Lifespan of Music Stardom: How long does it last?

What is the lifespan of music stardom: Discover the truth about how quickly artists rise and fall in today’s music industry.

Lifespan of Music Stardom: The Unfortunate Truth

by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Just about everyone who’s ever picked up a guitar or stepped foot into a recording studio has had visions of having a hit record. “Just 1 hit is all I need,” runs through your mind as you try to capture music lighting in a bottle. It turns out that the elusive hit doesn’t mean much at all, as a pretty detailed study of how long music stardom actually lasts pops that bubble.

As it turns out, you might not want to quit your day job just yet in sake of that hit.

Daniel Parris, who does these fantastic deep dives on the entertainment industry on his Stat Significant site, looked at the Billboard Hot 100 dataset and found some numbers that are truly eye-opening.

A Hit’s Lifespan

The biggest one is that 75% of artists have a lifetime on the Billboard Top 40 of less than 1 year!

Only around 12% make it to 3 years, about 4% to 5 years, and a little less than 1% of hit makers ever make it to Elton John/Bruce Springsteen/Rod Stewart territory of 20 years or more.

Are you depressed yet? There’s more.

If we break that down it’s even worse. Only a little over 1% even make it through that first year on the charts. 27% only make it 1 month or less, and only 65% have their stay only 3 months long.

Not only that, it takes time to get that elusive first hit. Most artists don’t have their first hit until age 27 to 30. For those of you hoping for a late-in-life hit, it doesn’t happen very often past age 42. In fact, less than 1%.

A Hit Maker’s Lifespan

But let’s make it even more depressing.

Daniel used “A cross-verified database of notable people, 3500BC-2018AD,” a comprehensive dataset of every “prominent” individual in human history, to find out the lifespan of those who achieved music stardom as compared to other industries.

Music artists end up passing on at an average age of just 64, which is worse than football and hockey players, but better than race car drivers and boxers.

I know when I was young I would have glanced at these figures and went right back to gigging without a care in the world. When it’s in your blood, you have to do it regardless of the adversity and dangers. That’s how it always has been and how it will be going forward.

The difference today is that music stardom holds a lot less allure than it did in the past, with most young people more likely to pursue being a tech bro or influencer instead. Playing in a band just isn’t as cool as it once was, but thankfully there’s no shortage of people wanting to do it.

That said, chasing the brass ring of a hit record isn’t what it used to be, and now we have the data to prove it.

Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author, blogger, podcaster, and coach. He has authored 24 books on music production, music, the music business, music AI, and social media.