I will start with a whole bunch of denials so as not to waste the time of noble dons on a small, non-binding post.

• This is not an article, this is a post. And more specifically - the reaction to the series of articles "Brilliance and Poverty"
• I deliberately will not take the cases of "Glitter", because millionaire musicians, like many other superstars, fall into a slightly different scheme. Nevertheless, as an example of the promotion of a person in the creative field "from scratch on a tilled field", I would like to give an interview to Pokras Lampas https://youtu.be/APayqoDDYMA
• I came across a couple of times, incl. on Habré, with a rather radical opinion that the analysis of the issue in metaphors and analogies is moveton. Nevertheless, this does not seem to me to be something out of the ordinary, and I consider the analogies applicable in many cases, incl. and in this.
• I'm frankly lazy to make pictures, especially since I didn't plan to write. Sorry.

So, why are some musicians, who in VK, YT and on trekkers earn in bulk? Should they earn at all, and how to survive in the harsh pirate world?
First you need to understand who they are, "modern musicians": how do they differ from "non-modern musicians", and how do they differ from "non-musicians".

Musician

As comrade Vasily_T has rightly noted, it is generally not clear who this is about. Who is a musician? It's like asking who the programmer is. Is the musician the one that plays more than 3, 5, 50 songs on the guitar? Who has written in his work that he is a musician? Or the one that the public recognized as a musician? In general, I would agree with each of these statements. Moreover, it is quite normal to call children aged 5-7 years who are just starting to extract the first sounds from their instruments as “little musicians”. Full

However, since we are talking about money, let's confine ourselves to the circle of professional musicians - those people, a significant part of whose income is music.
However, even if you ask: "how do professional programmers earn", the answer will be very broad. You ask what specialization interests where it is geographically located, what training it has, he earns freelancing, or plows his uncle, if his uncle - then gov.ru, or Yandex, or Google, or IP Vasya Pupkin " delicious foods at your home. "

If the programmer is a specialist in ASM, then probably, if he did find where to work for him, he will be worth his weight in gold. However, it is not a fact that he will reach the required level of competence at all, and will find an employer before he dies of hunger. At the same time, a junior fronder, who spent the month on, I don’t know, spring, can still find a not dusty place to provide them with their daily bread and, possibly, in the long term, to gain more systematic and valuable competencies.

Musicians are also different, they specialize in different things, and depending on this, the models of financing their activities and involvement in this process differ. But I would not say that modern musicians differ from non-modern musicians, which is more than modern programmers and non-modern ones. Here's what a programmer earned a living in the 70s? I do not know, but I would venture to suggest that in the USSR he earned money at a research institute. And what does a programmer earn now? Unless it is impossible to work in scientific research institutes? Why, you can. But languages ​​are different, techniques are different, tasks are different.

Music, after all, is a more archaic, complete and inert form of self-expression than programming, so it is difficult to find some things on the 1970-2019 line that have sunk into oblivion, but many new things have appeared. At the same time, it is unlikely that you will meet a performer at a kithara, but a person with a wheel lyre (which, it seems, died out in the 19th century) is now snapped up.

Such different musicians

Musicians in the workplace are divided into the following categories:

• Enterprise-uncle: tons of Legacy code, rigid formalization, terms, salaries, code review, backlog in 100,500 positions and no names
• Engineers at research institutes: reports, grants, quotas, and fucking tasks that no one can solve
• Civil servants (ILV and their ilk): swamp
• The guys from a startup: start-up capital, or its complete absence, cool idea, no one extra and the risk of running into a soldering iron. Well, or jump to another startup
• Freelancers: "gentlemen of fortune or the director himself"
• Indie developers (mostly game dev)
• Teachers (more below)

And also by role in the team (if any):

• Product managers: it seems to me that there is some consensus that the PM must be at least to some extent competent in matters solved by its subordinates.
• Architects: a common concept, the foundation on which everything rests
• Timlides: here musicians, unlike programmers, have a whole separate specialization
• Developers: shock squad, filling the voids left by architects.
• Bydlokodery: you need someone and copy-paste templates
• Testers and auditors: (more details below)

In my indiscreet opinion, the problem of the articles of the series “Brilliance and Poverty” is that only guys from a startup are considered , and examples are given of both successful and those who have gone so far to indie developers . And in addition, the variant of the musician “in general” is predominantly considered, the director himself: the architect, and the developer, and PM.

