About how music is a hard living, it's just a big question to answer. To get anywhere, you need to be the best of the best, and that it just to get into a decent university, or be a good teacher, or a producer. Sure, some are not that good, but also they can't pay for food. Even the great ones, can't pay for food :)) Kids start training for music at like 4 or 5 years old, and focus on it their entire lives, it takes priority in high school, and after school practices .. it is more intensive training than anything else really. And that is just to meet the standards. There is no governing bodies on it, so anything goes .. any way to be better is required to keep up. You work all hours of the night .. carry expensive and heavy equipment to different venues all around just to play live for whatever you can make. It is hard on the body and ears .. and the constant learning and memorization is infinite. When a musician is not performing, they are usually teaching or in my case, producing OTHER people's music.. That is not fun. Maybe a year or two is okay, but 10+ years of helping other people's music, gets highly depressing, usually as the ones that are qualified to do it, are far more talented than the ones they are doing it for. Imagine.. autotuning.. it isn't really AUTO tuning, that is just a word.. The producer, is forced to sit there for 8+ hours , listening to a bad singer over and over again, manually tweaking every word they sing. Heck, that is torture in some countries! Maybe only 0.001% of musicians can really focus on creating music for themselves and make a living doing it. I did make a living, but it was from working for others .. doing various projects, some big, some cool yes. but it was still other peoples projects. No chance to make a living from my own. So.. the game, is very refreshing.. we can make something that belongs to us!
Nono. you didnt understand. At a certain point, musicians and producers are not 'better' than others.. They are just different. But to get to that point, a musician needs to train hard their entire live. Once they are at that point, they are essentially normalized. And the 'money' this, is just the way it is. it really is best kept as a hobby. :)
Oh.. yes.. the producers are typically more talented. Not always of course.. really depends.. but it is in the same way a teacher would be more talented than a student. There are studio musicians who are very talented, but they are also people who work for pay. So say a singer, who writes some songs in her spare time and has some friends say she is good at singing Karaoke.. saves up some money and goes to a studio .. She is not at the same level as somebody who does it professionally for a job. The point is .. there is a separation between Professionals and Clients. That is what I was meaning.
And honestly, clients can be ANYTHING. Sure, maybe 1 in 20 is very good and rewarding to work with.. But 19 in 20.. are not. And it isn't only that. There is a lot of variety of jobs .. like recording Commercials, and Math Question voice overs .. or who knows.. Every time you hear anything, somebody needs to produce it.
I am not any better.. everybody has their own skills, and many are more talented than me in different ways :) .. Maybe one person is better at playing guitar, and another at piano, and another at organizing musicians, and another at music technology, and another at writing music .. But .. all of them are still poor :))