Personal Experiences of Mental Ill-health in the Music Industry

Head First, the inaugural conference on mental health and wellbeing in the Australian music industry, took place in Sydney this week. It was a beautiful thing to see professionals from diverse backgrounds share ideas about how to make the industry a more mentally healthy workplace. The need for psychologists who understand what it’s like to work in music was highlighted more than once throughout the day. Professionally, this is a spur for me to continue developing my practice in therapeutic alliance with people who work in the music industry. Yet since the conference, I’ve also found myself reflecting on personal struggles I had while working as a songwriter/performer in the early 2000’s (when mental health literacy in the music industry was non-existent). What follows is a description of those struggles, how I might make sense of them as a psychologist, and what might have helped me address them at the time. Though necessarily personal, my hope is that sharing these experiences will contribute to the broader conversation around mental health and wellbeing in the music industry.

“Andrew’s in his office again.”

Before I began touring as a musician in my early 20’s, I had taken three trips that required air travel: once when I was 7 years old, twice when I was 19. Airports and planes had rarely featured in my life. When I got the itinerary for the first real tour I ever went on, there was something unsettling about seeing months of shows and flights packed tightly against one another. I blocked those feelings out, because I was also excited. On tour though, it didn’t take long for the unsettled feeling to return. I got so nervous before flights that I’d stop on the way to the airport to go to the toilet, go again before boarding the plane, again before landing, and again before leaving the airport. This happened so frequently that a colleague began to joke, “Andrew’s in his office again,” each time I went to the toilet. Eventually this spiralled to its natural peak: a panic attack while riding an 18-seater airplane to a show in a rural centre in South Australia. It felt like the tiny aircraft shook mightily with the faintest gust of wind. My eyes were shut tight through the whole flight, and I literally kissed the dusty red ground when we landed. Neither I nor anyone else in my network at the time had the language to notice and name this as anxiety. I thought some part of me was faulty, so I didn’t talk about it. What I needed was information and support: This is anxiety. Everyone experiences it sometimes. Your particular experience involves fear of flying, and that’s pretty common. Would you like some help learning how to manage your flight anxiety, so that you can feel more present and connected with the reason you’re flying? Instead, I grinned and bore it. This did not serve me well.

“Anxiety makes you depressed”

Anxiety and depression love to hang out together, but the nature and dynamics of their relationship vary from person to person. I once heard a psychiatrist sum up a version of the relationship thus, “Anxiety makes you depressed.” That was true for me, as the daily slog on tour of putting up with anxiety while putting on a mask of wellbeing became exhausting. After a while, it started to grind down my mood. I felt trapped in 24 hour cycles of: flight anxiety, hotel check-in, boredom, hopelessness, lunch, more boredom, more hopelessness, sound check, loneliness, dinner, pre-performance anxiety, euphoria of performance, la bonne fatigue post-performance (quickly buried by partying etc.), and insomnia. Then repeat, starting with a 6am flight. This had a snowballing effect: because I always felt tired, often felt bored, and increasingly felt hopeless, I spent most of my downtime on tour in bed. I wasn’t sleeping, though. Mostly I was ruminating. “It’s always going to be like this… Why am I like this? There’s no point exploring the city I’m in, I don’t have enough time… Why do I have to do all of this traveling? Why can’t I just teleport onto the stage from home?” When the thing you love that used to be exciting and fulfilling becomes routinely anxiety provoking, it can be depressing. Again, I probably needed some information and support. When we’re depressed, it feels like we have to withdraw from the world until we feel better. But the very things that might help us feel better are the things we’re withdrawing from. It’s possible to do things that you know are helpful (e.g., exercise, cutting down on partying, contact with friends/family, getting out and visiting new places), even when your mind is telling you there’s no point. Learning how to manage depressive thoughts and implement some of these lifestyle changes would have probably made a positive difference to how I handled life on tour. But there were also less obvious aspects to being a musician that negatively impacted my mental health.

