For the last few months, a friend and I have been on a quest to investigate what the fuck is wrong with us. Through reflections on our pasts and patterns that keep us stuck, we often chat about why two ‘gifted kids’ who were praised for their creativity as children, now in their adulthoods, just can’t seem to, well, create. He wants to ultimately be a filmmaker, and I’ve been dreaming of making music since I was a teen, which took a back seat over time. We’re in our 30s now, and a monstrous guilt of not having ‘done enough’ eats away at us.  

The cult around creative work, including books like 'The War of Art', say that the void or emptiness one feels inside, like something’s missing, is just the consequence of the ‘unlived life’ — a creative calling that we’ve been avoiding. Stephen Pressfield, the author, says that it looks like unhappiness. “A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction,” he writes. "It deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be” — heavy stuff, I know, but I do believe it. And so, naturally, just producing and putting out a complete, honest body of work that I’m proud of would be enough for me to feel like I’d made it — reception and going viral be damned.

But if that is the ‘dream,’ for me and many others, I imagine, why is it that 74.3% of musicians and artists in the music industry who are already living the lives I aspire to are still not happy and show signs of abnormal psychological distress?

At ‘All About Music X’, South East Asia’s biggest music conference last month, a new nationwide study called 'It’s Time To Talk: Mental Health in the Indian Music Industry' presented its research, which collected more than 1,000 responses from people working across India’s music ecosystem. A collaboration between Global Music Institute in India, TATVA in India, Goldsmiths, University of London, and Creative Empirical in the UK, the study found that 3 out of every 4 respondents struggled with mental health in some form, be it anxiety, depression, psychological distress or even suicide risk.

They looked at the factors surrounding the work itself — discrimination, workplace sexual harassment, career pressures, perceptions of success, financial and social circumstances, and whether people felt able to seek help — to understand how these conditions were affecting them psychologically. The findings pointed towards what the report describes as a “crisis of occupational possibility”: the difficulty of turning talent, commitment and a huge personal investment in music into a long-term career.

When Mikhail Khan, our editor here at Homegrown and a musician, started performing around 10 years ago, he realised that making money from music and being able to live off it were two very different things. “There was always this thing where you have to have a day job,” he says. For him, that is part of the romanticisation of being an artist. "From the first gig, when you’re just starting out, through the middle of your career, there is simply no expectation that you’ll make enough money from gigs to support yourself. Which automatically creates a sense of 'you’re always going to be up against it',” he shares. “When you’re a musician, you’re always the underdog.”

Part of it, he argues, is because music remains a much less formalized profession than other creative fields. The fine-art world doesn’t necessarily have it easier, he says, but it does have things like “the white wall, the gallery space” and a little more organisation around the profession. Music is getting better with new initiatives emerging — he points to NMACC in Mumbai as one example — but there is still a fundamental shortage of infrastructure to support the number of people trying to make music. “There are too many musicians, and not enough venues and support systems to go around.”

Because live performance remains one of the most tangible ways for an independent artist to make money, this becomes a real problem. Mikhail acknowledges that while venues do have to deal with guaranteeing ticket sales, artists still need a working wage. “There has to be a baseline for what an artist gets paid when they perform,” he notes. “Whether they're starting out or whether they're experienced, it needs to go up on the whole.”

The infrastructure around independent music has gotten slightly better over the years. Amplify Music Incubator, for example, has run seven cohorts since 2021, working with more than 90 artists on everything from music business and financial frameworks to performance, audience development and wellbeing. Its new AMI South programme is now working specifically with emerging Tamil and Malayalam artists. Grants and residencies have also become more common, with programmes such as the TuneCore Grant offering independent musicians direct financial support alongside mentorship.

But Mikhail emphasizes that we are still far behind when it comes to grassroots backing. “Europe is much, much better when it comes to providing grants for musicians and music across the spectrum,” he notes. “Even certain parts of the Northeast have much better grants than we do in mainland India.” He argues that establishing these baseline support systems and funding from the ground up would give artists who are starting out a sense that “it's not going to be easy, but at least there are some support systems that I can rely on.” But all of this comes with its own song and dance.

To get an opportunity like this, modern musicians are expected to maintain an online presence alongside making the actual music. A 2025 study by researchers at Goldsmiths and UCL described this as working in a “content factory”. Interviews with musicians found that social media could help with connection, networking and career-building while also producing harmful comparison, trolling, uncertainty around algorithms and a sense that artists had to keep sharing more and more online — be the musician, social-media manager, publicist, booking agent, salesperson — put yourself out there, remain available, chase opportunities, deal with rejection and keep going.

When musicians face structural powerlessness, gatekeeping, and a total lack of relational justice, it leaves them feeling like permanent outsiders — which, as the study shows, directly drives up rates of anxiety (43% vs 33%) and depression (41% vs 30%) among those who feel their hard work isn't leading to success.

