Throughout our time with music there has always been a stigma that musicians, mostly famous musicians, make an incredible amount of money. More recently, though, that idea has shifted to, more or less, two schools of thought about the music industry: that there is tons of money and that musicians are able to be pretty successful or that there is no money and it’s all a hail mary now.

Well, according to Loudwire, there is now a study that shows how much musicians may actually make. The sixties and seventies had the ideas of rock star and pop star pushed all around as those “stars” in music made loads of money, enough to live a lavish lifestyle that, really, only one 1% of the population has truly experienced. However, as time moved forward, the music industry slowed down and the claim that music stars make a lot of money is nothing more than an anomaly.

A study has shown that, in 2017, the average income of musicians was $35,000 with only around $21,000 generated from music-related jobs. This study was implemented by the Music Industry Research Association alongside MusiCares and Princeton’s Survey Research Center. Over the course of the study only about 1,227 US musicians were surveyed with 61% admitting their music jobs do not generate enough to live by.

According to the American Community Survey, the average income for a musician between 2012 and 2016 was between $20,000 and $25,000. When comparing these two studies, it shows a pretty stagnant trend, however, there have been claims that there has been a rise in terms of more money generating from music ventures. After nearly 60 years, it could be the music industry is rising back up in the world.