“You’re way better looking on TV”

When I got to the makeup and styling area for the second music video I ever featured in, the security guard didn’t believe I was an artist and wouldn’t let me in. He got pretty grouchy when I persisted, shouting and swearing at me. Eventually the director came and smoothed things over, which prompted an immediate, stomach-churning change in demeanour from the security guard. I brushed it off in the moment, but I felt embarrassed and angry. I stewed on it for days. “But I am an artist – do I not seem like an artist? Do I need to be more of an artist? What does that mean? How should I dress and talk and walk and behave – how should I be?”’ That was the first in an accumulation of interpersonal sequences that started to feel like an interrogation of my personhood. After an in-store performance and signing, a teenage girl walked up to me and said, “You’re way better looking on TV,” and then walked away. At a single launch, a well-known industry figure got a bit handsy and then called me ‘sullen’ when I told him to take his hands off me. When I got my first big royalty payment, a well-meaning family member said music was my, “High paying hobby,” knowing that it was my sole occupation and source of income at the time. I could go on (and on). This all happened around 2004 when Facebook was brand new, before YouTube, Twitter and TikTok existed. I can only imagine what turbocharged version of the above today’s artists are experiencing. In subtly different ways, each of these interactions sent me the same message. “Be warned: ‘you’ – as a person who happens to be a musician – are a contested concept.” What I needed was some space and time to work out healthy ways to carry this musician part of me. I needed strategies to cope with the inevitable painful moments, and to learn that I can put my heart and soul into music behaviours without getting tangled up in a persona that’s imposed on those behaviours. Basically, I needed a therapist.

Each concept contains it’s opposite

We are psychologically large enough to have seemingly incompatible experiences coexist within us. A common expression of this in therapy is that, “I’m a whole, valid person just as I am, and I need to make some changes.” The above recount of challenging experiences in the music industry does not negate my love for song writing and performing. Working as a musician I experienced anxiety, depression, crises of self, and had some of the most fulfilling, transcendent moments of my life. For a long time, that was assumed to be the lot of a working musician. There is a growing movement in the music industry which rejects that assumption, and asserts that pursuing a career in music need not come at the expense of one’s mental health and wellbeing. At the forefront of this movement in Australia are professionals in the fields of music and mental health, including organisations like Support Act. I don’t know if I would have connected with this movement, or attended a conference like Head First, in my early 20’s when I was working in the music industry. I probably would’ve told myself that I didn’t need to; that these issues weren’t applicable to me. That’s partly why I started my own practice – to offer the type of psychological support to today’s music professionals that I didn’t recognise I needed when I was working in that industry.

How and When is Music Good for Who’s Mental Health?

To say that music can be therapeutic is a truism. We get this from folk wisdom, pop culture stereotypes, and normative human experiences (my post-breakup song is You Don’t Know What Love is, how about you?). It’s a pretty uncontroversial idea. Nonetheless, a recently published study adds scientific weight to this notion, finding that making or listening to music can benefit aspects of quality of life (most notably, mental health). The authors flag some important questions that their study raises, though. How do we develop an empirical understanding of this effect (i.e., through which specific processes might music improve mental health)? How do we account for large variations in how individuals engage with music? These questions matter, if we want to harness the power of music to help enrich peoples’ lives when they struggle with periods of mental ill health.

Each time we engage with music, whether making music ourselves or listening to other peoples’ music, we do so in a specific context. And that context matters. A distinction between passive and active engagement with music may help illustrate this point. In some contexts, passive engagement with music can be helpful (e.g., blasting Rage Against the Machine during a weight training session). This is an example of music as a facilitator (i.e., synergistically improving wellbeing via it’s influence on your workout). In other contexts, the effect of passive engagement is less clear (e.g., playing ambient music to help relax while checking emails, scrolling social media, scanning news headlines etc.). In any case, passive engagement with music may have an indirect influence on our mental health. It may be that in order to experience the direct mental health benefits, we need to be fully immersed in music. I’ve half-listened to the Teskey Brothers Hold Me in the car while trying to convince my children not to destroy each other on the morning school run. I’ve listened to the same song at a live concert amidst a sea of people clapping in unison. I’ll let you decide which experience was passive and which one was active; which barely registered as musical, and which was so immersive as to be spiritual (something like going to church for believers in music).

