> but not super popular.

Having been a sleight of hand close-up magician for most of my life (and even made my living performing for several years a very long time ago), you'll be happy to know that in the past decade close-up magic has become orders of magnitude more popular than it ever was - thanks to YouTube and video streaming. The perception stage magic is more popular is simply because performing for large live audiences is the main way to build a sustainable business able to support the high costs of big props, assistants, travel, advertising, etc which that style of magic requires.

There are only a few hundred magicians consistently making a full-time living performing stage magic and only a couple dozen consistently making a really good living. Whereas there are hundreds of thousands of hobbyists who've discovered learning and performing magic can be really fun.

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bsder 19 hours ago | parent [-]

> There are only a few hundred magicians consistently making a full-time living performing stage magic and only a couple dozen consistently making a really good living.

It's my (possibly wrong) perception that this has become more difficult for magicians recently--possibly this is a US-centric thing. For a while, it seemed like there were almost no stage magicians other than Penn and Teller left.

	▲	mrandish 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Big stage magic shows tend to come and go because it's hard to sustain multi-year runs but Las Vegas has a few long running shows in addition to P&T: David Copperfield (good), Mac King (great), Chris Angel (meh). Piff the Magic Dragon is a more recent show but is hilarious and looks likely to play for years to come. Shin Lim has had a close-up magic show at the Venetian for a few years now and is also great. Plus, there's almost always a few other magicians doing short runs in Vegas at any given time. Just do a search when you're planning to be there. Elsewhere, Derek DelGaudio's one man, non-traditional magic show In & Of Itself was sold out in New York for over two years and was released as a movie (which is fantastic and on streaming now). However, most large metro areas have live magic shows fairly often, they're just smaller shows in nightclubs, bars, dinner theaters, etc and don't have the budget to advertise. Do a search and you'll probably find something coming up. There's a shocking amount of really good magic happening lately driven by some incredible innovation from new magical inventors (people who create new methods and effects but usually don't perform themselves). And it's global.