sharke
 
The same thing could be said about "photographers." 

Funny though, people don't call themselves photographer as readily as they adopt titles such as "DJ/Producer". Maybe because cameras have been available to the public for decades, so people have been taking pictures w/o being "photographers" for a while. Whereas until recently, you couldn't really be a musician unless you, uh, could actually play music. And even then, unless you had gigs all the time or taught music or a record deal, you were just a guy playing guitar. 
 
I remember how much fun I had as a very young kid messing with the turntable making all kinds of noise, accelerating and slowing down things and all - ruining some of my parents records in the process. That was called having fun, no one in their right mind would have called me a musician for doing so. Same for creating our own very odd mixes and mashes using the 2 turntables in college later on. Fun. No title.
 
 
I don't know. "Photographer" is also a bit less glamorous than "musician". 

Rain

sharke
 
The same thing could be said about "photographers." 

Funny though, people don't call themselves photographer as readily as they adopt titles such as "DJ/Producer". Maybe because cameras have been available to the public for decades, so people have been taking pictures w/o being "photographers" for a while. Whereas until recently, you couldn't really be a musician unless you, uh, could actually play music. And even then, unless you had gigs all the time or taught music or a record deal, you were just a guy playing guitar. 
 
I remember how much fun I had as a very young kid messing with the turntable making all kinds of noise, accelerating and slowing down things and all - ruining some of my parents records in the process. That was called having fun, no one in their right mind would have called me a musician for doing so. Same for creating our own very odd mixes and mashes using the 2 turntables in college later on. Fun. No title.
 
 
I don't know. "Photographer" is also a bit less glamorous than "musician". 

Yeah maybe there aren't as many people calling themselves photographers, but still there are a frightening number of complete amateurs posing as professionals, as this website catalogs on a daily basis:
 
http://youarenotaphotographer.com/

MC DJ Bapu-o-matic? 

MC DJ Bapu-o-matic?

 
Ewwweee.......where can I get one. 

yorolpal
But the number of folks who refer to themselves as musicians has grown exponentially. Whether that's good or bad is a whole nother thing:-)

I'm no musician, songwriter, or recording engineer. But I play one at home.

MakeShift

MC DJ Bapu-o-matic?

 
Ewwweee.......where can I get one. 

It might be an add-on to ST3...

As far as I'm concerned, this is almost entirely down to piracy. I've seen that my band has many listeners who have not paid for our music, and who enjoy it on a regular basis. They still love music and listen to it a lot - it just costs them nothing.
 
Then there are the people who pay for streaming services and think that supports the artist, but they'd have to stream our album about 200 times for us to get the same money that we would have if they bought the cd - and in all the time I've been listening to music, there is no single album that I have listened to that many times. There's no way that streaming revenue can match sales revenue while the price per stream is so low. But streaming has to compete with piracy so it's unlikely that they will raise their subscription prices significantly.
 
Our main revenue stream is still from CDs. We have the type of fan that tends to prefer a physical product and prefers albums to singles, so we're lucky in that regard. But we can't sell enough CDs to cover our costs. It's a difficult time to try and be a musician.

Has it ever been different though? For every band that "made it", how many others always remained unsuccessful, gave up, or continued playing within their local scene as a hobby or second income. It was always only a select few that could really live as musicians and fewer still that got rich.
Why so much grumpyness in this thread? I personally think it's great that so many people can and do make music - for fun, in their free time, for friends, for their community, for strangers on the internet... More possibilities than ever. There'll be enough of the music industry left over to keep a steady supply of mass compatible pop, rock, country etc going for the radio and itunes frontpage, and that will still make a few people rich... There will always be a market for touring bands as well. But on top of that, what an excellent time to discover all these quirky, independent bands and musicians, what a great time to produce music when you can buy a near professional studio for about a grand. If music is headed away from being an industry back to something social that people do for other people - I don't mind, to be honest.

Yes, I hear a lot of people say, "has it ever been different", but they're missing the scale of the problem. To pick some numbers out of the air - it used to be that maybe 1% of musicians would make it big, 4% would stay small but maybe make a living from it anyway, 15% would at least cover their costs while never really becoming a touring act, and the other 80% would go nowhere or just treat it as a hobby. Now, it's more like 0.1% make it big, 0.9% stay small but make a reasonable living, 2% just cover their costs, and 97% go nowhere. And this is despite people's music reaching an ever-wider audience.
 

There will always be a market for touring bands as well.

 
The market for touring bands is collapsing, except at the very top. In the past, many tours would only happen because record labels would partially fund the tour as marketing for the latest album. Now that record sales have tanked, labels can't provide tour support, so lots of bands can no longer play gigs. Venues are closing and people are turning to YouTube and Spotify to discover new acts instead of going to see some fresh names at a gig.
 

If music is headed away from being an industry back to something social that people do for other people - I don't mind, to be honest.

 
I wouldn't mind if it didn't cost so much money to do. Our last album cost us £2000 to make, but we're lucky in that we all have day jobs and can just about afford that. What about younger kids who, in some cases, are better musicians than us, but can't afford that sort of outlay? And as for being 'social', we can't get out and play to people because the live market is collapsing. People want music on their phones and computers, or at festivals where you typically have to pay to play or hope you know the right person to pull some strings.
 
The relative abundance of cheap music for everybody may seem like a utopia but it hides some real problems, namely that it is pushing musicians out. In a few years we may see that the supply of good new music is drying up as musicians decide not to continue to throw thousands at making something that other people will take without a second thought.

It's kinda funny that the thing we all are plugged into and that allows us to have literally global reach and scope is the thing that is eating us alive at a fairly rapid pace.  Our capacity to change to accommodate each new shifting paradigm is being outrun by the speed at which whole industries are being destroyed or transmogrified.  Heck, even a hardware driven service like taxi cabs is in danger now due to cell phones and the web.  I have no doubt that "the man who has the gold" will eventually find a way to re-monetize everything but right now it's a fairly scary head scratcher.  How do we get the toothpaste back in the tube?