The Mental Health Crisis in the Music Industry Goes Well Beyond Touring

Written by Carlos José Jijón

Photography by Elektra Kaldeli

Warning: This article discusses severe mental health issues.

When trying to explain the level of exhaustion people often feel working in the music industry, a young musician who preferred to remain anonymous mentions the extensive preparation he goes through in the days leading up to live shows. “Exhaustion usually comes when you’re prepping beforehand”, he says. “You'll be listening to the songs over and over again — while getting ready, walking to work, whenever you can, basically — trying to get the song structure and lyrics down before you even pick up your instrument. If it's a headline show, the set can be around twenty-two songs. And it's not just the songs. It’s also the transitions between each song, the intros and outros, and none of them will be the same. Preparing for all that can really wear down on someone’s mental [health]”.

This past year, Groove Magazine has spoken to dozens of independent artists from different genres and backgrounds. And while their stories are all unique, there are some struggles they virtually all share, struggles related to mental health and severe burnout. And after months of hearing the same difficulties being brought up repeatedly, it seems like an appropriate time to delve into these issues once again.

When talking about the mental health crisis in the music industry, some issues are well known by the public (substance abuse, problematic interpersonal relationships with collaborators, legal disputes, etc.). Others are more obscure. Music fans might be familiar with stories of touring musicians suffering from exhaustion, but the problem goes well beyond live performances. For independent artists particularly, struggles related to visibility, stability, and competition can be extremely overwhelming by themselves, especially in our era of everything-online-at-all-times. Trying to understand the situation better, Groove Magazine reached out to mental health professionals and musicians willing to share their stories. Here’s what they had to say.

Constant exhaustion

Back in 2022, CONSEQUENCE published the article “Touring Has a Mental Health Problem. How Do We Fix It?” The piece recounted a series of tour cancellations by superstars like Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber, all of whom justified their decisions citing struggles like anxiety and social isolation related to life on the road. In the years since, the list of big name artists refusing to go on tour to protect their health has only grown. In the past few months, artists like Morrissey and Chase Rice have stepped away from performing live because of “extreme exhaustion”. 

According to Jodi Milstein, a licensed therapist with a long track record of working with bands and performers, a touring musician’s day to day is often completely incompatible with a healthy lifestyle. “I talk a lot about people’s circadian rhythms, something that is completely messed with when dealing with touring because your body is used to sleeping at certain times of the day and the music industry schedule goes against all of that”. Other problems she has observed include the lack of a healthy diet, dehydration, lack of movement, and social isolation, all of which can have devastating effects on people’s mental health. And this affects not only musicians, but most individuals involved in a tour. “Managers are on call 24/7”, explains Milstein, who worked in the music industry and represented artists herself before studying psychology. “You’re kind of everything. [You’re] the point person for anything and everything. You’re a babysitter. You’re a therapist. It’s a lot of pressure, a lot of stress on managers. [You’re helping them] learn to manage their lives as well, so they can have a life and it is not only about the artists they’re working with”. Crew members and people in charge of technical jobs face similar demands. “That’s a lot of work. They’re first in, last out, no sleep”.

Outside of the world of touring, things are not necessarily better. While hosting a conversation with members of the Music Industry Therapists Collective (MITC) in 2024, musician and author Daniel Liston Keller talked about stress he endured working in broadcast and recording studios. “I come from the recording end and I know I did, regularly, twenty hour days for weeks on end. That definitely has a toll on your mental health”. 

Speaking about the consequences of these types of environments, Milstein brings up the serious hazards derived from a perpetually exhausted industry. “You have crew members who have to stay awake for longer hours, not being able to sleep [when they need to]. It can be very dangerous to have them putting up a stage. That can be a liability for everybody”, she says.

Financial stress

Trying to confront the more difficult aspects of the music world, London-based singer and producer Emily Marks (better known by the alias ‘VERA SACRA’) has considered getting help from professional counselors in the past. However, this type of support can be way too expensive for an artist like her. “The music industry has very specific qualms”, she says. “I have thought about reaching out to music-specific therapists, but any therapist who has this specialty is charging a lot of money. Even non-specialized therapists charge sixty pounds an hour and, when I have three to four hundred pounds a month to live off of, that’s a big chunk of that”.