A key difference between active and passive engagement – whether we are fully immersed in music, or only half listening – is the way in which we allocate attention. Mindfulness, the practice of purposefully and non-judgementally paying full attention to some aspect/s of the present moment, is implicated in this process. Interestingly, the above-mentioned study found no significant differences in impact on mental health between listening to music and practicing mindfulness meditation. One can’t help but wonder what the impact on mental health may be when we combine the two: if we purposefully and non-judgementally pay full attention to a piece of music. This would be consistent with the wisdom that John Coltrane is said to have shared with his cousin Mary (yes, that one) about how to listen to music. Coltrane reportedly advised her to listen to a record all the way through while taking in the full range of sounds. He suggested that she then continue listening to the entire record as many times as there are instruments being played – so that she could isolate and focus on each instrument, one-at-a-time, all the way through. In other words, pay mindful attention to Giant Steps (which is infinitely cooler than following your breath – with all due respect to Jon Kabat-Zinn).

Another contextual factor that may influence music’s impact on our mental health is the above-mentioned variation – i.e., individual differences – in how we experience music. One difference is whether we engage with music for business, or pleasure, or both. For professional musicians, the benefits to wellbeing which music can provide may be undermined by the psychological distress of working in the music industry. On the one hand, creating music on a full-time basis can be a deeply meaningful experience, replete with flow states that improve one’s quality of life. On the other, a career that requires relentless promotion and monetization of yourself and your creations in an often adversarial workplace might make you sick. Some musicians may need support to maximise the creative and therapeutic gifts of music while minimising the sometimes-harmful effects of maintaining a professional music identity. How might we offer that support? From a sociocultural and industrial perspective, as Gross and Musgrave (and others) have suggested, we could start addressing unhealthy norms within the music industry. There is also an increasing awareness that musicians may need help with the psychological preparedness that the music industry evidently requires.

As an ex-performer/songwriter turned clinical psychologist, I’m interested in both understanding musicians’ inner experiences and providing some kind of intervention where it’s helpful to do so. In therapy, musicians may choose to work on amplifying mindful immersion in the tangible act/s of creating and listening to music – harnessing the above-mentioned wisdom of John Coltrane. They may also choose to do some self-concept work – de-emphasising identification with a narrow sense of self that is limited to music industry roles. However, as the authors of the earlier-mentioned study note, “The mechanisms of music’s impact on health are complex and specific to distinct settings, suggesting that targeted study is required to determine optimal music intervention characteristics in each setting.” Accordingly, we need more clinical research to figure out how best to help professional musicians absorb the mental health benefits of music while avoiding the mental health costs of the music industry. Any such research program needs to have the needs and preferences of professional musicians themselves at its core.

Google, why do I think in song lyrics?

No matter how much time I spend pre-planning, the actual preparation for a trip gets crammed into the last few hours before departure. During the recent holiday period, I was running critical errands on the morning we were due to leave for a short stay at a beach house. While struggling to maintain the frenetic pace, I noticed that my mind started cycling through random song lyrics. I reflected later that this happens all the time: during brief periods of wakefulness overnight, when I’m doing something solitary that’s tedious and finicky (e.g., setting up a beach dome), or as I’m hurriedly making my way to a meeting I’m late for. Not to mention recurrent periods of aimless mind wandering. My default mode network seems to have a soundtrack. I was curious enough to do a Google search (“Why do I always think in song lyrics?”), which revealed that I’m not alone. Perhaps there’s some general human process at work here beyond my own idiosyncratic experience.

Some exposition of that idiosyncratic experience before attempting generalisation: it’s usually a short sequence of lyrics (not necessarily the most aurally memorable ones – rarely the chorus), on a continuous loop, in my own voice. The lyrics play out much like a subset of thoughts from my inner monologue. I’m not sure how much this overlaps with the so-called earworm phenomenon, where catchy tunes (e.g., pop songs, ad jingles) get stuck in our heads. Often it’s snatches of a seldom-heard album track. It’s not Tom Waits’ voice but mine that I hear singing, “The Piano has been Drinking,” when I’m half asleep at 3:43am on a Tuesday. I spent most of my mid-teens to early thirties writing, rehearsing, recording and performing songs. So sometimes, the lyrics I hear in my mind are my own. But this occurs with no more frequency or intention, and no less randomness, than it does with other peoples’ songs. The overall qualitative experience ranges from benign distraction to a pleasant stroll down memory lane. Curiosity about whether other peoples’ experiences of this phenomenon were similar to my own is what inspired that lazy literature search.

