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The decline of the working musician

You used to be able to make a living playing in a band. A new book, “Band People,” charts how that changed.

Not that the spotlight in question shines all that brightly to begin with; most of the dozens of artists Nicolay spoke to work in commercially tenuous realms, such as indie rock or punk, in which a band like Sonic Youth represents the imagination’s zenith. But the pragmatism of young artists could be, in part, the product of growing up in uncertain times, with a hollowed-out and faddish music industry, which forces them to shoulder more responsibility for their careers, from the logistics of booking their own shows to the consequences of their bad behavior. Many of Nicolay’s interviews took place in the mid-twenty-tens, and, although the musicians he spoke to are honest about the particularities of their situations, they seem to have had little sense of the changes still to come: the complete domination of Spotify and the shrinking of streaming royalties, the pressures of social media and its near-constant demands for engagement.

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