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Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

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Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#101

Post by mathisfun123 »

softfalcon wrote: post #80
ipsi wrote: post #11

Reminds me of a couple of married friends of mine. The wife played a classical musical instrument (e.g., not an electric guitar) and had her sights set on being a professional. While working towards that she did a lot of teaching/practising/etc, and her students would often say something along the lines of "I'm so envious of all this time you have to practice music! How are you able to do it?!" and her reply was alwa…

Yeah, similar situation with: - My brother who is a writer while his wife works at an industrial job that pays exceedingly well - My friend who is an artist, whose husband owns an engineering firm with big medical device contracts - My other friend who is a nature photographer, whose husband works in tech - Yet another friend who is a musician, whose wife works in tech - Another friend who runs a dog shelter, whose h…

I wonder how many people there are out there supporting partners working on their struggling startup hmm.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#102

Post by motohagiography »

ipsi wrote: post #11

Reminds me of a couple of married friends of mine. The wife played a classical musical instrument (e.g., not an electric guitar) and had her sights set on being a professional. While working towards that she did a lot of teaching/practising/etc, and her students would often say something along the lines of "I'm so envious of all this time you have to practice music! How are you able to do it?!" and her reply was alwa…

Athletes as well. I don't see how a "husband works in tech" answer is a letdown though, as really, what's a marriage for except creating the circumstances from which to grow. Over the decades my tech jobs have supported grad students, authors, craftswomen, actresses, athletes, among others and it was a pleasure watching them level up and grow. If I were ever to be married, earning enough to support arts or athletic pursuits would be pretty ideal. They're how you make kids brilliant and not be boring.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#103

Post by aidenn0 »

softfalcon wrote: post #80
ipsi wrote: post #11

Reminds me of a couple of married friends of mine. The wife played a classical musical instrument (e.g., not an electric guitar) and had her sights set on being a professional. While working towards that she did a lot of teaching/practising/etc, and her students would often say something along the lines of "I'm so envious of all this time you have to practice music! How are you able to do it?!" and her reply was alwa…

Yeah, similar situation with: - My brother who is a writer while his wife works at an industrial job that pays exceedingly well - My friend who is an artist, whose husband owns an engineering firm with big medical device contracts - My other friend who is a nature photographer, whose husband works in tech - Yet another friend who is a musician, whose wife works in tech - Another friend who runs a dog shelter, whose h…

I'd like to see a list of jobs for which:

1. We generally value as a society

2. Two people both working the job and married to each other cannot afford to raise two children.

There are some jobs which we romanticize as being this way (musicians and other artists being a big example), but are we okay with e.g. social workers all either starving, or from wealthy backgrounds?

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#104

Post by softfalcon »

gonehome wrote: post #17
ipsi wrote: post #11

Reminds me of a couple of married friends of mine. The wife played a classical musical instrument (e.g., not an electric guitar) and had her sights set on being a professional. While working towards that she did a lot of teaching/practising/etc, and her students would often say something along the lines of "I'm so envious of all this time you have to practice music! How are you able to do it?!" and her reply was alwa…

Also pretty common with authors iirc - a spouse with an income that provides stability. That said, also easy for people to use this as an excuse.

Yup, my brother is literally doing this. He stays at home, plays video games, writes his book. His wife literally works a coal mine to fund his career.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#105

Post by tomrod »

eastbound wrote: post #52
JSavageOne wrote: post #39

Great, practical advice. I do think however that by 2030, UBI will be the norm in many wealthy countries, and thus more people will be able to pursue their passions rather than having to sell their soul as dayjobbers to make money for corporations and rich people.

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t. Surprise: Stress is a factor of excellence. You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.

Sounds like a market failure for hard jobs to get done at poor wages. What you really meant to say, economically speaking, is that harder jobs will cost more. Good. The current UBI is $0. Let's just increase that a bit.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#106

Post by CPLX »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #57
CPLX wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not understanding what commodities are. An apple (or type of apple, to be specific) can be a commodity because I don't care or who which orchard made the apple, and I am completely indifferent to the apples of various orchards when I go to the supermarket. Recorded music isn't like that, at all. I care if the song is Fly Me To The Moon sung by Frank Sinatra or Stairway to Heaven sung by Frank Oz using the voic…

I think there's some talking past each other going here. I think it's useful to bisect music into commodity/non-commidty categories. Category 1 is things like Taylor swift's music which is not a commodity. Category 2 is the music playing on lofi hip hop radio[0] is a commodity. 28,000 people are listening to the music on that channel as I type this and and approximately zero people know or care who made that music. T…

Just because they themselves have outsourced the selection of the music doesn't make it a commodity.