This does seem to be a dimension of typical human behaviour (i.e., some of us do it a little, some of us do it a lot, we’re all on the continuum somewhere). I’m among those for whom the experience is neutral or fun, but a significant minority of people find it disturbing. Stuck Song Syndrome is an extreme manifestation of this where people fear, and struggle to move past, songs getting stuck in their head so much that it negatively impacts their daily functioning. So what differentiates those of us who either enjoy or are not bothered by songs getting stuck in our heads, and those who find it disturbing and even disabling? As is often the case with complex psychological phenomena, it’s an open empirical question to which the answer is, “We don’t know, but we have some ideas.” There is evidence that people with OCD may be more likely to find the experience of getting songs stuck in their heads psychologically threatening. The stereotype of OCD is someone who spends a lot of time washing their hands, or checking various sources of perceived threat (e.g. stove top, locks, asymmetry). An aspect of OCD that is sometimes overlooked is the intrusive thought process, i.e. the obsessions that gives rise to such stereotyped compulsions. Many people with OCD find it extremely difficult to relate to their thoughts as random mental events that need not necessarily have significance attached to them (as an aside, developing such a relationship to our thoughts is known to be helpful). Compulsive behaviour may be viewed as a control strategy: doing something to ‘get rid of’ the obsessed-over thoughts. For someone with an anxious-avoidant attachment to their thoughts, getting a song stuck in one’s head may be akin to such obsessions (i.e., a source of psychological distress).

For those of us who have a more benign experience of songs getting stuck in our head, what might the function of this behaviour be? In my above-described holiday experience, it felt like a cognitive hamster wheel for my mind to spin off nervous energy in a neutral-to-pleasant way. There seemed to be something specifically functional about the repetition: some forms of repetitive thought are adaptive (e.g., as mental stimulation that helps us achieve practical goals). That was certainly the case when lyrics were looping through my mind as I frenetically prepared for the road trip. But why was it the opening verse to Nas’s “The World is Yours” revolving in my mind? It could’ve been a calming mantra, or some concrete, task-relevant, repetitive thought (e.g., “Fuel, air in the tyres, coffee… fuel, air in the tyres, coffee”). At a general level this might be an evolutionary quirk related to our pre-historic affinity for oral forms, which need to be aurally appealing so as to be memorable. The non-written bardic storytelling tradition is probably an adaptive elaboration on this quirk. Related effects are still very much evident in contemporary human behaviour. When two words are linked by rhyme, we tend to remember them better than non-rhyming words. On a personal level, almost twenty years of song writing is sure to have shaped some aspects of my cognitive functioning. One example may be the overlearned behaviour of holding lyrics in mind and repeating existing lyrics until new ones are added. I’m not sure if this resonates with other people who have spent much of their lives writing songs, but I would be very interested to know.

In Appreciation of Vince Jones for Ausmusic Month

Among a stack of vinyl records recently given to me by my father were two LPs by Vince Jones (Spell, and Tell Me a Secret). My dad was a big Vince Jones fan (as demonstrated by close inspection of the back cover of his copy of Spell - see photograph). I hadn’t thought about Vince Jones nor listened to his music for a long time, but as soon as I heard the opening bars on Side A of Spell, I had a remembrance of things past. I don’t know of any Australian musician quite like Vince Jones.

Born in Scotland before moving to Woollongong NSW in 1964 at age 11, the venerable vocalist, songwriter, and jazz trumpeter has been making records for four decades. Nowadays he is something of an elder statesman, reuniting with other Australian jazz icons and helping develop future talent through his academic posting. Adequately positioning Vince’s body of work within the Australian music canon requires the type of long-form journalism I have neither the time nor talent for. Inspired by my Proustian re-experiencing of these two records, this article is limited to Vince’s output during the 1980’s. Throughout that decade he released a slew of albums comprised of subtly interpreted standards and distinctive original songs, and the latter often outshone the former. These were the kind of records that could fit the mood at any stage of a good dinner party – from furtive greetings to lush farewells.

