In Burnstein’s experience, managing a band is more art than science. He tries to make dealings with band members transparent, to explain the rationale for decisions, and to convince the band members that they are all making more money together than they ever thought they would.
Career Longevity
“The trick is to become an institution, like me,” Count Basie once said. “I can work until I die, even if I don’t have another record.”33
Of course, becoming an institution is not so easy. Very few performers stay at the top for very long.
There are some notable exceptions, including Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Billy Joel, Madonna, and James Taylor, but they are few and far between.
In hard rock, no band has come close to the worldwide popularity of Metallica since they released their Black Album in 1991.34 What is the secret of Metallica’s longevity? Cliff Burnstein admitted that he often asks that question himself. “You would think there should be some competition to come by and knock them off their perch at some point, but it hasn’t happened,” he said. Burnstein posited that Metallica’s long run came about because they have a large canon of hits, because lead singer James Hetfield “is an unbelievable talent” who has stayed with the band, and because drummer Lars Ulrich is an outstanding arranger and organizer. They are professionals with “a drive to succeed at the highest level.”
Burnstein did some research on Metallica’s fan base and discovered that their fans are evenly distributed in age from teenagers to fans in their forties. That wide demographic should ensure that Metallica has an audience for years to come. Burnstein highlighted another important aspect of the way Q Prime manages the band that contributes to their longevity: they don’t tour the way they did before. They take more time off because of age, family obligations, and physical demands. When they do tour, demand is high. And they put on an amazing show. On winning the 2017 Swedish Polar Prize, sometimes called music’s Nobel Prize, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich remarked, “It’s a great validation of everything Metallica has done over the last 35 years. At the same time, we feel like we’re in our prime with a lot of good years ahead of us.”35
Many performers transition to other roles in the industry, such as songwriting, composing, or producing, all of which creates a steadier stream of income and requires less travel. This progression could also account for why many popular bands and musicians are making a leap from the concert stage to the Broadway stage. The success of ABBA’s 1999 Broadway hit, Mamma Mia, has been followed by many others, including Green Day’s 2010 Tony Award–winning American Idiot, Duncan Sheik’s 2006 Tony Award–winning Spring Awakening, Bono and The Edge’s 2011 musical Spider-Man, Boy George’s 2003 musical Taboo, Sting’s 2014 The Last Ship, and Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein’s Tony Award–winning 2013 musical Kinky Boots. Elton John has also had great success writing the score to the Disney hit The Lion King in 1998, Aida in 2000, and Billy Elliot the Musical in 2009.
Perhaps no one has had as long and varied a career in music as producer Quincy Jones. At age sixteen Jones so impressed Lionel Hampton that he was scheduled to tour with his band, until Hampton’s wife insisted that Jones finish high school first. At nineteen he toured with Hampton, playing trumpet. Later, he played trumpet and served as musical director for Dizzy Gillespie’s band. He went on to produce records for nearly everyone in the business, from Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles to Michael Jackson and Donna Summer; composed countless film scores; and, after discovering Will Smith, produced the hit TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He produced the hit song “You Don’t Own Me” twice—first with Lesley Gore, and then with Grace and G-Eazy—and both versions made it to the Billboard Hot 100, fifty years apart. Jones has won twenty-eight Grammys, and at age eighty-four, the music icon told me he has given up alcohol and is excited about writing a new street opera.
Sitting down with Jones in the living room of his 25,000-square-foot Bel Air mansion, I asked him how he managed to enjoy such a long and successful career. Quincy’s answer: “Work hard, play hard.” 36 Later, he gave a more revealing insight: “Curiosity.” That curiosity has pushed him to work in new genres with new artists and with new technology. He did not go into music to become rich or famous, he said, but because of his passion for creating music. The head of his music production company, Adam Fell, mentioned another secret to Quincy’s success: he surrounds himself with young people, embraces new ideas, and is comfortable being challenged.37 That strategy has made him a financial as well as a musical success. For example, Jones was an early investor in the music streaming company Spotify.