Let's walk on each type

Interpraise uncle

These are fighters of the invisible front, closed by large shields of companies and labels producing music on an industrial scale. Actually, I'm not quite in the topic, because In enterprise never worked. But once the vacancy of the orchestrator / composer hung to work on the music for the series from ... Honestly, I don’t remember now that the RFP is about $ 2500 / month. And a colleague shared inside out of the office, the workloads are serious there. Very serious, requiring a full hand and a specific psyche: you need to give about 2-3 minutes of music per day. As a rule, TK is given in the form of either the composer’s (architect’s) sketches, or the necessary case material and time codes. In short, the conveyor. You can also see an article about Scandinavians writing hits for Taylor Swift, Nikki Minaj and others (link provided by nitrosbase )

As for the peculiarities of the national music industry, everything is more modest here, of course. However, there are people who work in the enterprise, but are not necessarily organized into labels. In Russia, the enterprise is predominantly in the format of life-long freelancing, which is not good from the point of view of workers' rights.

Well, we must generally understand what the enterprise does: it takes the product (as a rule, the performer), and sends it to production. For every performer, such as Philip Kirkorov or Leonid Agutin, there are a lot of highly-qualified and well-paid staff who work in completely different roles. And even this does not detract from the real contribution to the product of the performers themselves. Suppose, as far as I know, Agutin not only writes, but often also completely arranges his songs, participates in the production cycle: in general, he plays the role of PM as well as the architect and developer in many ways.

Engineers at research institutes

Analogue of scientific research institutes in music circles are conservatories and philharmonic. Moreover, it is often difficult to say, say, a philharmonic society - this is still a scientific research institute, or already a state structure.
Salaries, of course, as are found in the public sector, no. Bribes the scale, status and usefulness of projects. For a composer (architect), happiness is not to write any songs on the radio, or Mouzon in an advertisement, but to forget symphonies and sonatas. For a theorist (theorist and theorist in Africa), happiness is not to earn another Vanessa Mey of Mtsensk as an audit, but to collect some epic telegits, or pick great works. Do not feed the performers (developers) with bread - let me just play what the soul is about.

But in Russia, as always, everything is bad. With a scoop it was better, and, in fact, almost without alternative almost (if not talking about "Shine"), and now there are either those who earn somewhere else, or those who live out their age, or frank heroes (in any case there is a place for a feat), well, often just unprofitable personalities who have never fit anywhere else.

In general, at the last planning meeting in the philharmonic society, the artistic director said: if you don’t like salaries, nobody keeps you, we have a third conservatory in a country that has enough graduates who are competent enough and ready to work for food.

However, right here, very soon, your humble servant, together with his Novosibirsk colleagues, flies to Beijing to earn $ 1,500 / month just by participating in the creation of a Beijing piano school.

Civil servants

They start as engineers, but grow into a special class, the apotheosis of which is Denis Matsuev. Often they are either listed as artists of the philharmonic / operatic, or even generally teachers of the conservatory, music school, or group. But they all share the willingness to carry the flag of the administration at various events that normal people do not ride. Payment by agreement, but often even free of charge))

Startup guys

If lucky, the peak of their career is to become a product of labels (or not lucky), but history and everyday life knows many examples of good independent teams with different levels of investment. They are a transitional link from indie developers to label products, and it is often difficult to draw boundaries.

Startups are really different: from cover bands to private symphony orchestras. You know about money in startups.

Freelancers

In general, the normal state of a professional musician or composer. In our country - the only stable and profitable, due to the national characteristics of the enterprise.
Offer certain services for a certain amount of money. They start from the college bench, and the good guys are getting on the hook, especially in the capitals: many orchestras are even concocted from the backbone of these same enterprise freelancers. And then their Mosfilm is personalized, so as not to drag the ballast in the form of bydlokoderov (since all the smart guys, and so for the most part played) pulls on the recording of some kind of "Kryaknutye holidays".

The difference from freelance programmers is in the greater role of word of mouth (both in our country and in the world), and in the smaller computerization of the industry (similarly). I myself am a freelancer (orchestrator, session pianist), and have not taken a single order either from freelance.ru or from new venues. And it is not profitable even with the presence of a sundress, at least my modest level.

Earnings mainly depend on the ability and self-assessment of the freelancer. I know guys who tear their ass for 20 hours (track 3-5 minutes) for 5.000 rubles, I know a dude who takes 20K / min of orchestral sound. I myself write for 4K \ min (~ 500-700r. \ Hour). It is cheap, but so far on the border of my personal demand / supply.

Indie developers

Why did you write that mainly gamedev? Because most of the shots are their own directors, or they hang out in popular areas where the market is saturated. Features of survival are not much different from those described in the article on behalf of an indie developer, which was translated here in the fall.

However, as a rule, this is precisely the very bottom and poverty, where there are uncompleted coders who lack skills with self-esteem to the enterprise, and for some reason are unwilling or unable to go to research institutes.

However, dudes can start as indie, and then, God forbid, anything can happen.

