I was not the only person to take issue with this article. Some provided detailed and clear-headed thinking, some less so. I would like to focus on one particular exchange with the Future of Music Coalition (F.M.C.) because it will eventually involve Mr. Johnson, the Times public editor and the magazine editor. This is the passage in the original article that sparks the exchange:

According to the O.E.S., in 1999 there were nearly 53,000 Americans who considered their primary occupation to be that of a musician, a music director or a composter; in 2014, more than 60,000 people were employed writing, singing or playing music. That’s a rise of 15 percent, compared with overall job-market growth during that period of about 6 percent.

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