Some musicians also refine their style and grow with age.

David Bowie's got great music lineup spanning every decade of his career from the 1960s to the day he died. I think people who enjoy his music can easily pick out a definite classic from every decade and everyone has their own favorite period.

Tom Waits started out as an okay musician, and he grew into his own sort of music with age. He's known for his grit and grime, and it's much more profound in his later work than his earliest stuff. A song about being a worn out old drunk on the side of the road hits harder when you hear it from a rugged middle-aged man than a young 20-something.

With these two, Bowie constantly updated his image and tried new things. Tom Waits simply advanced the atmosphere he built up in his earlier work. I think a lot of other popular musicians put more energy and liveliness into their earlier works and can't keep up with it as they get older, or they end up following some music trend that they think will get them pop success instead of just doing their own music.

Virtually every indie band does the latter as they start to get fame, and it often turns off their old fans immensely when they see them become just another soulless pop band.

Critical mass of the audience, most likely. Early to mid 20s overlaps when people are most willing and able to form their musical and artistic identities as consumers of content.

It's pretty rare to see people older than their mid 20s hanging out in new/hot venues with the latest artists trying to build a following and living/breathing their craft. There's only so many years you can pull it off both as a member of the audience and a creator.

A few years ago I was a minor artist (more a hanger-on than anything) in the EDM scene of a major city for that back when it was the hot thing, and was around a few folks that made it. It couldn't have happened for people in their late 20s or older. That particular grind requires of fueling 18-22 year-olds appetite for drugs, alcohol, and rhythm from Thursday through Sunday, every week of the year. When you factor in the reality of rent and other costs of living, dueling roles as promoter, party goer, content creator, and performer, it really is not sustainable unless you're the azimuth of your craft and an age where you can balance those costs against your future.

>Something I've always wondered is why musicians peak so young, especially in comparison with other creative types.

Is that pop/rock musicians? If so, that's because pop is a young person's game/interest.

Tons of Jazz, classical, ethnic genre, electronic, OST etc, musicians have produced their best works in their later years...

If you look at classical music, many soloists easily performs in their 70s; for most of them, until their bodies become not athletic enough, they do continue to evolve and perform better. Violinists in their forties and fifties are significantly better, more philosophical, than their earlier works.

Even composers are like that. Most continued to put out great work until death.

The thing with popular music, is that it's supposed to be popular, trendy, and just new. Talented composers start putting out innovative works when their are young, and in the eye of the general public, those are more salient, more praise-worthy.

I think you're talking about popular music. Popular music is pretty much defined by youth culture. And to create music that appeals to youth culture, you have to be young yourself.

Musically, I don't think you lose your abilities as you get older. In fact, I would say you become even better. The most visible example of this is among movie composers. Morricone was in his late 30s when he scored "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly". Hans Zimmer has done some of his best work in his 50s.

Could this be due to the earlier albums being made without big record companies pushing into a certain direction "for marketing purposes"?

The most prominent example in the metal world of this is Volbeat and to a lesser extent Metallica. The first few albums were generally well received by music fans, while both bands slowly changed their style over the years to accommodate more mainstream audiences, leading to a drop in quality.

Counter-examples are bands like Trivium and Tool, which also have evolved musically over the years but not specifically in a direction to please a larger audience, they just kept making music they like for the sake of music.

One possibility is that touring musicians lose touch with ordinary life, and therefore no longer create anything that people can relate to.

Nick Cave is a counter-example to the above, btw. I think he's just gotten better and better with age

I used to be a performing musician myself for many years and I have a formal musical education. The answer to your question depends on the type of music and activity. It takes a lot of time (much more than the famous 10'000 hours) to learn these enormous skills as e.g. a classical pianist and to be able to perform a classical work with the virtuosity and endurance that is expected today. If you don't start as a child, you lack the time until you reach professional age. Moreover, children can learn many things more easily than adults. In pop music it's completely different; you can be successful there without mastering your instrument, if you look good and have a good stage presence - or another characteristic that just happens to be important to a large audience. A young audience is naturally more likely to be attracted by young idols. A big portion of luck is needed in any case.

I think to some extent they're forced to peak young. I don't believe musicians are actually at their best when they are young and I'd claim recordings of classical artists through their lives supports this.

For classical music, competitions and conservatoires will only take young people and if you don't go through their processes there's no chance of getting auditions for pro gigs.

I wonder if the author is one of those who needs a few more years to understand themselves well enough to perform at the highest level, by which time she'll be to old to pursue music professionally

You could consider the marketing factor: early work from lesser musician is designed to sell. Then when fame is there, maybe they can focus on something more driven by their artistic désires.

