Artistic Independence & Why We Still Need Each Other
On failing systems, fair pay, and what actually comes next for artists.
Dear Artist,
I can't stop thinking about the systems that are failing.
This week, it's another major symphony running out of cash to keep its doors open. The next headline of demise flows right after it. Of course, it’s never just been a music problem, either. The structures we were all trained to aim for are buckling everywhere, for everyone, simultaneously.
I'll keep heralding it. But here's the paradox that caught me this week, and I can't let it go.
I spend my days helping artists build independence. The life and the career, on their own terms. And at some level, that's what we all say we want: free, out from under the institution.
And yet, even such autonomy requires others.
We need the hall, the staff, the platform, the people who keep the lights on. And they need us: the talent, the audience we bring, the reason there's a ticket to sell at all. Neither side of that wins alone. It shouldn’t be a fight. It was always a collaboration, we just forgot that it was.
But why is it all coming apart?
The system is collapsing because the equity was never there.
Let me be careful, because this is a fine line. I'm not saying the person casting the vision shouldn't be paid well for it. They should. What breaks a thing is a structure where the top keeps inflating while the artist at the center of it, the whole reason it exists, can't make rent doing the work. And, when that artist finally says "not for that," nothing changes. They just find someone who will. That same fractal repeats at every level, all the way down.
I've lived it. Bosses earning multiples of what I did, on work they couldn't have done without me. Over trained and qualified than supported by the pay scales. "Organ scholar" roles offered at a quarter of a real salary, the rest paid in "experience." We're being pushed to diversify out of necessity, and truthfully, we should be diversified. Betting your whole life on one institution to cover your bills was always fragile. That system is falling.
Here's what I can't hand you. I can't tell you how we fix this together. Nobody put me in charge of the org chart or the pricing or the policy, and maybe it's the same fight it's always been. And I won't pretend it's simple, or for everyone. The orchestra player, the ensemble member, the artist whose gift only lives inside the collective, they can't just go solo. What we lose when these structures fall is the community itself, for the people who need it most to make their art at all. I don't have that answer yet, but I want to help find it.
But here is what I can do.
I can help you know what you're actually worth, and build ground of your own to stand on, so you stop waiting for a failing institution to assign your value. Use their stage as leverage instead of a lifeline. Let them have the talent, take the room and the exposure, and walk out having built something beside it that reaches people directly and sustains you whether the institution lasts or not. That's the version where everyone wins, and you belong to no one but yourself.
Because underneath all of it, what I want is almost simple. I want you to get to do the thing that is most you. To live in your alignment. And I want that for myself, too.
So I'll keep heralding the collapse of what was never fair. And I'll keep helping artists build what comes next, on their own terms, and somehow, still together.
What would fair look like for you?
I'd be honored to help you build it.
|: IAM
If this named something you've been carrying, start here. The Creative CEO Audit is a short, honest look at the four areas that decide whether a creative career feels like momentum or overwhelm. It won't tell you what to build. It'll show you where your own ground is thin, which is where building begins.
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