It was in just this setting that I first encountered Vince Jones’s music as a child. After Saturday dinner, I used to watch reruns of late 80’s basketball games and eat ice cream in a bedroom with the other kids while our parents drank wine and listened to records in the lounge room. Like Vince’s family, my parents and their friends had immigrated to Australia from Scotland in the 1960’s. They brought their own taste in music with them, which bore out Vince’s remarks (and those of Annie Lennox) about some connection between the Scots and black music. As well as Vince Jones those dinner parties introduced me to Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, George Benson, Van Morrison, Tony Bennett, Stevie Wonder, and other greats of jazz, soul, and R&B. When I heard that stream of music through the walls at those parties, I didn’t know the titles of the songs, or which songs came from which record, or the names of the artists. All of the music fit together, all of it was great, and it all seemed a perfect accompaniment to the irreverent adulting that was going on in the next room.

It’s hard to think of another Australian vocalist from that era who could fit in that playlist, except maybe Renée Geyer. But Vince Jones belonged there. Consider the Tell Me a Secret LP. Listen to Vince’s soulful phrasing on Hoagy Carmichael’s Two Sleepy People, and how that old standard sits neatly beside Sensual Item, I’ve Been Used, and Too Much Too Soon – fine examples of Vince’s own song-writing. The double bass that rolls in to start Sensual Item would make Ron Carter proud, and could have sent Q Tip on alternate excursions. Vocally, Vince floats in to the track like some prototypical Jay Kay meets Georgie Fame, an aural babushka doll: the future in the past in the present. You can imagine this album playing in between Mark Murphy’s Stolen Moments and Brother Ray’s Come Live With Me. Perhaps that sounds like an exaggerated claim for an album recorded with largely local musicians in South Melbourne in 1986. But when you listen to Tell Me a Secret (or any of Vince’s records from that era) – and I hope you do – the experience is absent overt locality. There is no single place you can point to on a map where the music could adequately be said to ‘come from’ (despite Vince’s obvious love for and connection with Australia). Thinking back to those dinner parties of my childhood, Vince’s sound simply melded with the internal consistency of great jazz, soul and R&B music. Who cared where it came from (to the Beginner’s Mind of a 7-year-old, at least)?

Inspired by Ausmusic Month, I’ve been listening to a lot of Australian music lately. There are a few artists who rightfully loom large in the collective conscience (e.g., Paul Kelly, often described as our greatest songwriter). Vince Jones has been widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz artists in Australian music history for a long time, but I’m not sure that captures his reach. It feels a little confining for someone who can hang with Ella and Ray. In recent years we’ve seen Australian artists make great songs that are rooted in black music and take them global (e.g., Daniel Merriweather, the Teskey Brothers). Vince (as well as Renée Geyer) was one of the first Australian artists to do this. After listening to these two LPs from the 1980’s, I’m convinced that he was also one of the best to do it. Maybe it’s time to drop the genre classifications and appreciate Vince Jones as one of the greats of Australian music.

Music meets human needs, but are musicians getting their human needs met?

Plato described music as a moral law. This does not exaggerate the value assigned to music by the ancient Greeks, who thought that music was integral to daily life and human nature[1]. There is evidence of musicality among humans well before writing systems were developed. The earliest known musical instruments have been dated from approximately 40,000 years ago[2]. Humans may have made music even earlier than that, perhaps as a tool to facilitate communication prior to the development of language[3]. If that’s true then, far from being auditory cheesecake[4], music may have been linked to matters of life and death for our ancestors. Indeed, music has played a role in childbirth[5] and end-of-life rituals[6] through to the present day. There is something about music that interacts with our fundamental human needs.

