High suicide rates show music industry ‘profoundly dangerous’, researchers say

‘No other industry would tolerate this level of loss of life and neither should we,’ one of the report’s authors said. Photograph: Karl Hendon/Getty Images

Musicians have one of the highest suicide rates in the world because the music business contains so many difficulties such as intense touring, performance anxiety and low earnings, researchers have suggested.

The finding that unusually large numbers of musicians take their own lives show that “the music industry is a profoundly dangerous place”, according to a co-author of the study.