“The point is that while music is as lucrative as ever for those at the top, what’s diminished, as in so many jobs, is the comfortable middle, where once upon a time musicians who never quite hit the big time could nonetheless make their living: not super-rich, but doing fine and enjoying a certain stability. What we are left with now is a kind of all or nothing, in which you either scale the dizzy heights or languish forlornly at the bottom.”