Many of us have become acutely reacquainted with this interaction as we rely on music to help regulate our emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic[7]. Yet the pandemic has had a catastrophic impact on some of the people who create music and avail us of this coping strategy. It was predicted that musicians would lose 65%-80% of their income in 2020 due to the pandemic[8]. At an individual level, people have had to abandon distinguished performance careers and abruptly change vocations to support their families[9]. At an economic level, Australia’s music industry value, estimated at $1.82 billion AUD in 2019, reportedly shrank by 39% in 2020 as a direct result of pandemic-related restrictions[10]. These ongoing personal and economic losses are unlikely to be the only musical costs of the pandemic. It remains unclear what the long-term cultural impact will be for us, the listeners, if a significant portion of the creators are no longer willing or able to create. Up to 60% of people working in the Australian music industry are considering leaving that industry in the wake of the pandemic[11]. Hence for humanitarian, economic, and sociocultural reasons, it’s important to consider what the needs of people who make music may be at this point in time.

Musicians are a demographic group with unique needs who ought to be consulted directly about what those needs are, and how they can be met[12].  Yet it’s also important to examine whether the core human needs we all share are being met for musicians. The best-known model of human needs is that of mid-twentieth Century psychologist Abraham Maslow. His famous hierarchy ranges from subsistence (e.g. food, shelter, safety) to psychological growth (e.g., self-transcendence). Based on the surge in crisis relief cash grant applications to not-for-profit music welfare organisations such as Support Act[13], a significant number of musicians are struggling with subsistence needs at present. This is a reminder that despite romantic mythologising of the profession, a typical musician earns less than the national average wage[8,14]. Though not directly related to COVID-19, personal safety is another uncontroversial human need that has not necessarily been met for musicians, particularly the sexual safety of females[12,15]. It seems that both during and prior to the pandemic, some basic needs have gone unmet for segments of the music making community.

Regarding psychological needs, further research is needed to examine whether Maslow’s hierarchy stands up to the rigours of modern science[16]. Self-determination theory is a more recent and empirically supported model that identifies three universal psychological needs for humans: autonomy, competence, and connection[17]. People need to feel in control of their own behaviours, to gain a sense of mastery by building and applying chosen skillsets, and to experience a sense of belonging. When these needs are met people generally enjoy better mental health and quality of life, whereas when they are not met people generally suffer poorer mental health and quality of life[18].

It could be argued that working conditions in the music industry made it difficult for musicians to meet the needs of self-determination even before COVID-19[12]. Recording artists commonly experience the vitality of creating new music give way to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness as that music indefinitely ‘sits on the shelf’ for reasons beyond their control[19]. Twenty-first century folk wisdom holds that this should no longer be an issue: musicians have the power to ‘be their own brand,’ due to the freedom to create and share information that technology affords. Some independent artists have indeed leveraged these conditions to achieve success on their own terms (e.g., Frank Ocean). However, this folk wisdom is inconsistent with the experience of most working musicians, who are constrained within existing music industry power structures. Even when they spend every waking minute ‘being their own brand,’ the relative success of that brand is largely determined by the above-mentioned industry forces that are, again, beyond the musicians’ control[12].

Restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, or how those restrictions have been imposed (i.e., with little to no consultation), have dramatically amplified such routine undermining of musicians’ self-determination. Perhaps the starkest example of this is the disruption to live performance, which is the primary source of income for musicians in the digital-music era[20]. Live music is slowly returning in some countries, albeit amidst uncertainty about how this will be done safely and sustainably[21]. At the time of writing and throughout the pandemic, the Australian live music industry has effectively ceased to exist[13]. As the nation continuously swings in and out of lockdowns, live shows and festivals have been cancelled at literally the last minute[22]. So much for a sense of control over one’s behaviour (i.e., the need for autonomy) and opportunities to apply one’s chosen skillsets (i.e., the need for competence). Another valued aspect of live performance for musicians is the act of coming together with other musicians and with audiences to experience a sense of belonging[23]. The decimation of the live music scene during the pandemic has isolated many musicians, removing opportunities to meet their need for social connection. Given the link between low levels of self-determination and poor mental health, these unmet psychological needs may be contributing to increased mental health issues for some musicians during the pandemic. In recent years evidence has emerged that, on average, musicians are more likely to experience mental ill-health than people in the general population[12,14]. Whether musicians experience lower levels of self-determination than the general population, and whether this drives differences in mental health, are empirical questions for future research. There is more immediate work to be done.

