Music is known to boost cognitive and emotional wellbeing, yet those who pursue it professionally experience greater levels of psychological distress compared to the general population.
Psychological distress among professional musicians is a global phenomenon, shown in studies from Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia and South Korea. More than two-thirds of professional musicians in the UK suffer from depression, according to a 2016 study involving over 2,000 musicians. In Canada, as many as one in five professional musicians experience suicidal ideation.
Now, musicians are calling on the industry for change. In February, Grammy-winning artist Chappell Roan used her Best New Artist acceptance speech to advocate for healthcare and a living wage for developing artists.
“I told myself if I ever won a Grammy, and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and healthcare, especially to developing artists,” Roan said.
Major record labels have now provided commitments to the mental health of their artists. Universal Music Group recently partnered with Music Health Alliance to launch the Music Industry Mental Health Fund, which provides a new suite of outpatient mental health support for musicians.
A lack of support systems
Musicians’ mental health suffers from a paucity of institutional protections for freelancers, irregular work schedules and profound financial instability. This is often exacerbated by high instances of performance anxiety and perfectionism among professional musicians, said Dr. George Musgrave, senior lecturer in cultural sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
“When people talk about music being good for health and wellbeing, they’re not talking about working musicians,” Musgrave said. “Those who are doing it for leisure or creation are not anxious and depressed in the same way that those who do it for their job are.”
Unpredictability also characterizes the career trajectories of many professional musicians, said Noah Fralick, artist manager at Huxley Management.
“You don’t really go to school, get training, then work your way into the workforce and slowly build up,” Fralick said. “There’s no linear path. You might go from total obscurity to huge amounts of popularity quite quickly.”
Emotional labour is also inherent in this line of work, which can put musicians at risk for mental health pressures, said Dr. Sally Anne Gross, principal lecturer at the University of Westminster.
“There’s an interrelatedness to sport, where the body’s running so fast and in doing that, you would expect it to get injured,” Gross said. “If you’re working with your emotions in your working environment … you can expect that you might have emotional injuries.”
The strains of a music career
The traditional trope of the “tortured artist” — the idea that an artist must suffer pain to generate authentic creative output — has taken on new significance in the digital age.
“The digital world is desperate for real things,” Gross said. “The artist now has to be larger than life … in this atmosphere, at this point in time, if you are a young emerging artist or a current artist, you have to engage in a way that is seen to be authentic and there’s nothing more authentic than pain.”
Mass democratization of music creation has made it easier than ever for musicians to enter the industry, but with no guarantee that their music will find an audience. Musicians feel pressure to show vulnerability as a way to stand out in a market flooded with options.
“About 100,000 new songs are uploaded to Spotify every day,” Fralick said. “Streaming has sort of eliminated the barrier to access the music industry, but diluted the potential for any one [musician] to be successful.”
This creates an environment in which consumers fall back to familiar tunes and artists, as deciding between a multitude of new options can feel overwhelming. As a result, it’s a rare artist who becomes a star. But these success stories become well-known, and the dramatic publicization of those who succeed can explain part of the allure of the music business, Fralick said.
“I always use this analogy of a lottery winner, and the way that lotteries are set up, we see the winner,” Fralick said. “We think ‘I’m going to buy a ticket because that could be me,’ because your brain is only seeing the success story.”
Pressure to succeed
Musgrave said that this mindset can be detrimental for musicians. “Many of them are afflicted with what I’ve referred to as cruel optimism. The optimism is cruel because it’s keeping them tethered to an unrealizable ideal,” he said.
Aside from emotional investment, launching a professional music career can also entail hefty financial costs. These costs could include paying distributors, shooting music videos, receiving coaching and joining premium memberships.
The opportunity cost can also be significant. “You give up a lot of earning potential in order to invest in this craft,” Musgrave said.
For female musicians, age can be a critical stressor and determining factor of success. As the marketability of their music often hinges upon maintaining a youthful image, it can place additional pressures to find success faster.
Many female musicians see the age of 30 as a hard cut-off, Musgrave said. “Age is a spectre that haunts women’s musical lives in a way that doesn’t haunt men’s,” he said.
Getting help to those who need it
The last 10 years has seen a sea of change regarding mental health interventions for musicians.
In the UK, all three major record labels — Universal Music Group, Warner Music and Sony — have mental health support offerings either in-house or through outsourcing. But in-house mental health counselling could present potentially challenging scenarios for conflict of interest, Musgrave said.
Currently, the biggest source of musicians’ mental health support is the charitable sector. Organizations such as MusiCares, Music Minds Matter, Music Support and the Man Down Programme provide various offerings such as weekly support groups, 24/7 crisis support lines and training packages for music industry workers.
Gross said that while poor mental health among professional musicians is an urgent concern, that shouldn’t stop schools from providing music education. Instead, the occupational health hazards of professional music careers should be clearly communicated, so that young people can make informed decisions.
“I think we have to reassess and re-evaluate the ways in which creative industry jobs have been sold to the next generation,” Gross said. “We have to really think about what’s happening in the educational space … and it’s absolutely essential that we deal with the issues and challenges of the working environment for all professionals.”
Three questions to consider:
1. What unique pressures do professional musicians face?
2. What is meant by the term “cruel optimism”?
3. Why do so many people dream of becoming famous performers?