The Great Purge of the American Blue Collar Musician

It’s happening. And it feels like there’s little if anything we can do to stem the tide. Ultimately, it’s part of greater forces both economic and societal whose impact range well beyond music. But at this moment, it feels like music is receiving the brunt of the impact. And it’s affecting the music community in ways that potentially could be irreversible, and even catastrophic in the long-term.

Between 2000 and 2010, Nashville lost 80% of its population of full-time songwriters. As Tennessean reporter Nate Rau explained at the time via statistics supplied by Nashville Songwriters Association International, it was a bloodletting brought on by a host of factors, including the rise of music streaming, and the streamlining of publishing houses to favor a certain handful of writers instead of a headlong pursuit for the best song no matter who wrote it.

It was during this period that country music also saw the proliferation of the 3-person co-write, and the supposed “Artist-Songwriter” who “writes” with professionals—meaning they get a writing credit on all of their songs, irrespective of how much they contribute. In Nashville, it’s call “third for a word.”

Long story short, over this period, there was such a dramatic purge of songwriters, it resulted in seismic shifts in the music, and the population of songwriters the industry employed. Unless you were willing to write those corporate bops or perhaps your were Lori McKenna, it was over. It’s no coincidence this trend coincided with the rise of Bro-Country, and the banal list-like lyricism and same-sounding songs and melodies that still infect much of popular country music today.

Reporter Nate Rau said in his 2015 article, “The result has been the collapse of Nashville’s musical middle class—blue-collar songwriters, studio musicians, producers and bands who eke out a living with the same lunch-pail approach that a construction professional brings to a work site.”

Now this same thing is happening all over again, but not just in country music, and not just in Nashville. It’s nationwide, and affecting all genres. We’re losing large swaths of the population of blue collar, club-level working musicians who can sustain themselves without any other means of employment, and at an alarming pace. All the cancellations of tours, the supposed “blue dot fever,” the exorbitant price of gas and especially diesel that is needed to power tour buses down the road has made touring budgets difficult to impossible to square.

Meanwhile, social media and the online market is not much better. Instead of artists and songwriters launching careers organically by sharing videos of themselves playing songs like we saw just before, during, and coming out of the pandemic, now much of social media musical content is teary-eyed musicians saying they’re having to cancel their tour, or take a side job.

It doesn’t help that not just fuel, but everything is more expensive, while the guarantees that artists and bands get for playing shows have flatlined, if not declined, in part because the appetite for live music has diminished after the post-pandemic surge, as have the average individuals’ discretionary budget to spend on extra-curricular activities like going to concerts. Also, local and national media that once supported shows and concerts has now either dried up or found different priorities.

It’s not all simply an economic problem though. It’s a trust problem as well. Since the pandemic resulted in massive cancellations, it created a permissive structure in music to cancel shows and tours more regularly and without any explanation, including last minute. This has made consumers more hesitant to click the “purchase” button on tickets that seem to be rising in price even faster than the rate of inflation. They’re also less inclined to travel to see shows since hotels and flights can’t always be refunded.

Meanwhile, you have artists like Stella Lefty who has now been accused of ripping off four of her songs, making the public question everything they see and hear. Integrity in the music industry seems at an all time low, as is the trust in the public of it. And all of this has little or nothing to do with AI, which was supposed to be the existential threat musicians would be facing in 2026. They still might down the road. But right now, the threats are a lot more conventional. You just can’t make money playing music anymore, even if you have a decent following.

Though we don’t have any statistics to cite just yet, that 80% purge of songwriters between 2000 and 2010 doesn’t feel entirely far off for what we might be experiencing with blue collar touring musicians.

Where social media was a significant tool in launching careers previously, now algorithms that reward bad news and negativity seem to be centered on musicians complaining about not being able to make it any more, or having to cancel shows or tours. You could be an up-and-coming musician and post a song that during the pandemic would have gone viral. But today it gets buried in videos dedicated to exposing Stella Lefty and Jelly Roll, or “influencers” talking about why it’s so hard to make it in music now, ironically robbing attention from actual creatives sharing their music.

