Hello GigTowners! Andy here, your Grand Poobah :)

The music industry sucks. Musicians everywhere are scrapping to get paid for their art. The closer to the center of the industry you get, the less money there is for musicians playing around town. There are tons of "get rich quick schemes" where artists can pay a fee for a chance to be reviewed by industry pros who maybe, just maybe, will select your song for use in a noteworthy movie or TV show, or give you a chance to open up in front of a big name artist. Musicians don't have enough money to create very high quality content like albums and music videos. They essentially pre-sell their content through channels like Indiegogo or Patreon in order to create anything in the first place. Then they push the content out to their fans. Sometimes their fans listen. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes the artist pays Facebook money to get more people to watch the video. Sometimes they watch. Sometimes they don't. Whether they watch or listen or ignore entirely, there is no such thing as a 'break' and in 99.99% of cases, almost nothing results.

2016 has gotten off to a pretty rough start; re: witnessing Earth's mightiest music heroes fall.  So many of our great pioneers are reaching the age where perhaps their earlier lifestyle choices may have begun to catch up with them.  Sadly, I don't see this new trend is musician deaths slowing any time soon.  For a guy such as myself who worships the people who came about from the 1960's - the 1980's, I'm getting more and more prepared to watch an entire generation fall over the next 20 years.  I don't mean to sound so morose, death comes for us all, afterall.  Perhaps a brighter twist?  Ok, let's consider it a changing of the guard.  I suppose it's time for all us fine young folks to step up the plate and really do our jobs.  The seasoned generation won't be around much longer to pick up our slack.  So get to work.