The highest risk group across the entire study was found to be people aged 25 to 29. This is usually the point where the idea of “giving music a shot” runs into rent, family pressure, and adult responsibility. Symptoms include relatives asking when you are going to get a real job, settle down, and bring home a stable income. Meanwhile, you watch old classmates land corporate promotions, buy homes, and build financial security. Even the noble pursuit of a higher purpose doesn’t make you immune to the embarrassment of explaining why basic bills are still a struggle as you approach thirty. 

If that wasn’t enough, the industry itself is a tricky place. A massive seventy-seven per cent of respondents in the Indian study reported experiencing everyday discrimination, which showed up alongside every single negative mental health outcome researchers looked at. These working conditions don't exist in a vacuum; people carry deep social hierarchies like caste and religion right into the music scene with them. Mikhail himself has been calling out clear and consistent right-wing rooted bigotry and islamophobia that's embedded itself across the Indian heavy music landscape.

An astonishing 89% suicide-risk rate within the LGBTQIA+ community in the study completely shatters the illusion that independent music spaces are inherently safe or progressive. It reveals that queer respondents face severe, disproportionate pressures across the board, showing significantly higher rates of anxiety (55.3% vs 37.1%) and depression (55.6% vs 34.8%), alongside an alarming 19% suicide attempt rate — more than double that of cis-het respondents. This 34 percentage-point disparity in suicide risk represents the single largest gap found anywhere in the report. Just because an industry preaches cultural visibility doesn't mean it offers real, material safety when you are navigating booking networks, touring setups, backstage environments, and relentless financial strain.

Workplace sexual harassment is another huge part of the problem, prompting the study to call for urgent sector-wide action. Half of the respondents reported surviving sexual harassment, which led to a 2.5 times higher rate of suicide attempts. But addressing this raises the question: where even is the workplace for an independent musician? Is it a midnight studio session, a rehearsal room, a green room, a tour bus, an afterparty, or a promoter’s private WhatsApp chat? When the lines between your job and your social life are so blurred, calling out abuse, reporting misconduct, and holding powerful people accountable becomes even more complex.

There’s a growing criticism of how the wellness industry, therapy and a culture of ‘nervous-system regulation’ can turn structural problems into individual ones — teaching people to manage their stress, optimise themselves and become more “resilient” so they can keep functioning under failing institutions that are making them unwell in the first place.

I think the music industry isn’t too different. When faced with unfair pay or gatekeeping, it subtly teaches musicians that their struggle is their own fault — that they just aren't working hard enough or aren't ‘tough’ enough to make it. This internalised guilt is isolating. Over a third of musicians in the study dealing with severe ‘red flag’ distress, anxiety, or depression have never once sought help. Even worse, 28.4% of those who planned or attempted suicide never reached out to anyone either. While cost is a huge barrier, with 58% of men citing financial stress as a reason not to seek therapy, the mindset is the bigger issue. When you're convinced that suffering is just part of the job and that you're the problem, asking for help feels pointless.

Moreover, the playing field is much more uneven than a study like this with a small sample can fully capture. While class privilege doesn't necessarily spare the 'artsy kids of rich parents' from the doubts and pressures that come with making music, it still provides a critical financial cushion to fall back on. Marginalised independent artists without that safety net are left completely on their own, trying to figure everything out from scratch while lacking access to industry literacy — things like copyright, or performance royalties through societies like IPRS, publishing deals, and entertainment lawyers. Without that foundational knowledge, artists are left even more vulnerable to predatory contracts and being systematically undercut.

You could argue that social media has levelled things out a bit — giving non-urban creators and artists with limited resources a direct line to an audience — but relying on algorithms is still an exhausting game you're forced to play that has nothing to do with your actual skill as a musician.

A lot of this goes back to the unwritten cult of being an artist, which feeds into the idea that the industry is an exclusive, tight-knit circle you can only access once you've either “cracked the code” or proven yourself by jumping through enough hoops. But this isn't the cutthroat world of finance or a rat race to win at capitalism. The running joke online about the spouse who says, "I have to lock in at my corporate job, so my partner can run a little pottery studio or open a café" might actually be true for the music industry too.

As one of the most meaningful thing our species has the capacity to experience — music is tied directly to who we are, how we connect and relate to each other, and how we experience the world. The structures built for music cannot be governed by the same cold, extractive rules of standard corporate industries. As AI slop fills every creative sphere, authentic human voices are only going to become more sought after — backing real artists is the smartest long-term play the showrunners can make — as the spouse — someone to hold down the fort, nurture and protect; to hold bad-faith actors accountable for the exploitative practices labels and major studios have gotten away with for decades, so artists have the space and safety to, in Berthold Auerbach’s words, help wash away from the soul the dust of everyday life. 

Read the full report from 'It’s Time To Talk' here.

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