The question of art vs commerce remains with us now more than ever before. Currently, record companies function less like patrons and more like investment bankers. They put down a large amount of cash on an artist in the hopes that the artist or songwriter will bring in huge returns.
Many music industry executives, such as Clive Davis who discovered Whitney Houston, started out as lawyers. A frightening number of the most powerful executives have no music background at all. Therefore, the hopeful songwriters’ professional goals revolve around convincing these people that the songs they write can be commercially successful.
This happens when you create songs with a certain sound and form, and by being as professional as possible with submission packages, personal bearing, and attitude. A certain amount of local success, to prove that you can make it at the local or regional level, also helps a lot. Of course, once you have wider success you may gain more artistic latitude.
Much closer to the old patron system is the network of grants and fellowships. However, even they may ask for specific things in the compositions. Many modern composers write for TV and film, while others get high academic degrees and teach while they compose on the side.
So, the professional composer has almost never been free of the worries of making a living. Either that, or the composer did music as an avocation rather than as a vocation, such as Charles Ives did. In other words, you have a day job and do music as a hobby. It may be a serious hobby, but a hobby none the less. Sometimes it’s best to leave it that way too.
Whitney Houston