The good folks at Consequence of Sound recently ran a story about a year-old study that came out of Sydney University, which found that whilst most musicians won’t join the infamous 27 Club, they do have a good chance of dying earlier than average.
Apparently CoS had only recently caught wind of the frightening statistics featured in the report, but in Australia we’ve known for some time just what a toll working in the entertainment industry can have on one’s physical and mental health.
As The Telegraph noted, the study by psychology professor Dianna Kenny was believed to be the first population study of performing pop musicians, and observed some 12,665 musos.
The study found that, on average, musicians die 25 years younger than non-musicians. The musicians studied died between 1950 and 2014, with the average age of death between a muso’s late 50s and early 60s.
“The results of this study are disturbing,” Professor Kenny said at the time. “Across the seven decades studied, popular musicians’ lifespans were up to 25 years shorter than the comparable US population.”
“This is clear evidence that all is not well in pop music land.” Whilst Prof Kenny said the findings suggest the music industry needs to stop “valorising” destructive behaviour, it’s not just drugs and drink that lead to early demises.
A musician’s chance of accidental death was between five and 10 times greater than for the general population, suicide rates among musicians were between two and seven times greater, and homicide rates up to eight times greater.
“The music scene celebrates drugs and promiscuity and valorisation of early death, so young musicians who are depressed and suicidal are attracted to these types of environments,” Prof Kenny told ABC News.
“They are meeting fellow travellers where they amplify each others suicide, depression, or substance abuse and that gets into an-out-of-control spiral leading to early death.” She called the music industry “a very dangerous place for young people”.
And as we know, that’s not only true for musicians, but for those working behind the scenes as well. Entertainment Assist, a charity that helps people working in the industry, launched their own study after identifying 70 roadies who had died prematurely.
They found Workers in the entertainment industry are paid significantly less than the rest of the community and have higher rates of suicide, due to “unhealthy, often divisive, competitive” work environments.
With funding from the Pratt Foundation, Entertainment Assist commissioned Victoria University to conduct a new study late last year, the largest ever conducted on industry workers anywhere in the world.
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It found that in the past 12 months, workers in the entertainment industry considered taking their own lives almost seven times more than the general population. and one in every 14 performers surveyed admitted to making an attempt on their life.
The figures for those working behind the scenes, such as roadies and technicians, were even more shocking, at almost one in 12. To put that in context, the figure is roughly one in 30 people for the wider Australian population.
“Sadly, it was pretty much what we expected,” Susan Cooper, general manager of Entertainment Assist told Fairfax at the time. “Anecdotally, we have known there has been a problem forever, but we didn’t have statistics to stand up and take notice. Now the problem cannot be denied.”
So now that we have the statistics and data, are we about to see a sweeping change in the music industry? It’s unlikely, but the more aware we are that there is a problem, the more likely change is to happen, until these “disturbing” figures are a relic of an old way of doing things.
ENTERTAINMENT ASSIST INDUSTRY SURVEY FIGURES
63% of performers earn less than the National Minimum Wage of $34,112
10% of professional singers have attempted suicide
59.5% of entertainment industry workers have sought help for mental health issues
40% of performers have been diagnosed with a mental illness
36% of roadies reported “suicide ideation” in their lifetime
Lack of sleep, low pay, drug and alcohol abuse the contributing factors
Source: Working in the Australian Entertainment Industry survey, Victoria University
