As for making money in this business, it is most certainly possible. However, most musicians that I know multitask within the profession (performing, teaching, recording…)in order to produce income. It’s not easy to make a living, but the means by which we make it are wonderfully rewarding.

What they didn’t tell you was Michael Jordan graduated with that degree. But they used his salary in creating their stats. He obviously wasn’t using that degree! hahaha!

My brother as a young man was a fantastically gifted artist, dabbling in graphic arts, printing, metal sculpture, carpentry, etc. He turned that creativity into the high tech industry and has made a killing. Most other creative people I know also make a very handsome living, unless they stuck to their music or art. Once they went out and got a real job, their creativity enable a quick rise for them.

I think there’s something about the natural mathematics inherit in music that appeals to a mathematical mind, at least on an intuitive level.

Anyway, I mention this because it’s possible that a large amount of those 150k+ earners are in some aspect of the technology field.

Just food for thought.

In any case, I still like music

I fit the description of the people in the study, and I can tell you what profession I ended up in. I played the cello from the time I was 10 until I was 18. I didn’t love it, and I hated to practice, but my mother always taught me never to be a quitter so I played all of the way through high school. I went to a top Ivy league school, where the never-quit mentality served me well. I ended up at a top law school, where every student is virtually guaranteed a job that pays at least $160,000 a year before bonuses. (You get your job offer your second year of school, or in my case, even the first. For example, I interviewed with 30 law schools, chose to visit 8 and ended up with 8 offers in three cities from law firms that wanted to pay me $40,000 to work this summer and $160,000 upon graduation.)
I would say most of my classmates studied musical instruments in high school. One even had a career as a musician before enrolling in law school, but that is far from the norm. Most of us juggled music lessons with foreign language lessons, community service, and work on our high school newspapers.
I would also say, from my experience in college, that most of my friends who went into investment banking studied music, and most of my friends who ended up in med school studied music, too.

My kids will never be musical geniuses, but they really enjoy what they are doing. Since we no longer pay $40/week for piano lessons, we feel much happier about the situation! If your son becomes interested earlier on, YOU could always teach him!

There’s nothing in the world as great as a good public school system!

At the time that she was in school she had considered only minoring in music but, one of her instructors persuaded her differently.

I recently read the bio of Mitch Albom on Forbes website and it says that he plays in Rock band occasionally. But, as we know he earns his $6million annual income as a writer and radio personality.

The relationship can be:
both start with the letter ‘m’ both have 5 letters in it and we all like the sound of both.

But jokes apart I can take a cue from the book Freakonomics that I read recently along with your post then I can put the following relationship.

Music courses are expensive(as per you) and only such students can afford them who have great passion or who are financially well or have financially well parents. Now it make sense that most music lovers end up with higher education degree as they were financially well and landed up in a well paying job riding on their education.