I don't think that's the only reason since the dole exists today too and there's not as much good music coming out.

Jazz and other music genres in the US came without government welfare, they came from struggle and oppression. Motivated artists will still work part time to fund their dream, they don't necessarily wait for welfare to start making art.

IF you were to give a lot of people free money today, will you get more and higher quality art in return, or will most people just drink and smoke that money while playing videogames at home?

Society, people and the world today are vastly different than back in the 1960s, so we need new polices targeting the society of today, not 1960s policies.

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tehjoker 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What do you think those policies might look like? It's true that we have more screen based entertainment options today. We also have a very different music distribution system that is likely influencing things substantially. In the 1960s, I imagine getting on the radio was what it took to launch a career, now it's matching the algorithm on spotify.

	▲	joe_mamba 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't know what the right policies would be, but I noticed that smart, driven and disciplined driven people will always find a way to work around algorithms to get to the top, it's not something the government can legislate in order to get a desired outcome. It's not like becoming famous back then was easy either. Plenty of good bands never got anywhere. The Mona Lisa wasn't a famous painting until someone stole it in 1911, before that nobody gave damn and now it's the most famous of them all. Survivorship bias and randomness in art is real.