It’s very easy to fall into a doom and gloom cycle at the moment, especially when you consider that we’re just on the fringes of seeing the effects of AI on music, if the human species is even around in a decade to enjoy audio expressions, as some AI experts are warning we won’t be. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still business models that are working for some, or that the current environment couldn’t even present an opportunity.

On Episode 13 of the podcast/YouTube show The Hook, professional songwriter Drew Kennedy spoke about this very issue,

“Recently I’ve seen a lot of artists complaining about how hard it is to make a living on the road, and they’re correct. Expenses have gone up. Grantees have stayed the same. But if you’re out there and you’re hungry to do it, this is the perfect opportunity for you. Because as some people are saying, ‘This is too hard for me … I should hang it up, and go do something that is safe and has benefits and give me a salary,’ that’s you chance if you love it that much to step up and fill whatever void it is that the people that are going to get out of the business are vacating.”

You can see Drew Kennedy’s full comments below.

It was the evisceration of the songwriting population in Nashville that might have doomed many blue collar songwriters. But it’s also the environment that gave rise to viral songwriters like Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, Jesse Welles, and more independent and authentic voices such as Tyler Childers and Sierra Ferrell. Hungry for authenticity, people sought out and found alternatives to the Nashville system.

But what we’re currently experiencing is not just a widening of the gulf between the haves and have nots. As more and more musicians drop out of the blue collar musical workforce, only the very top-earning musicians are the ones who will survive. And even then they have a treacherous road ahead, with massive superstars like Post Malone and Garth Brooks being affected by “blue dot fever” as well.

But where Garth and Posty can weather the storm, your favorite club-level musicians might be filling out an application at Home Depot, which means that next album gets delayed, if it ever gets written or released in the first place. Then all that’s left for the new music diet is corporate artists, or perhaps AI, which despite the strong push back from the public, perhaps will exploit this vulnerability of the music industry, and use the opportunity to take over.

Make no mistake about it, the music industry itself is not in peril. On the contrary, they’re in the make. Music is making more revenue than any other time in history. Though individual concert attendance might be down for specific shows in the “blue dot fever” phenomenon, cumulatively, Live Nation continues to post record profits, in part because they’ve monopolized the market.

What are there solutions to all of this, if there are any? This is where the outlook begins to turn even more bleak, especially with AI in the offing. The quickest solution would be a dramatic drop in gas prices. This would allow the economics of music to make sense again for more performers. Streaming and recorded music already didn’t make sense. It was touring where the profits were. It’s been the elongation of the war in Iran that has made this issue a short-term pain, and turned it into an existential threat. And unfortunately, musicians only have so many options when comes to attempting to shape world events themselves.

But we also must remember that musicians aren’t essential workers. Even if some are super passionate about pursuit music and have that dream, that doesn’t mean they have the talent, skill, or appeal to do it. Our favorite musicians are special because they’re so unique, and supply something to the entertainment space nobody else can. But that’s not the case for everyone that wants to make music.

There is also nothing wrong with pursuing music part-time, in whatever capacity a musician wants. In fact, sometimes having a second job or a different job is essential to a musician holding onto their integrity, and doing the music they want to do instead of what they must do to pay the bills.

But the cold hard truth is that the amount of population that was able to make music as a full-time pursuit coming out of the pandemic is diminishing, and at a rapid pace. Though music faces many other problems, this one seems to dwarf all others at the moment, and should be the primary focus of any discussion on music, and any initiatives to try and support the arts in specific communities.

In that population of musicians who are having to hang it up, there will be a few who were barely hanging on to begin with, and perhaps don’t have the magic to make it long-term. But there might also be the next Ella Langley, the next Sturgill Simpson, the next Sierra Ferrell, or the next Billy Strings who just can’t sustain, are forced to take a second job or chooses an entirely different career path, and their entire catalog might never make it to our ears, or into the pantheon of music to inspire and influence the next generation.

Then, all we will have is AI music to entertain us. And that is not a future worth fighting for. A future where authentic human expression shared through the medium of music is the only one where the full human experience can be realized. And that’s the experience we should fight for, for the benefit of us all, and for future generations.

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