The stones released a classic blues album lately. That was purely for them not so much for selling. They can afford that because of their huge fame.

It’s not something inherent to music or musical creativity. Classical music follows the same pattern as writing, with the greatest work produced mid to late career. Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Bach, take your pick. So it’s probably just explained by the youth culture around popular music and bands, as other commenters mention.

Martha Argerich will be 80 next year and is still at the top of her game, after struggling with cancer for the last 30 years.

Just watch this, including the audience reaction. It's stunning how good she still is.

https://youtu.be/BF7pmimzjBs?t=53

Perhaps it's explore / exploit. You need a huge amount of time to get the fundamentals, and then to use that to find some sort of individual expression. If you ever find one, your incentive is to put out more from the same area, but you hit diminishing returns.

I think it depends on who your audience is. If it's pop music consumed by younger people it's natural younger musicians will be more popular. In my world, contemporary art, a lot of celebrated people only got recognition later in life.

I think Jimi Hendrix didn't get a chance to make his best work due to his early passing. His last Band of Gypsys album was a glimpse of what could have been and it was on a whole new level in terms of artistry and craftsmanship.

I wonder if it's the industry itself. Maybe you need to have sex appeal so that the main record purchasing generation (18-24) would buy your stuff?

Music is heavily dependent on controlled distribution channels which markets young people to young people. The lifestyle, gigging, being surrounded by drugs and alcohol, it’s a young persons game.

A serious painter could quietly produce work in a studio for decades until they are discovered, same is true for writers or just about art form but with music, and to a slightly lesser extent acting, if you haven’t made it by the time you are 23-25 you most definitely never will. You may become a song writer for hire but you’ll never be famous. The average consumer of music is profoundly disinterested in musicianship, song writing, virtuosity pretty much anything a musician could improve with time.

I’m utterly pessimistic about why most people listen to music. Pop music serves a function somewhere in between a utility kind of like air conditioning and a white noise to play in the nursery to keep the babies from getting anxious. It is also a vehicle to legitimize pop stars as more than just phone and makeup sales people.

I love music but I find myself bitter about it sometimes. It often feels like just something playing in the background while everyone is shopping. Or psychological filler to distract you from realizing how dull the movie you’re watching is.

Many of my closest friends are guys who play in hard rock bands and are not famous at all. We are all at the end of summer in our mid to late 30s. When they were younger there was a cockiness in them about being cool and playing music. Doing lots of acid and being wild. Now that our 30s have passed in a handful of heartbeats I don’t think any of them are keeping the dream alive of being famous as musicians. If anything, they are better than ever before as song writers, musicians, they are still very cool and quick but matured and better humans basically, still very attractive as men but their value as would-be celebrities is basically negative value now. They are still super cool to me and dear as anything in the world as my friends but to people 20 years younger than us, they are now perceived as culture vultures. Becoming old guys at the bar. They are definitely not there yet but it’s wild to see how many of the new ones hanging around acting like they own the world instantly perceive us as dated. Counting us out for no reason other than we are now old, at 36-38. The local scene operates this way, I imagine the music business is no different.

I truly believe most of the loved, classic albums which are almost all universally made by people in their early 20s were made by artists who became even more interesting as people when they turned 30, 40, or older. But they almost all lose that ghost in them which made them do something cool in the first place as they get older and become “too old” for the game. I think it’s heartbreaking to be so easily casted out and replaced. I think that kills the inspiration to make great music. Music is made for people, but if the people no longer want you because you’re old, are you really going to be excited to make music for them?

I dunno, randomly subjectively I don't find it true. I now searched for older and newer Rolling Stones songs and I don't really find old ones all that better. It is quick search, but I had the same observation with other bands I liked. I am more likely to listen to new albums - unless I have particular nostalgia attached to song. (In particular I find old Madonna boring to listen and tend to like 50% of new songs whenever they come out.)

But, they are not the genre that would be interesting to young crowd. Pretty often they don't speak of feelings that young crowd wants to see in music, they speak to people like me more. This stuff is followed mostly by where young culture goes, because they consume the most, pay the most and have interest to discover new things.

> The early deaths of legends like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain etc. are tragic, sure, but does anyone really believe these guys would have put out their best work at 40?

I have listened to Kurt Cobain albums lately and what striked me was that the music was much alike song to song. So he would have to change up (angering some fans as result) or his n-th album would become out of touch. Kurt Cobain is precisely the kind of music that spoken strongly to some young people at the time - it expresses certain generational sentiments.