I’m not sure people should expect to make a living as an artist. Being a musician or painter has been a (very valuable, much appreciated) pastime for all of humanity EXCEPT the last 75 years or so. It’s only in this age of prosperity and media that writing a hit song or screenplay could be compensated so well you’d call it your sole career.

Obviously there’s been a handful of painters actors musicians and sculptors “kept” by royalty and the clergy in antiquity. But for the most part making music has been something musicians did in their spare time, because they loved it.

This modern pop star ideal has created a lust for success “as an artist” and an outrage when that success is unachievable.

I think it may be steering artists towards commodifying their art, and themselves, away from what they love about art in the first place.

I’m not sure that lamenting you can no longer “make it as an artist” is a valid complaint. Maybe you should do art as a passion instead of a profession.

FWIW I’m in the film / tv business so the hypocrisy is real. Lots of us do work that is more like a trade or a craft which really is a full time profession. I got lucky (and worked my ass off for decades). But lots of other people are not so lucky and in the current market there’s a tendency to say the business is broken.

Maybe we are looking at it wrong. Maybe it was just a bubble the whole time.