My job is to entertain people. I help my audiences forget their troubles, at least for a little while, and have a good time. In order to achieve this, one of the things I must do is to project positive emotions through my music and demeanour. This may create the illusion that I am always happy and blessed with stellar mental health. In truth, musicians are like any other human being. We have ups and downs, and we have to deal with the stress of navigating the world.
Being self-employed in the culture and entertainment sector comes with many unique challenges. One of them is to keep track of the trends, both in terms of economics and market legislation, and in terms of art and the public’s interests. It is hard to do so in the digital age, with so much information whose origins are uncertain bombarding us at all times. Finding balance is tricky: you can’t close your eyes to the world and pretend to live in your own bubble, and you can’t spiral down every rabbit hole and seek to have an informed opinion on every topic under the sun. The former is unsustainable and will probably cause harm to you and others. The latter is overwhelming, confusing, and it will prevent you from doing your job.
I have found that identifying reliable sources that involve experts in the topic at hand is the way to go. For example, last year, after hearing some alarmist and contradictory things about the Autumn Budget, I decided to attend a short course directed at SMEs (small and medium enterprises) to better understand it and how it would affect me.
The first thing the lecturer said was that we should not read the headlines, because media outlets don’t aim to inform us or educate us, but to catch our attention. Sensationalist headlines that cause anxiety are way better at achieving that than a sensibly written article. For this reason, we should be selective with where we get our information from. At this point, it is worth mentioning that, due to the fact that generative AI is prone to hallucinations and making sources up, programmes like ChatGPT are not suitable as sources of information, nor can they summarise information reliably.
Once we looked at the Autumn Budget up close, we could distinguish things that it did right and things that it got wrong. Realising that there were improvements in areas like the increase of the minimum wage, or the ending of the two-child benefit cap, allowed me to release some of the stress and sense of doom that this topic had caused me. Good, fact-based and veritable information is empowering, and I strongly encourage you to find reliable sources to improve your decision-making and mental health in 2026.
For musicians, two organisations that I can recommend for you to get assistance and information in topics important to our profession are The Musicians’ Union and Help Musicians UK.
