Once upon a time there were filthy rich record company executives sitting in high towers who picked from all the available candidates and anointed a few lucky music star "performers" with money and fame in exchange for complete control of their creativity. They arranged for "managers" to control the artists, and to further enhance their control over them they often facilitated easy access to alcohol and drugs to keep the performer in a malleable fog. Other industry roles (A&R) were devoted to checking out available candidates and finding horses to bet on. To young potential artists the dream looked real, fun and even accessible. To those executives in their control towers it's like betting on horses.
With this system, the young "musically inclined" candidates were enticed to embark on the journey to try and "Make It" - the popular talent rises like cream to be skimmed off and cooked until they're done. Along the way the artist's soul is crushed and exchanged for the illusion of success while every speck of profit is stripped and funneled back to the high towers. The allure of owning a private island or your own jet replaces sane and rational thinking. "I can do it" becomes an internal and inescapable mantra propelling them forward.
A few make the journey intact but it's not a big list and when you weigh it against the list who died trying (drugs and alcohol took them out) it's just not a good career path for most.
To help you understand the odds of "Making It" I put together a list based on actual data.
YOUR CHANCE OF BEING A ROCKSTAR
There is good news and bad news as we peruse the available data. Imagine one person standing in a line with others waiting to get into an exclusive club. Some lines are shorter and some are even longer.
As it turns out your chance of being chosen "Rock Star" is roughly one in a million (depending on the data sets evaluated, the odds of success are actually much worse than this - so we rounded down to an easy to evaluate number).
CAR ACCIDENT
Your chance of dying in a motor-vehicle crash (2024 National Safety Council data) is about 1 out of 101, much more likely than being a rockstar (makes me want to stay off the road).
HIT BY LIGHTNING
In your lifetime your odds of being hit by lightning are around 1 in 20,000 so watch out!
Dying in a cataclysmic storm: about 1 in 14,115 ouch, more death on the road to rock stardom.
LOTTERY WINNING
I'm not into gambling so I can easily count ALL the lottery tickets I've purchased in my lifetime on my fingers.
Your chance of winning $100,000 in a scratch off lottery is roughly 1 in 350,000 (much more likely than being a rockstar).
When you step up to the big winning games like Mega Millions your chance of winning is on the order of 1 in 12,000,000 which makes going for a career as a rockstar look much more appealing odds-wise. Are you feeling lucky? Well are you?...
DEATH DEFYING ODDS (all much more likely than being chosen "RockStar")
Death by drowning: about 1 in 1,025... be careful when swimming.
Dying from dog attack: 1 in 33,899
Dying from hornet, wasp, or bee sting: 1 in 42,626
Killed while riding a bike: 1 in 3093
Dying choking on food: 1 in 2,367
Dying in a house fire: 1 in 1,365
Dying from accidental opioid overdose: about 1 in 84 (illegal drugs BAD)
Dying in a fall: about 1 in 89
GOOD NEWS
Your chance of being a rockstar is roughly 1 in 1,000,000
Your chance of dying from a shark bite is 1 in 4,000,000 (but you must be in the ocean to be included).
That should ease your mind about going into the ocean and swimming with sharks (the large fish species not the record company executives).
THE NEW CARROT
Spotify dangles some enticing numbers and the pool of people uploading to that service grew by a million people uploading in 2025 data alone.
Luminate counted about 106,000 new tracks a day delivered to streaming services in 2025, and 96 percent of those uploads were independent or DIY.
Meaningful money, from Spotify alone, in 2025:
- Over $1,000: 303,200 artists. About 1 in 43 of the 13 million uploaders.
- Over $10,000: 81,100 artists. About 1 in 160.
- Over $100,000: 13,800 artists. About 1 in 940.
- Over $1 million: 1,540 artists. About 1 in 8,400.
- Over $10 million: 80 artists.
Dig a little deeper and you'll find the people who are making serious money are the upload services like DistroKid, Band Camp, CDbaby and other services like them who are the gate keepers to the big players.
OTHER PATHS
I love music - many different styles and genres. I love crafting the words that go into songs, creating deep meaningful vistas of rhythm, melody and harmony. I love making crunchy Marshall guitar tones. The desire to create music was so strong that it overflowed and pushed me to learn electronics so I could build my own primitive recording studio back in the late 1960s while still attending high school.
The Lord gave me a lot of musical gifts but "Rockstar" was not one of them. Instead I pivoted to peripheral music and sound related industries which kept me alive, happy and well paid.
Electronic knowledge was a rock for me. Along the way I repaired TV sets, was a music store repair tech, a sound engineer in film and video, a recording engineer, recording studio owner and a theme park sound and exhibit designer. I did a good job on a design and installation project which got me a referral to a cruise ship company - that changed into a lucrative 30-year client relationship that took me around the world several times.
EPILOGUE
I'm no good at performing for the "algorithm" but I regularly get messages from real people who connected with my music through my web sites and SoundCloud (I love that direct feedback from strangers).
My personal financial return from music "sales" has become so small and life is so short that I'm disconnecting completely from paid distribution, offering my music for free on SoundCloud is the right place for me. Through SoundCloud, people all over the world are actually hearing my tunes - I had over 400 plays in Viet Nam in the last 30 days - just knowing that people are choosing and playing my creations is joy to me.
Keep music precious and special. If you truly love music, keep making it, that's the dream. Do it because you love it.
A song about it: Keeping The Dream Alive
Thanks for reading High on Technology, Good Music To You!
©October 2026 Mark King. It's NOT ok to copy or quote without written permission from the author.
Originally published 10152026