Drugs, Mental Health, and Life Expectancy
The Heartbreakers’ drummer Steve Ferrone told me that by 2017, Tom Petty’s broken hip had become so painful that “he couldn’t walk up the steps. He’d hang on to my shoulder to get up onstage.” Why didn’t he cancel the fifty-three-show tour they had scheduled? Ferrone said musicians feel “bulletproof” while onstage. “With 50,000 or 60,000 people in the audience that love you, what problems do you feel?” Thanks to adrenaline and pain medication, “sometimes Tom could walk back up there on his own without any problems for the encore,” Ferrone said. In addition to fentanyl, an autopsy conducted after Tom Petty accidentally overdosed on October 2, 2017, found sedatives and an antidepressant in his system. “He must have been in agony,” Ferrone whispered over and over.38
The sad fact is that fatal drug overdose, substance abuse, alcoholism, anxiety, depression, and suicide are major risks for musicians. Life on the road, the pressure of performance, and the availability of drugs and alcohol take a toll on many. Some musicians may also take drugs in the belief that they enhance creativity. My survey found that musicians are three times more likely than the general population to suffer from substance abuse problems.39 Among the superstars who have died from drug overdoses are Jimi Hendrix (died at twenty-seven in 1970), Janis Joplin (died at twenty-seven in 1970), Elvis Presley (died at forty-two in 1977), Kurt Cobain (died at twenty-seven in 1994), Michael Jackson (died at fifty in 2009), Amy Winehouse (died at twenty-seven in 2011), Whitney Houston (died at forty-eight in 2012), Prince (died at fifty-seven in 2016), and Lil Peep (died at twenty-one in 2017). Musicians have a two to three times greater risk of dying in their twenties or thirties than the rest of the population, according to careful research.40
Several prominent musicians have also struggled with depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems. Mariah Carey, Sia, and Demi Lovato have opened up about having bipolar disorder. Bruce Springsteen, Logic, Khalid, Selena Gomez, Janet Jackson, the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, and Heart’s Ann Wilson have discussed their struggles with anxiety and depression.
Half of the musicians in my survey reported feeling down, depressed, or hopeless at least several days in the last two weeks, compared with less than a quarter of the adult population as a whole. An alarming 11.8 percent of musicians reported entertaining “thoughts that you would be better off dead or hurting yourself in some way” in at least several days in the last two weeks, compared with 3.4 percent for the general population.*1
In 2017, 72,306 Americans died of drug overdoses according to the Centers for Disease Control, up 14 percent from the preceding year. The opioid epidemic, in the form of heroin, struck musicians long before it spread to the general public. As in many cases, problems in American society began earlier and are amplified in the music industry.
Rise Up: Family Backgrounds of Top Musicians
Historically, music has provided an avenue for upward mobility for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, and a means to effect cultural influence. It provided a prominent voice for African Americans during the struggles of the Jim Crow era. Among the brilliant musicians who were able to rise from poverty and racial discrimination to enrich American culture and society are Mahalia Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles,
and Stevie Wonder.
Does music still provide that avenue for upward mobility today for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, the chance to reach the top echelons of American cultural and economic life? With the help of a team of Princeton students, I tracked down the family backgrounds of the musicians who participated in songs listed in the Billboard Top 100 in 1976 and in 2016. The 1976 cohort included such stars as Paul McCartney, Freddie Mercury, Peter Frampton, Mick Fleetwood, Elton John, Diana Ross, Steven Tyler, David Bowie, and Steve Miller. The 2016 class included Drake, Adele, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Shawn Mendes, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Meghan Trainor. The average age of musicians on the Top 100 charts was about the same in both periods (close to thirty). Discovering the family backgrounds for many musicians proved a challenge, as we attempted to classify them based on their families’ economic circumstances.41
The results showed a clear and encouraging pattern: music continues to provide a means of upward mobility. In 1976, 15 percent of the musicians in the Billboard Top 100 had come from family backgrounds that placed them in the bottom 10 percent of all families economically. In 2016, the corresponding figure was 26.5 percent. The increase in upward mobility was a result of the rise of the hip-hop/rap genre. More than half of hip-hop/rap musicians came from families classified in the bottom half of the income distribution. Excluding hip-hop and rap artists, about 14 percent of musicians with top songs in 2016 came from the bottom 10 percent of families in terms of income. As a point of reference, only 2 percent of all individuals in the top 1 percent of the U.S. income distribution today came from families ranked in the bottom 10 percent when they were growing up.42 Musicians with a top 100 song are likely to reach the top 1 percent of income earners in that year, so a career in music is associated with much greater bottom-to-top mobility than in the economy overall.
Superstar musicians also come from a more diverse set of geographic regions in the digital era. In 1976, nearly 20 percent of musicians in the Billboard Top 100 came from only four cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, or Nashville. In 2016, the number of musicians who came from those cities was down to 15 percent. The share of superstar musicians who grew up in a small city or rural town (population of 50,000 or less) rose from 18 percent to 29 percent over the forty-year span.
Regarding race, there was a slight increase in the percentage of African Americans among top musicians over the intervening years, from 34 percent in 1976 to 38 percent in 2016. African Americans were overrepresented in the top performers when compared to the music workforce overall. The percentage of musicians who grew up in two-parent households fell from 80 percent in 1976 to 66 percent in 2016.
Reflecting the increased polarization of American society, top musicians were more likely to come from families in the top 10 percent of the income distribution in 2016 than in 1976. Seventeen percent of top musicians in 2016 grew up in families with incomes in the top 10 percent; only 6 percent came from such privileged families in 1976. Nonetheless, music remains more democratic than the economy as a whole: in the overall economy, 45 percent of the individuals whose earnings place them in the top 1 percent in the United States grew up in families that were in the top 10 percent of the income distribution.
