Can Music Make You Sick? Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition

Acknowledgements
Note: On the Music Industry/Music Industries

1. Introduction: Special Objects, Special Subjects
1.1 What Makes You Think You’re So Special?
1.2 You Don’t Have to Be Mad, But it Helps
1.2.1 Can Music Really Make You Sick?
1.3 Abundant Music, Excessive Music?
1.4 Communicating when Music is Media Content
1.5 Music Education and the Pipeline
1.6 What Are We Seeking to Do in this Book?

2. Sanity, Madness and Music
2.1 Signs of Emotional Distress and the New Language of Mental Health
2.2 Music and Suffering: The Limits of Magical Thinking
2.3 Methodology: Our Survey Findings – Anxiety and Depression by Numbers
2.4 A Deep Dive: Solo Artists, Gender and Age
2.4.1 Interviews: Understanding Feeling
2.5 Conclusion: Status and the Rhetoric of Fantasies

3. The Status of Work
3.1 Financial Precarity and Defining ‘Work’
3.1.1 Work, Work, Work
3.1.2 Money and Meaning
3.1.3 Pleasure and Self-exploitation
3.1.4 Professionalism and Value
3.2 Musical ‘Success’?
3.2.1 How to Define Success
3.2.2 Capital, Image and Illusion
3.2.3 Failure, Responsibility and Identity
3.3 Expectations and the Myth of the Future
3.3.1 The Achievement-Expectation Gap
3.3.2 Music as Social Mobility
3.3.3 ‘Deification and Demolish’
3.4 Conclusions: Take Part, Make… Content

4. The Status of Value
4.1 Validation ‘Online’
4.1.1 Feedback and Vulnerability
4.1.2 Competition and Relevancy
4.1.3 Abundance and Communicating
4.2 Validation in ‘the Industry’
4.2.1 Reputation and Contracts
4.2.2 The Deal
4.2.3 On the Role of Luck
4.2.4 Luck, Power and Privilege
4.3 The Myth of Control and the Nature of Blame
4.3.1 Symbolic Inefficiency and Stickiness
4.3.2 Do You Feel in Control?
4.4 Conclusions: Welcome to the ‘You’ Industry

5. The Status of Relationships
5.1 Personal Relationships
5.1.1 Family, Guilt and Sustainability
5.1.2 The Role of London
5.1.3 Touring and Family Life
5.1.4 The Work/Leisure Distinction
5.1.5 Music as a Gambling Addiction
5.2 Professional Relationships
5.3 Women and Their Relationships
5.3.1 Sexual Abuse and Misogyny
5.3.2 Self-Perception
5.3.3 Women Online
5.4 Conclusions: Drive and Being ‘Occupied’ by Your Occupation

6. Conclusions: What Do You Believe In?
6.1 Discipline and Dreaming
6.2 ’Twas Ever Thus: What’s New?
6.2.1 Experiencing Abundance, Making Data
6.3 ‘Let’s Talk About It’: What Would Living Better Look Like?
6.3.1 Therapy and Listening
6.3.2 Public Policy and Learning Lessons?
6.3.3 Duty of Care: Responsibility and Control
6.3.4 The Case of Lil Peep
6.4 Music Education Now: Reflections
6.4.1 Questions of Content and New Ways of Teaching
6.5 Concluding Thoughts: Myths and Wellbeing

Appendices
1 Musicians Interviewed and their Demographics
2 Additional Cited Interviewees and Interviews with Mental Health Professionals
3 Directory: Music and Mental Health Resources
4 Notes on Methodology