Electric Guitars to Bouzoukis: How Seattle’s Musicians Persist Despite High Living Costs
By Akshan Ranasinghe and Alaia Aulachong, JCamp 2025 — Seattle
Nestled among a kaleidoscope of pastel-colored prints depicting the city’s iconic sights, such as Mount Rainier and Pike Place Market, was an unexpected print of an acoustic guitar.
The vibrant piece was one of several that 34-year-old electronic musician Alexander Sleight was selling in his mother’s art stall at the famed First Avenue marketplace. And it’s symbolic of what he would rather be doing to earn a living. But rising prices have forced Sleight into a series of side gigs: on-and-off food deliveries and Sundays working at the Pike Place stall.
Sleight, like many other working musicians, can’t live off the music he loves.
“I’m starting to wonder if I can even live here,” said Sleight, who pays about $900, including utilities, for a cramped one-bedroom with three others. There’s no room to produce music. He tries to resist the pressures other musicians face. “If they don’t [have side gigs], they’re gone… They’re homeless, they’ve passed away or they’re somewhere else,” he said.
Grunge culture once defined Seattle in the Nineties. The music scene popularized by bands such as Nirvana unleashed a movement of flannel-wearing, electric guitar-slamming, long-haired devotees. But the music has since gone quiet. Musicians struggle to fund their passions as life becomes too expensive, driven partially by the region’s tech boom.
American radio personality Marco Collins was a harbinger of Grunge in the 1990s. He is credited with breaking artists such as Beck, Pearl Jam, and the Foo Fighters into the music scene. Collins reminisced: “Seattle’s always felt like a very small town. You know each other. The scene knows each other. So all of a sudden, the world is embracing our dumpy little town in the rain.”
Seattle’s emergence as a grunge haven helped build a concert-going culture, a slew of venues and a community of musicians and fans to support it. It cemented the Emerald City’s identity. To this day, venues like Central Saloon, where Nirvana first got their start, are still active among music-loving locals.
Prices have changed dynamics. According to Fox 13 Seattle, the city’s median rent hit $2,110 in June 2025, the sixteenth highest in the country. Gas prices have also reached about $4.89, while in cities like Des Moines, Iowa an average gallon of gas costs about $2.98.
“We used to be a grunge, artistic, kind of gritty town. Now, Portland is that, and we’re a tech town,” Collins said. “So a lot of the prices have been driven up by folks that are coming to town, who can actually afford their rents.”
Tattoo artist Gabriel Reyes, 31, busks at Pike Place to make money on the side to help pay his bills. Standing at the corner of Pike Place and Pine with his bouzouki, a mandolin-type instrument in hand Reyes said: “When I’m playing music, knowing that I might not be able to afford rent, it’s a stressful thing.”
Reyes also noted how streaming services can be exploitative toward artists, citing rough estimates indicating that musicians earn, at most, less than a cent per stream. Reyes thinks that now, more than ever, it is difficult for artists to get noticed and survive in big cities.
Streaming services don’t always pay well but they do open new avenues of exposure for indie artists. If fans discover artists through streaming, they may purchase tickets or merchandise, alleviating some financial strain, musicians claim.
“If you’re a local band and you’re not on streaming services, you’re doing yourself a disservice,” Collins said.
The city government’s arts office and independent organizations such as Austin, Texas-based Sonic Guild, also offer grants to help offset costs for Seattle artists.
While attention toward Seattle’s music scene has died down since its heyday in the 1990s, Collins said there is no shortage of artists striving to make it big amid major financial or cultural changes.
“Seattle is a city of the arts, and we always will be whether there’s an international crowd to support it or not,” he said.
The scrappiness that once-defined the Seattle music scene prevails through buskers like Reyes and working musicians like Sleight. Music experts say the era of grunge is over. But musical experimentation continues in the city.
“The ’90s were a perfect storm in Seattle,” Collin said. “It was amazing, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t also have it going on right now.”
