[…] Thomson says she hopes the study will help music fans to better understand the financial realities that musicians are dealing with.

“Sometimes there’s assumptions about musicians that, ‘Oh, they’re all rich,’ or the opposite, ‘Oh, this is just a hobby for them, they should get real jobs,’” she says. “There’s huge assumptions made about musicians, based on people thinking about all musicians being rock stars or crazy artists. We hope that this work, on the biggest level, can humanize or demystify the musical community … to give a sense of the more nuanced take on the way musicians knit a career together.”