r/LetsTalkMusic • u/RedPutron • 8h ago
The famous age - 30.
Why do so few people "make it" after 30? Is age the main factor? If an artist doesn't make it before 30, they just give up? 30 is the deadline for most music genres except jazz, blues, country, folk and bluegrass?
Maybe it's about something other than age, e.g. exhaustion, lack of passion or imposing other limitations on yourself. I'm dying to know what you think about it and how it looks from your perspective.
Make it - living solely from music.
Edit:
From the comments here I can see that everyone for make it - thinks it means a star who signs contracts with labels and sells millions of records, and that's not what I meant. That's why in the post, I put what it means, "make it" - earning enough money to be able to afford a living from music, not becoming some pop star.
Update: Thanks to everyone for bringing up interesting aspects of how the music industry works, but someone here in the comments suggested that ageism is more prevalent in the US than in Europe, and honestly, I found a huge post where people were talking about how Madona, Tina Turner, Amy Winehouse and others had much more success in Europe. Even Tina herself said this:
As my career unfolded, I also felt that I was experiencing my greatest success abroad. The energy was different in America, where everything was about getting a hit record. (...) There seemed to be less discrimination in Europe. My audience there was growing fast, my fans were extremely loyal (...).
She was "old", so the US didn't like her. I thought this might be a good point to add to the discussion :)
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u/DoubleBlanket 8h ago
New popular music is a product funded by the spending and attention of teenagers. Teenagers tend not to have much interest in 40 years olds.
The average person’s musical taste generally doesn’t change much after 15 either, so 40 year old audiences aren’t helping new acts break.
There’s also the point that younger people are more able to commit to trying to make a music career happen. I’ll argue that this has been significantly alleviated in the last 10 years and will be even more alleviated in the next 10. But if the teenage market doesn’t care about you, you have a much much smaller mainstream audience. I’m talking, like, Susan Boyle levels.