think the same is partly through for graphical artists.
Internet or not if a band were to play 4 straight hours live like Led Zeppelin used to do back in the days they'd get noticed.
Of course you can't just be at the park sitting on a bench while doing so.
You still have to go through the process of embellishment and make an effort to sell yourself both in terms of structure and looks.
What people on HN and reddit fail to realize is that the internet won't ever find a way to force its way into the golden hour of music marketing:
7pm-3am
Young people go out during that timeframe, they are with their friends and smoking and drinking all sort of funny things.
That's how one's favorite song is minted.
The problem is clubs, they want to play the hits because they sound familiar. They should scout for bands and structure a deal for a % of their future income in exchange for giving the initial opportunity.
Club owners are not ambitious enough to think they could find the next big thing and become their manager, and yet history of early pop music was all about that sort of arrangements.
Technology has also made it easier to be an artist, tools often automate what took artists countless hours to perfect. This exacerbates the issue making “art” a technical skill and not a creative endeavor. The problem is that no matter how technical it gets, treating art as something that can be artificially constructed leaves things very blatantly soulless. In the modern era everyone can be an artist but only the exceptional will thrive, and art being an endeavor you can thrive on instead of struggle is what’s unique about the times we live in.
I do pretty good drawing stuff that makes me happy to draw and giving it away for free, with a Patreon tip jar. There are better artists than me who are also doing this, there are worse artists than me doing this, and there are artists who work a lot harder than my lazy self doing this. Or artists who work a lot harder than my lazy self grinding out immense amounts of work in the animation/effects/game asset mines, and getting a salary.
Admittedly I am also fifty years old, and got good enough for people to pay me for drawing stuff about twenty five years ago.
The fact that every social media platform likes to hide posts that take people off their sites to places they could give me money hasn’t been making it easier, but I do okay. My audience of people who are enough like me that “stuff I draw to make me happy” fills a lot of otherwise-unfulfilled desires is slowly growing.