Music appears more meritocratic than the top ranks of American society in another respect: only a handful of top musicians had parents who were superstar musicians. Although many musicians who have achieved stardom have talented children who follow in their footsteps and achieved some prominence (think Frank Sinatra and his children Frank junior and Nancy, Johnny Cash and Rosanne Cash, Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole, John Lennon and Julian and Sean Lennon), it is hard to name a parent-child combination in which both became superstars. Top athletes and corporate executives are more likely than top musicians to have parents who excelled in their profession. The rarity of dynasties in music probably reflects the outsized role of luck in achieving stardom.
A Man’s World?
Looking at music as a whole, there have been roughly twice as many men as women working as professional musicians since 1970, according to Census Bureau data. The gender gap is even larger among elite musicians who make it to the Billboard Top 100 chart. But at least the trend is improving. In 1976, only 10 percent of the musicians with top hits were women; by 2016 that had increased to 27 percent, still a bit below women’s percentage of all musicians, but much higher than forty years ago.
There are many signs that women are underrepresented in music. Only two women (Madonna and Céline Dion) are in the top twenty of all-time performers in terms of concert revenue, according to the Pollstar Boxoffice Database. In the words of former Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm, “As soon as we were heading into the music industry, we started to be faced with some sexism. We were told girls don’t sell.”43 Chisholm is not alone. A survey I conducted in 2018 found that 72 percent of female musicians felt that they had been discriminated against because of their sex, and 67 percent said they had been a victim of sexual harassment.44 After female artists were selected for fewer than 20 percent of the Grammy Awards given out in 2018, the Recording Academy appointed a task force to examine “barriers and biases affecting women and other underrepresented voices in the music industry.*2
The gender imbalance is greater in some music genres than in others. Country music, for example, is particularly male oriented. Only three female artists made it to country radio’s Top 40 in 2017.45 Classical music is also a challenge. Zubin Mehta, the celebrated conductor of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra (1964–78) and New York Philharmonic (1978–90), once baldly stated, “I just don’t think women should be in an orchestra.”46 And there is a dearth of female producers and record company executives.47
It may be that women are underrepresented in music because they prefer to go into other fields, or because they face discrimination, as illustrated by the attitude expressed by Zubin Mehta. To determine the role of sex-based discrimination, economists Claudia Goldin of Harvard and Cecilia Rouse of Princeton studied a remarkable, real-life experiment involving auditions for symphony orchestras.48 In the 1970s and 1980s, most major symphony orchestras started conducting blind auditions, where the candidates performed assigned pieces behind a screen that concealed their identity. In some cases, they even rolled out a carpet so the judges couldn’t hear whether the candidates were wearing heels. The share of women selected for orchestras rose considerably in this period, from 10 percent before 1970 to 35 percent in the 1990s. By 2016, women made up just over 47 percent of musicians in American ensembles, according to the League of American Orchestras.
To determine the role that blind auditions played, Professors Goldin and Rouse collected year-by-year data on eleven major symphony orchestras, each with 90 to 105 musicians. With their data, they could look at the male and female hiring rates and the sex composition of orchestras before and after each orchestra introduced the practice of blind auditions. Not surprisingly, female candidates fared far better when they auditioned behind a screen. The two economists concluded that the switch to blind auditions can explain a quarter of the increase in the percentage of women in orchestras from 1970 to 1996.
Blind auditions cannot be applied in every industry or at every step of the hiring process. And members of minority groups continue to be underrepresented in orchestras. But several companies outside of the music industry have implemented strategies to shroud the gender of job applicants to increase the representation of women at work and counteract discrimination, and these strategies have had some success.49 More progress is needed, however, to nurture women’s careers, eradicate explicit and implicit forms of sexual harassment, and change attitudes. These challenges are especially difficult in industries that are characterized by large imbalances of power and industries in which independent contractor relationships are common, conditions now common in music and in a growing number of other industries.
A Musical Life
&nbs
p; The life of most musicians is often economically challenging but personally rewarding. Only a lucky few achieve fame and fortune. The rest struggle to make ends meet. Most of their rewards come from the intrinsic joy they derive from pursuing a profession that they are passionate about, from collaborating with similarly passionate musicians to entertain others, and from honing their craft. A growing number of workers in the rest of the economy are facing the same types of challenges as musicians. The advice that Billy Joel gives to young musicians seems to me to be particularly appropriate: “Forget about being a star or a recording artist: If you can pay your rent and make enough money to buy food and necessities of life as a musician, that’s already a success.”50
*1 After the survey was completed, one musician wrote back, “The very process of completing the survey led me to realize how long I had been feeling depressed and I am taking steps to deal with it….I hope it helps to know that you made a difference in ways you may not have anticipated.”
*2 A report by Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, and Kate Pieper of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative drew attention to the low percentage of women who won Grammy Awards in 2018, and launched a national conversation on the issue. The Recording Academy established its sixteen-member task force, chaired by Tina Tchen, in the aftermath of the report. I served as a statistical consultant to the task force.
Rockonomics Page 8