Teachers

Earnings directly depends on ambitions. In Russia, as expected, the less professional ambitions - the greater the opportunity to realize financial ambitions. Personally, I know very strange girls who deal with immature minds for 1.5-2Kr./h. But the coolest teaching, as expected, in the conservatory. Only there they do not pay and do not give work.

Team roles

Product Managers

Or in common people - producers. It is difficult in general for a Russian person to explain what a producer should do. But in general there is just a clear analogy with the PM. He leads the product, be it a band, artist, album or philharmonic.

From PM it is desirable not superficial competence in the performing (development), architectural (composition), and auditing (music criticism) areas. Also, he must keep the relevance of the product and / or its concept. Rarely when a producer does something CAM straight (although it happens). However, in our country there are few of these, and they are not taught anywhere.

Architects

They are composers. Bearers of the Design , usually based on TK. They verify business goals, form the backbone on which the work will be held: form, musical text. Depending on the type of project, they can either have a staff of architects to refine (hi, Hollywood), or work in a team. Either trust the developers, or prescribe the documentation and guidelines to the last stroke.

Fully trainable, there are special composer diplomas, but the portfolio is still much more important.

Timlids

Actually, I meant specifically conductors. This is a special profession that combines the competence of a high-level executor (developer) and a manager (team management). In fact, one of the most difficult professions, incl. and not only in music. Timlid is not obliged to be at the forefront, although no one forbids him, and the conductor is always at the forefront.
Separately, I would like to highlight the Techlids - these are developers who have a team under their control. Relevant only for orchestras, they are called accompanists and usually get 1.5-2p. above the rest of the developers (performers).

Developers

These are people who work on the front line: basically, I mean the performers, but orchestrators can also be included (those who fill in what the architects did not add and adapt the data for transmission to the performers). Can be as high and not very qualifications. They are divided into families and types of tools that they own. As a rule, all their life they work on one thing, the edge - on two. But there are also multi-instrumentalists, although this is not a completely typical story.

The performers of the Novosibirsk Philharmonic symphony orchestra receive 30-40K, the opera theater - up to 100K, in national teams in Moscow time they make up to 200-250K. p / month, of course.

Bydlokodery

Beginners, caked, or just incompetent musicians. Cannon fodder, which sits on a gallery in orchestras, or teaches music theory at the 13 ** Noah music school. Salary level is appropriate.

Testers and auditors

In the enterprise - is the control of work, if the producer does not have time.
In philharmonic societies - lecturers musicologists.
In magazines - critics or reviewers.
The level of income is very different.

Instead of conclusion

Uhhh ... analog, analog, and analog. I'm tired :)

Separately, I would like to say how indie turns into an eternal startup that can feed throughout life. It is enough to occupy a niche, to get some piece of cake - the audience of listeners, and she will be grateful to come to you for concerts, which can be independent from the enterprise or from the scientific research institute, and not rush into a tough race for brilliance.

In the pre-crisis times, my senior classmate (a student of the same professor) Dmitry Karpov earned in addition to the philharmonic and tavern "salary" $ 500-600 every 2 months leaving for a tour of the Urals with new programs. I did not introduce such a lifestyle into the classification, because by and large it is the same freelancing, in some way, but on some permanent basis.

In general, I can earn everything. But not everyone wants :)

And answering the question with which you went down under the cat: should musicians make any money at all? Should. Good professional musicians provide most of the market that is monetized and in demand. In addition, it is one of the longest formations in the world (an average of 20 years for a competent specialist who has to be tested in the chosen field of activity).

Do pirates violate our rights? I do not think so. The world is changing, that's all. What was a good source of income and required huge investments can now be regarded as a PR-action, and it will take less money.

Yes, the recording of the album so far is an occupation requiring expensive equipment and very competent specialists who gathered in a very good and very expensive room. Nevertheless, it was possible to reduce the cost of some processes, and to automate a part. A part can be replaced by a rubber woman in the form of simulations via VSTi, if this saving is justified.

All good.

UPD: New conclusion

I realized that I didn’t quite make up the promise of the article, and the following paragraph would like to round out a little thought about the musician’s earnings:
It seems to me strange to perceive a musician only as a person who goes to the audience in order to take money from her for his work. As well as programmers, musicians often work for a quite deterministic customer who needs music.
This customer is a concert agency (philharmonic), a specific person (a wedding), a project of a label or another musician who is already in business (enterprise), or a project from another opera in which music is part of (gamedev, cinema). In the case of crowdfunding, there is also a customer: those people who invest in the project, and this seems to me important, because in fact, crowd leads to a completely different philosophy of spreading and paying for art, which I am very impressed with. And the situation when there is no customer, and the person himself sells his product to an unspecified group of persons is not a rare, but not typical phenomenon for professional musicians.

All good :)