So You Wanna Be a Rockstar...

It's easy to fall under the assumption that modern day 'rock stars' are still trashing hotel rooms, mainlining illegal substances, and making more money in a year than I will in my entire lifetime. Unfortunately this lifestyle is becoming obsolete, except for the lucky few. 

Here is a leaked list from a record label of the demands per show for some of those lucky few:

(image credit @www.powerfm.com)

Even those lucky few tend to have very short lived careers, much like a professional athlete, and the nurturing and life span of their careers often involves making decisions or deals that completely do away with their creative control.

The digital age in which we are living has all but done away with album sales. The internet is one big cesspool of (largely) free information and file sharing, and just about every song recorded resides on the internet as an mp3. Even if the devout fan goes the legal route, iTunes offers purchases per song rather than per album.  Almost no albums went platinum during 2014, save for Taylor Swift's '1989' and the movie soundtrack of Frozen. Even artists as big as Pharrell seem to be enduring hard times. Though 'hard times' for Pharrell may be good times for you and I, his hit single 'Happy' earned him less than 3000 dollars in songwriting royalties despite his millions of plays on Pandora.

So how do artists survive with the music industry on its toes? Tour!

Tour, tour, tour, tour, sleep (maybe), tour some more....and sell as much merchandise as you can.

Whether it be on a local or global scale, musicians supplement their income. They play shows, teach, sell merchandise, and much more. If you want to survive as a musician, it's very possible! Just be persistent, and never lose your passion for music.