If we care about the humans who make the music we love, or the economy they contribute to, or the cultures they help shape, then we should address the pandemic-related pain currently being felt by musicians. There is an urgent need, particularly in Australia, for access to a dependable source of financial support until pandemic-related barriers to earning a living from music are removed. The federal government’s four-phase plan for emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic does not appear equipped to support musicians in this respect[24]. Australian musicians have made it clear that they need a governmental policy and roadmap for how the industry can rebuild and sustain itself in the years to come[25]. If co-designed with input from musicians, this may help facilitate a sense of autonomy, competence, and connection (i.e., self-determination) for those who make music. Nothing will better help musicians meet their needs for self-determination than a return to creative work (especially live performance), which is dependent on the above-mentioned industry-specific roadmap.

We could also do better in terms of helping musicians meet needs that have gone unmet since before the pandemic. Musicians receive virtually none of the multi-billion dollar annual revenue generated by music streaming services[26]. This music industry equivalent of wage theft could be remedied by streaming services adopting revenue models with more equitable royalty structures[27]. Awareness of the need to ensure sexual safety for people in the music industry has increased in recent years, but raising awareness does not necessarily result in tangible change. It has been encouraging to see major record labels take action to address the lack of sexual safety in the Australian music industry[28]. Hopefully these will prove to be not tokenistic reactions, but rather first steps towards a music industry in which everyone is safe to personally and professionally thrive. In the UK, record labels have recognised the need for proactive early intervention approaches to supporting musicians’ mental health, rather than waiting until signs of psychological distress emerge[29]. It would be helpful for Australian music institutions to take a similar approach (e.g., facilitating access to evidence-based, personalised psychological support that’s responsive to the unique experiences of musicians). This is an approach to mental health support that professional musicians seem to value[30]. If music is a moral law, then taking these steps to prioritise musicians’ needs as we transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic is surely the right action to uphold it.

About the author: Dr Andrew Gardner (PhD) is a clinical psychologist and the founder of Opus Psychology, which specialises in providing psychological services to musicians. Previously he worked as a songwriter and performer.

References

1. Schoen-Nazzaro, M. B. (1978). “Plato and Aristotle on the Ends of Music.” Laval théologique et philosophique vol. 34: 261-273. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/59610745.pdf

2. Higham, T., Basell, L., Jacobi, R., Wood, R., Ramsey, C. B., & Conard, N. J. (2012). Τesting models for the beginnings of the Aurignacian and the advent of figurative art and music: The radiocarbon chronology of Geißenklösterle. Journal of human evolution, 62(6), 664-676. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248412000425

3. Levman, B. G. (1992). The genesis of music and language. Ethnomusicology, 147-170. https://www.jstor.org/stable/851912

4. Pinker S. How the Mind Works. New York, USA; W W Norton; 1997 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400831296-033/html

5. Browning, C. A. (2000). Using music during childbirth. Birth, 27(4), 272-276. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1523-536x.2000.00272.x

6. Caswell, G. (2012). Beyond words: Some uses of music in the funeral setting. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 64(4), 319-334. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/OM.64.4.c

7. Ziv, N., & Hollander-Shabtai, R. (2021). Music and COVID-19: Changes in uses and emotional reaction to music under stay-at-home restrictions. Psychology of Music, 03057356211003326. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/03057356211003326

8. UK Music https://www.ukmusic.org/research-reports/music-by-numbers-2020/

9. Miller, N. (2021). https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/i-was-on-the-kitchen-floor-crying-too-often-a-year-of-despair-for-performers-20210812-p58i5c.html

10. PwC (2021). https://www.pwc.com.au/industry/entertainment-and-media-trends-analysis/outlook.html

11. Strong, C., & Cannizzo, F. (2020). Understanding Challenges to the Victorian Music Industry during COVID-19. RMIT University. https://researchrepository.rmit.edu.au/esploro/outputs/report/Understanding-Challenges-to-the-Victorian-Music/9921970611701341

12. Gross, S. A., & Musgrave, G. (2020). Can Music Make You Sick? University of Westminster Press. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/186329659.pdf

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