Marks writes and records her music by herself while also playing live shows and promoting her work online, all while simultaneously having a non-music job to sustain herself. She describes it as a vicious cycle. “When you can’t afford things, you don’t have enough time to make music and, then, when you’re making music, you don’t have time to work on your other job as much”. For her, a difficult part of the experience is realizing that her music career “doing well” does not necessarily mean more stability. “I have some friends who do very well on Spotify but they’re not making that much. The difference, financially, between 2,000 and 20,000 streams is not very much. Maybe you’ll make fifty quid or something”. 

For Tamsin Embleton, psychotherapist and founder of the Music Industry Therapist Collective (MITC), the struggle for financial stability in the music industry can inflict serious damage in someone’s psyche. “There is a powerful narrative that talent and hard work will inevitably lead to success, security and self-esteem, as if the industry were a meritocracy rather than a system shaped by power, networks and chance”, she says. “When [success] fails to materialise, or proves fleeting, the psychological fallout can be profound”. In her experience, many patients suffer because of constant uncertainty related to their careers. “A common experience is feeling as if you can’t direct the course of your own life”, she explains. “Sometimes artists come to me feeling very detached from their work. It no longer provides joy. It’s no longer a resource with which to cope but has become a source of difficulty”.

Endless comparison

“As soon as I wake up — my phone is next to my head —, I see loads of notifications. I check all my analytics. You get really obsessive about it”. This is a common occurrence for lina sounds, a 19 year old singer and songwriter from East London who works on music while studying full time at King’s College London. “When it’s something like your music that’s so personal to you — it’s literally your thoughts in melody form — and you’ve spent so much time and maybe even money crafting it [...] then you show it to people and you get maybe three ‘likes’ and two of them are yours from two separate accounts. It gets really depressing”.

“Thief of Joy”, lina’s newest song, came out on March 6th. With a title inspired by the phrase ‘comparison is the thief of joy’, the track’s lyrics get into the feelings of frustration and envy she frequently feels while making and promoting music. “As an artist, you kind of just see other people and those people might be at different stages than you. It’s impossible to not see their progress and then compare it to your own”, she says. “Obviously, that’s really impactful on your mental health. Especially during the promotion season, you’re also focused on the analytics, the numbers, the views, the comments, and the ‘likes’ and it really does get to your head”. 

In 2026, most musicians rely on social media to share and promote their work, which means being constantly exposed to technology that has been linked to negative effects on one’s mental health. The way Tamsin Embleton puts it: “Being chronically online can distort your self-view, particularly if you are a public figure receiving a lot of feedback. Never before has it been so easy for fans to contact artists and lots of artists are encouraged to share their private life online. This can mean they are constantly thinking about turning their experiences into ‘content’, which can reduce the enjoyment (for them and those they hang out with)”.

For lina sounds, the level of competition artists have to deal with means that, in order to pursue a career in music, you need to be “delusional”. “Unfortunately, I think you have to be delusional, especially in this climate. With TikTok, you can say that it’s a positive because people are able to blow up so easy, but at the same time that means that [the industry is] incredibly oversaturated. Everyone is making music now and what makes you any different?”

The way forward

Despite thinking that burnout is “inevitable” for independent musicians, lina sounds notes that there are rewarding moments also. “You get that one comment that says ‘oh, my god, I really love this song’ or ‘I see all the work you’ve been doing! Please don’t quit! I believe that you’re gonna make it!’ All those heartwarming messages that you get. Those are the kinds of things that keep you going, I guess”.

Tamsin Embleton currently believes that, while there is a larger awareness of the problems musicians face in relation to their mental wellbeing, the systems they work in are “slow to change”. “No one wants to accept responsibility and everyone passes the buck, so individuals are left with the challenge of becoming more resilient in systems that remain dysfunctional”, she says. At the same time, however, she also mentions that we live in a time in which helpful resources are available. Aside from MITC, she mentions the work of Music Minds Matter and Music Support in the UK. 

When asked about the changes she has observed in the music industry in the past few decades, Jodi Milstein mentions that, while still prevalent, the stigma surrounding people speaking about their mental health has become less powerful. “At one point, it was very hush-hush. If somebody wasn’t able to finish a tour because of exhaustion, you could never be direct and say ‘I’m really not doing well’”, she recounts. “It would be better if somebody broke their leg than to say ‘I’m emotionally exhausted’ or ‘I’m having some difficulties at some’. Now, the stigma is gradually being diminished so people are more likely to speak up for themselves. That’s really important because when these artists and people who others look up to are speaking about their mental health and taking it seriously, hopefully their fans will realize that it’s okay to not be okay, and that it’s okay to ask for help”.