A recur­ring theme these days is, ​“musi­cians should give away their music for free, and make mon­ey through tour­ing and sell­ing mer­chan­dise.” But I have trou­ble with the idea that the music busi­ness is now going to be sus­tained pri­mar­i­ly by things oth­er than music itself:

This is the posi­tion in which our musi­cians now find them­selves. They’re expect­ed to mul­ti­task in order to suc­ceed. Their time is now demand­ed in so many dif­fer­ent realms that music is no longer their busi­ness. What we can increas­ing­ly expect is a con­vey­or belt of smug accoun­tants liv­ing a pop star’s dream, per­form­ing aggres­sive­ly mar­ket­ed, low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, unchal­leng­ing dross.

If musi­cians have to make mon­ey by sell­ing t‑shirts, where’s the incen­tive to record new, inno­v­a­tive music if your career is going to be a t‑shirt design­er? Is the idea of ​“make good music, ask fans to buy it” com­plete­ly unre­al­is­tic these days?