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[BopEuph]

Back in the 1970s, it wasn't that unusual for musicians to be paid $3,500 a year to play in per service orchestras. Adjusted for inflation, $3,500 in 1971 was about the equivalent of $30,000 today, which today is considered to be enough pay to be considered full-time orchestra pay.

And the biggest eye opener is showing up to an audition for one of those $30k jobs for an orchestra here in Florida, and meeting a better player having flown in from, say, Oregon to shoot their shot. I was much better off moving into the wedding band circuit and grabbing up other pick-up gigs when they come through, rather than shedding for 6-8 hours a day for the unlikely prospect of a $30k job. And that's probably what the principals make.

Disney has regular auditions for their Candlelight show, which is their annual Christmas Orchestra concert, and a few years ago they did video submissions for the audition. I found players from Michigan uploading audition videos. If you're lucky, you would get maybe ten performances and about three rehearsals. That's less than $4,000. People were looking to move (or possibly travel) to Orlando for the prospect of an optimistic $5k. And there's very little extra work in Orlando, ESPECIALLY as a classical musician.

I worked a summer show that paid really well at Disney...like $600/day in 2016. It was unexpectedly extended and became a five-month gig. A guitarist moved up from Miami, thinking that since he got hired to do that job that he'd be a shoe-in at Disney. Problem is, there were literally no other guitar gigs on that property, and haven't been since. And he never recovered from that.

[bloke]

Counting on any "steady" playing gig has always been folly, including so-called "full-time" and including so-called "tenured".

More than once, I've discussed a very high profile Boston Symphony oboist (Wayne Rapier) who was also known for his solo recitals and solo recordings who made sure that he made more money selling real estate than he did playing in the Boston Symphony (and I believe he advertised in the Boston Symphony program booklet).

I suspect that one of the next groups of people to be targeted are these so called tenured university music professors, particularly those who are the studio teachers. I predict severance packages, and replacement with adjuncts who are either some of these with whom universities have overstocked society with DMA's, or local symphony musicians.

No large institutions - nor their HR departments - view employees as human beings, and certainly not as their friends or colleagues. Rather, they view them as expenses and liabilities.