What the music industry’s people need next

As the music industry’s resurgence continues, its people need support now more than ever. There’s an opportunity to further embrace a contributor to success in tech, sports, and other industries.

We’re now living in a world that’s more prosperous than at any time in history. Standards of living are increasing. Extreme poverty and child mortality are down. Literacy levels continue to rise.

Much of this has to do with innovations in the ways we do things: the techniques, and particularly the technologies, we employ.

Despite these steps forward, during the past year in particular it’s been difficult to ignore the groundswell of concern about our relationship with technology, and how everything from fake news to the rise of machine learning affects the ways we approach our work, our relationships, and our lives.

When taking stock of where we find ourselves today, the economist and global living conditions analyst Max Roser surmises “the world is much better; the world is awful; the world can be much better”.

Despite all the added layers of convenience in our lives we seem to find ourselves working harder, and in spite of seamless methods of communicating with one another we’re becoming more isolated.

There’s a nagging sense of there never being quite enough, and always wanting or needing more. Many of us find ourselves falling headlong into the comparison trap and its close cousin imposter syndrome.

These feelings are now commonplace, and for people working in the creative industries they can be almost omnipresent.

Dive in and you’ll see some commonalities across creative disciplines: long and often unsociable working hours; the constant balancing act between art and commerce; and more than a fair dose of unpredictability.

There are many reasons for this — from the subjectivity involved in creative fields, to the deep intertwining of life and work that inevitably comes when developing what often starts as a passion into a sustainable career.

While working in these industries can be immensely rewarding, the accompanying tension, imbalance, and uncertainty can lead to overwhelm, stress, and sometimes much deeper issues.