“Utopia isn’t for Everyone”: Career Inequalities and Adaptations among Female Independent Musicians

The music industry is sometimes seen as a unique sector that is more meritocratic than the rest of society and in which the work is by nature fulfilling. However, the industry is deeply inegalitarian, and precarity is the norm for most of those who work within it. But does this precarity manifest differently depending on gender, class, and race? Drawing on a participant observation study and interviews with a population of independent (“do-it-yourself,” DIY) musicians who work outside of institutional and commercial forums of recognition in “creative” neighbourhoods of Brooklyn, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Stockholm, and Paris, this article seeks to show (1) how certain difficulties encountered by interviewees vary depending on their social identities and (2) how these female musicians demonstrate reflexivity and adaptability in order to build a career. Aware of the hierarchies created by social identities, the interviewees negotiate a place for themselves by engaging in considerable emotional labour to conform to social expectations in the hopes of building a career within a sector where, paradoxically, “individuality” is socially valorized.