It's like saying Michelin-starred restaurants are a commodity.

They aren't.

Once they are on that list they might be sort of interchangeable to a specific sort of person who just wants a generic "nice" restaurant and picks one off the list when they get to a city.

But they're all unique and different in really substantive ways, and also different from non-Michelin starred restaurants.

Your example of venues that hosts bluegrass works the same way. You trust the guy who books the bluegrass bands. If they just offered a gig to every band that asked you would hate going there and they'd close soon. Have you seen genuinely bad bluegrass? You don't like it, I can assure you of that.

You're just talking about curation. And the fact that curation is even possible proves what I'm saying.

If recorded music was a commodity there would only be one playlist because you would not be able to tell one playlist from the other.

Can your car tell Exxon from Sunoco? Can you drink a glass of milk and know which dairy it came from? Of course you can't.

THAT is what a commodity looks like.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#107

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

dahfizz wrote: post #74
bluefishinit wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're underestimating the role marketing plays in demand generation. It's not that Taylor Swift is "better" than the local jazz guitarist, she's just more heavily marketed. Music labels know that the mass audience doesn't appreciate musical complexity so they market simple music with attractive performers. Then the Clear Channel/Ticketmaster... machine takes over and handles the promotion and distribution. I…

You're not understanding. Commodity has a very specific meaning in economics. You can very easily tell that a Taylor swift song and a local jazz song are not the same song. They are not interchangeable. If someone replaced some songs in your playlists, you would notice. Therefore, not a commodity.

To argue that the technical meaning of the word "commodity" doesn't fit what OP is saying is to completely miss the point.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#108

Post by tel »

CPLX wrote: post #53
tel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to your experience cited in your other comment, a lot of my music experience time is a continuous stream of random tracks on Apple's "Made for You" feature. I'm not particularly partial to what comes up. There's obviously a degree of quality that I'm expecting in order to keep the experience smooth and a set of genre and musical conventions I'm expecting. I wouldn't say that's exactly commodified, no, bu…

Sure. Now, instead of using an algorithm of music selected by a mass market service that is playing you an endless stream of songs that are proven to have a large audience, try listening to the raw feed of uploaded music to major services. Like the literal feed coming in that is just a firehose of every major label, all the indie releases uploaded via Distrokid or similar, and so on. You'd find it instantly unlistena…

So there's a filtering/refinement process. That doesn't immediately seem so unlike other commodities. I buy refined gasoline, for instance.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#109

Post by ketzo »

Mistletoe wrote: post #61
ipsi wrote: post #11

Reminds me of a couple of married friends of mine. The wife played a classical musical instrument (e.g., not an electric guitar) and had her sights set on being a professional. While working towards that she did a lot of teaching/practising/etc, and her students would often say something along the lines of "I'm so envious of all this time you have to practice music! How are you able to do it?!" and her reply was alwa…

One can think of music teachers as a zero interest rate phenomenon then by proxy, so maybe it wasn’t all bad (but most of it was).

Listen, can we all agree to stop calling any expenditure of money without a direct expectation of return a "zero interest rate phenomenon"?

"Starving artists" have existed for millenia. The arts patronage system began either or thousands of years ago, depending on who you ask. People have paid lots of money for gold jewelry basically since we figured out how to pull it out of the ground.

I saw someone call dog-walkers a ZIRP recently. No! It's just a luxury! There's a difference!

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#110

Post by softfalcon »

lynx23 wrote: post #69
ipsi wrote: post #11

Reminds me of a couple of married friends of mine. The wife played a classical musical instrument (e.g., not an electric guitar) and had her sights set on being a professional. While working towards that she did a lot of teaching/practising/etc, and her students would often say something along the lines of "I'm so envious of all this time you have to practice music! How are you able to do it?!" and her reply was alwa…

There are exceptions to every rule of course, and the situaton has changed significantly with all-software productions, but... If you dig deeper into many electronic music producers bio, you realize they were sort of rich-kids. First and foremost, hardware costs real money. And this is gambling money, since you typically dont know what is going to come out of that project. And secondly, you need sare time on your han…

I know some successful musicians, DJ's, photographers, and videographers.

One thing they all have in common? Mommy and Daddy were loaded.

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