For young people attempting to turn music into a sustainable livelihood, the creative ambition is often inseparable from a much more immediate problem: paying for life while trying to establish a career. New findings from the 2026 Wellness in Music Survey put numbers to that pressure among music professionals ages 18 to 24, with the results pointing to financial instability, substantial anxiety and practical barriers to care.
The research, backed by Carmela Wallace’s Live Free 999 foundation, surveyed 203 people in that age group as part of a broader music-industry wellness study. Within the younger sample, 79% said they had difficulty covering expenses through their music work. Nearly 69% reported total annual income of $25,000 or less.
Those figures do not describe every musician or every young person working in the business. The youth group is a specific subset of a broader survey that received responses from more than 3,300 people across the music industry. Still, it offers a focused look at people in the early, uncertain phase of pursuing music professionally—when income, access to support and the pressure to keep going can collide.
What the numbers say about early-career pressure
It is important to read the income and expense findings as related but distinct measures. The $25,000-or-less figure concerns respondents’ total annual income. The 79% figure addresses whether respondents could cover expenses through music work. The data does not establish that music income was every respondent’s only income source, nor does it identify a single cause for the financial difficulties. It does, however, show that a large majority of this young sample did not feel music work could comfortably meet their costs.
Housing, basic necessities and health care were among the leading financial concerns cited by respondents. These are not optional career investments such as new equipment, promotion or studio time; they are fundamental living costs. When those essentials are unstable, the usual demands of building a career can become harder to manage.
“Jarad was my son before he was Juice WRLD, and I know firsthand how important it is to recognize when someone is struggling and help them get the care they need,” Wallace said. “His music helped so many young people feel less alone.”
Wallace founded Live Free 999 after the 2019 death of her son, Jarad Higgins, known professionally as Juice WRLD. The organization’s work centers on mental health support for young people and emerging artists, and the survey framing reflects an effort to identify needs from respondents’ experiences rather than presume what support should look like.
“The more we know, the more we can do to help before someone reaches a crisis,” Wallace said.
Anxiety is part of the picture, not a separate issue
Financial stress and emotional well-being are presented together in the findings for good reason. Fifty-two percent of young respondents reported moderate to severe anxiety on a typical day. The survey does not prove that money concerns caused that anxiety. A survey result showing two conditions at once is not the same as a medical or scientific demonstration that one directly caused the other.
But the overlap matters in practical terms. People who are worried about rent, food, health care or other basics may face less flexibility in seeking help, taking time away from work or absorbing the cost of treatment. In an early-career music setting, the stakes can feel particularly high: the person may be trying to build relationships, create work, find opportunities and maintain an identity as a professional while resources are limited.
The survey also identified two obstacles to getting care: difficulty locating appropriate providers and stigma. An appropriate provider is not simply any available clinician. In this context, the phrase points to the challenge of finding care that a person can access and regards as a workable fit for their needs. Stigma, meanwhile, can discourage people from talking openly about mental health struggles or seeking treatment even when they recognize a need for it.
These barriers demonstrate why awareness alone is not necessarily enough. A person may know that anxiety is serious and still be unable to locate care, afford it or feel safe asking for help. Support structures that reduce a specific obstacle can therefore be more meaningful than broad encouragement on its own.
How Live Free 999’s programs address specific barriers
Live Free 999 has partnered with Music Health Alliance on $1,000 grants intended to help emerging artists pay therapy costs. The program is focused on a direct affordability issue: therapy can be difficult to maintain when someone has low or unpredictable income.
A $1,000 grant is not described as a complete solution to the survey’s financial and mental-health concerns, and the available information does not say how many artists receive grants or how long individual support lasts. What is clear is the targeted purpose. The funds are meant to assist with therapy costs for artists who are still emerging, a group aligned with the survey’s focus on people working to establish themselves.
The foundation also supports a paid Bring Change to Mind fellowship in which high school students help shape mental health resources. That program places young people in a role beyond simply receiving outreach: fellows can contribute to how resources are developed. Its paid structure also recognizes that participation and access are affected by money, especially for students who might otherwise be unable to commit time to a fellowship.
Wallace said Live Free 999 partnered on the research to better understand what younger music professionals and music professionals more broadly are experiencing, rather than making assumptions about their needs. That distinction is significant. A high-level conversation about “the music industry” can obscure different conditions for artists, workers and newcomers. The age-specific responses add a narrower view of the people who are still trying to get a foothold.
Why the sample should be read carefully
The broader wellness survey included more than 3,300 respondents across the music industry, while the results highlighted here come from 203 respondents ages 18 to 24. That is enough to provide a meaningful account of what this group reported, but it should not be stretched into a claim that every young musician shares the same income, anxiety level or access problem.
Likewise, “music professionals” is broader than performers alone. The supplied findings do not break the youth respondents down by job type, location, genre, employment arrangement or specific source of income. They also do not provide a comparison with older respondents in the broader study. Those omissions do not negate the reported results; they define the limits of what can responsibly be concluded from them.
The most supportable reading is also the most direct: among the 18-to-24 participants surveyed, difficulty paying expenses through music was common, low total annual income was common, and moderate to severe day-to-day anxiety was reported by more than half. Housing, necessities and health care stood out as financial worries, while provider availability and stigma stood out as hurdles to support.
The industry context: wellness and sustainability are connected
Music careers are often discussed in terms of creative output, audience growth and visibility. This research shifts attention to the infrastructure underneath those goals: whether people can afford to live, whether they can obtain care and whether support arrives before a situation becomes a crisis.
That approach is especially relevant as music tools, platforms and distribution systems continue to change. Industry-facing developments can affect how creative work is made and shared, but they do not automatically solve the underlying questions raised by the survey. For example, new music options in short-form video tools may expand creative possibilities for some users, while the wellness findings underscore that opportunity and economic security are not interchangeable.
There is also a useful distinction between crisis response and prevention. Crisis response addresses an urgent need after it has intensified. Prevention aims to reduce the chance that a person reaches that point by identifying strain early and offering accessible support. Wallace’s comments frame the research and the foundation’s work around the latter goal: learning from young professionals’ reported circumstances and acting before the pressure escalates.
For emerging artists and other young music workers, the survey’s value is not that it predicts any individual’s path. Instead, it validates that money concerns and anxiety are not merely private failures or isolated experiences within this sample. The findings make a case for taking them seriously as structural pressures that can shape whether a person is able to continue pursuing work in music at all.
Live Free 999’s research backing, therapy-grant partnership and youth fellowship each address parts of that wider problem from different angles: information, affordability and youth participation. None eliminates the risks described in the survey by itself. Together, they reflect a model in which mental health support is treated as a practical part of sustaining a creative life, not an afterthought reserved for when someone is already in crisis.
