This New York Times article speaks out to this day and age, where music has changed drastically from the art that it used to be revered as. Today music is acquirable anywhere. Youtube, pirating websites, recordings; anything is possible. With this said the speaker of the New York Times article’s qualm comes from how difficult it is for artists to make money with these conditions. When music is obtainable at every turn of a corner for free, who would want to buy music? And if anyone did, do they do it often enough to endorse their favorite artists and make a living for them? The speaker starts the article optimistic wondering why anyone would not want to be their own entrepreneur, but after a serious loss when the label that produced her music went bankrupt. From that point on, the prospective artist that she was, the speaker decides to be her own entrepreneur and self-promote her own music. How hard can this be? Like all the millions of other hip-hop artists that take innovative methods of production such as selling their own clothing line, the speaker tries to join their ranks. This proves to be a greater problem than she could have imagined, however, since self-promoting is almost like selling yourself out and begging for funding. To do this, it is almost a requirement to be loud, ready to be public.
The problem with this is that now a days artist have to go to extreme methods to publicize themselves. The speaker of the New York Times article at the end is asked to write a book and she does so, changing her career from music to literature. This brought up the question: Why are some arts more respected than others? As a writer she was more successful not having to self promote herself and having all her works sold and bought. Why is this not the same for music? Why don’t educational, governmental, and cultural institutions extend the same kind of support to arts like music the same way they do for other kinds of expression. To this end, to be successful as a musician in todays world there is no other truth; you have to be big, you have to be loud.
