Music Therapy Musings: Also Known As "Things I Think About When I am Awake at 1:30 AM"

My sleep schedule is so messed up at the moment that I am spending inordinate amounts of time awake when I am usually sleeping. I tend to wake up and just be awake. It is rare that I go back to sleep once I am awake, and last night, I woke up twice to use the bathroom. This is also pretty unusual. I was able to go back to sleep the first time (it was only about 11ish), but when I got up the second time this morning, I was up. So, I wasted some time on TikTok, and now I'm up and thinking.

One of my social media forays this morning was a post about trying to hire brand new music therapists and there being a significant disconnect between what new music therapists with zero professional experience want to be paid and what the market allows. This is a significant issue in the world of music therapy. Sure, I would LOVE to be paid $100K to be a music therapist, but that is not the reality of life at this time.

Let me preface this with some background information here. I am a music therapist who is finishing her 30th year as a professional. Three decades of experience here. I have a Master's degree in Music Education with Emphasis in Music Therapy. I am the staff music therapist at a facility for persons with psychiatric and developmental concerns. I am a writer, a musician, a composer, a paper crafter, and all sorts of other things. I supplement my public school/not-for-profit organization salary with two side hustles and a part-time job. I am hoping to add another part-time job to my calendar pretty soon to help supplement my salary. I have never felt that I had enough money to do everything that I wanted to do, but I have been comfortable the last eight years - after I paid off my student loans.

I have spent many years living from paycheck to paycheck, and while I don't recommend that life to anyone, I have always been able to make it. I understand the need for a living wage, but I also understand that there is a pretty big disconnect between what I want and what the market will pay me. I have 30 years of professional experience, and I make significantly less than my sister who teaches in the public school. I also have an advanced degree which she does not. I still get paid about $40K less than she does - even with all of my side hustles and paid jobs.

I have sacrificed many things in my life in order to continue to follow my passion of music therapy. I do not live where I want to live because the jobs in that locale do not pay enough money for me to live on. I have not been able to travel the way I want to travel. I have not taken vacations. I have always bought cars new - mainly because I drive lots for my commute, but I lived in an apartment until just last year. Last year, I finally found myself in a place where I could buy a home of my own. 

Now, I get wanting to have a livable wage. There has to be a realization, though, that your experience counts for quite a bit. A brand-new music therapist has to be trained. A brand-new music therapist has to be supervised and taught how "we do things." A brand-new music therapist is not a great risk for a business to take on. There has to be a balance between what the market will pay and what employees want to do a job.

This is not a new argument, nor is it an easily solved one. There are many elements that come into what different professionals are paid, including supply and demand, education, experience, returns on investments, and local markets. Many of these elements are not things that can be fixed by the American Music Therapy Association. AMTA has no say in how my school district decides to compensate me. None at all. If AMTA tried to tell my school district how much they had to pay me, my school district would eliminate my position rather than have to deal with a little bitty organization. Period. Many times, the conversation turns to blaming AMTA for things that AMTA cannot control. It is easy to blame an organization rather than accepting the reality of life in various areas of the world.

If anyone out there is telling music therapy students that they will be earning top dollar as brand new therapists, then those people are lying! The fact of this profession is that we will never be rich doing this job. We will never be compensated at the same levels as other therapists. This is because of a combination of things that happened long before any of us were contemplating a life as a music therapist and continued patterns. Hind sight is 20/20, so it is easy to see where we could have veered away and had a much different job position now, but choices were made back then that set us on this path. Unless one of us gets a time machine and heads back to the late 1940's, then we are the way we are - destined to be paid at levels similar to what public school teachers earn.

We can try to demand more money from societies that have learned to undervalue us. There will always be someone who will do the work for less money. They may not do it as well as we can, but they will do it for less. Business always tries to earn as much money as possible for the good of the business. The idea, from a business standpoint, is to make money.

So, if I go into the world, demanding a high salary, business has two options. One, accept my demands, increase the cost to the consumers or, two, find someone else.

How do we navigate this? We have not found a solution that benefits the clients to be served, the music therapist, and the business of therapy.

There is also a sense of entitlement that seems to be part of being a person in this world at this time. I should get x, y, and z - just because I am who I am. Business is not set up in that model and will not until things changed significantly.

I do not have answers. I do not have solutions. I do not know what we can do as a profession, but I know that we need to be more realistic when we are preparing our future therapists to be music therapists in this world.

Time to head off into some work for one of my side hustles. Gotta earn a bit more money...