I think looks have always been a factor--though not a completely overriding factor--in a performer's success, ESPECIALLY since the rise of television. This may be less important in niche styles of music, where the audience is especially devoted to the music and the genre itself. In bluegrass (my own frame of reference), well, it sure doesn't hurt if you look like Molly Tuttle or Chris Thile, but we make stars--and deservedly so!--out of people who look like Danny Paisley, Michael Cleveland, and the late James King, just on the strength of their musical abilities. That's a good thing.

I get rehired to play places so I guess looks doesn't matter too much.
I suppose it would matter more in being hired for a musical TV ad or promoting a modeling agency.

My musical choices have nothing to do with the looks of the players.Aside from general cleanliness of course.

Ira --i think you pretty well nailed it
great music can circumvent unlucky or wore out looks --
being a sexy moving stage object also has extra selling points to --- some of us . Us would be each individual or a joint effort --it's all a great ride on the third rock--

as always this is my ''thinking out loud''i ask no agreement

Excellent playing transcends physical appearances.
I suppose looks are more important to vain people.

Sex sells, ,, Ricky Skaggs once said the bluegrass wasn’t sexy….

What if Elvis had been a homely-looking hayseed from Hooterville...?  Carl Perkins might've been king of the rock'n'roll hill.

People that buy recorded music don't have a clue what the players look like.I didn't buy the records of Flatt and Scruggs because I thought Lester was handsome.

Anyone remember Susan Boyle?

Susan Boyle

My layman's thinking is that it's long been widely accepted that physical attractiveness is a significant (?) component.  Being able to quantify it? ... probably not so easy. 

One interesting snippet from this article https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/dating-and-mating/201701/why-physical-attraction-matters-and-when-it-might-not ... "...we don’t necessarily want partners who are extremely attractive—we just want partners who are attractive enough."

I'm too lazy to delve into it, but hasn't it been demonstrated that juries tend to favour attractive people; first impressions re. stuff like trustworthiness favour the attractive; etc., etc.?   If/when two TV readers whose "attractiveness" might vary significantly read what is essentially the same report, does it make a viewer atypically vain to show a preference?

If people don't find ya handsome, they should at least find ya handy.
R. Green

I’d rather go out with an ugly woman with class than a class-less knockout

Lets all grab yer banjos and sing "If you wanna be happy for the rest of yer life ..... ...https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tVP1zc0TDMyM7WsMMs1YPRSzkstSy1SyE3MTlVIVCgoSi0pqVQoz89NzFOozC8tUijPTEsFAKXsEVc&q=never+make+a+pretty+woman+your+wife&oq=never+make+a+pretty+woman+your+wife&aqs=chrome.1.0i355i512j46i512j0i512l4j0i22i30l4.13179j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#wptab=si:AC1wQDAmhH4WxhqkLyzXLNCgm7uMlL-cwjtGo7YoiLsJI42k1Zt3T5h9PClNLNtt0Z7jv-_u7wcmiDkT5icfuTyr7usGnr1R12wpPwzFR-w-y2uygxVNMo6xgDSn3r3ylwfhaLwduPmGfeeZdf83pPkOfawkyDwSoYmBFd-Xl0tTpPC8BTglV2s%3D

Didn't somebody [BanjoLink?] tell us some months back about an exception to ^^?

I suppose that oftentimes, middle ground trumps all-or-nothing.  

In the populat music world, sexiness is an asset. Just look at the way they dress these days. And they gotta dance, in "spray-on" outfits that reaveal more than they conceal. There are exceptions to the rule, but looks has always been part of music marketing. Selling to a young market hadn't exactly been an exercise in communicating with scholars.

The visual has been important, even to the design of album covers and promotional material.

"In my day", Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker were exceptions. Jerry Garcia wasn't exactly a sex symbol, either.

We live in a visual culture extraordinarily more potent than any other society in human history. We would also need to examine why TV presenters, newsreaders, weather reporters, actors in TV commercials, popular youTube 'influencers', cover content of magazines and journals, mainstream cinema, job hiring for positions in many high exposure professions etc. etc. all conform to such a narrow and strangely unrepresentative template in regard to physical appearance. And then the hugely complex social and cultural tendency for large swathes of the public audience to tacitly buy-into and emulate that unrepresentative template.

The shortest reply I can come up with is that it's a consequence of a relatively rapid history of what a very few people have decided the majority want to consume. But in everyday reality our relationship with surface appearance, vulnerability to suggestion and tendency to conformity is a much wider and more convoluted subject than that.

There's presentation; and there's objective reality. With an ocean of a gap in the middle*

*- with the obvious exception of banjo players who are all specimens of svelte perfection. 

There was a time when politicians could be relied upon to have the physical appearance of micro-waved meatloaf in saggy, nondescript clothes. Their stature and what they stood for was the only relevant factor.

Even that's changing, slowly but surely. And we're the one's to blame. No-one else. 

As the ugly duckling among my siblings, I can attest to this. My brother Mike was on the other hand extremely good looking, like having almost a line form up when entering a bar or club good looking. Women and guys fawning over him. I used to pick up the table scraps when we would go out together. Of course his personality development was sadly lacking as well as judgement, and he passed away in his 20's from a heroin overdose. so, yah, I'll take middle of the road or lower. I used to find the same lack of development in women when I was dating. Abbot and Costello used to have a bit that went:
Costello: When I marry, it's going to be to really ugly woman.
Abbot: Why?
Costello: Because a pretty woman might run away on me.
Abbot: But an ugly woman could run away too!
Costello: Yeah, but who cares!

thanks one and all

The genre is a factor here. I think appearance is more important in pop music than in roots type music. It certainly doesn't hurt that Rhonda Vincent, Molly Tuttle, John Hartford or Billy Strings are/were good looking, but they were also talented musicians.
I'd much rather listen to Ola Belle Reed play the banjer than Taylor Swift.
In bluegrass or especially old timey music, appearance is not as important.

Some people seem to be more interested in seeing celebrities than in the music the entertainers are producing. One of the Beatles remarked that fans screamed so loudly it was almost impossible for anyone, musicians or fans, to hear the music.

How much sells and how long it sells probably the determining factor in a professional entertainer/authors success. Fame is often fleeting.

Yes, “All glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” Napoleon Bonaparte.

The ability to play music beautifully often makes a person beautiful. At least it seems to work that way for me.

To my mind the OP is referring to the commercial success of a 'manufactured product'; a sales template or set of economic tick-boxes. That doesn’t necessarily have any relationship to quality or the impact amazing music can have on us.

The times my socks have memorably been blown-off by someone’s playing it was in a context about as far-removed from ‘commercial success’ as you can get. And I have no particular recollection what those musicians looked like. Who cares?

An analogy is the food industry. Huge corporations pour money into selling us a 'tomato' that adheres to a visual 'ideal' they think we prefer, but tastes of nothing.

Grow your own natural tomato and your senses and taste buds burst into life and discover the wonder of what a tomato actually is.

Same with music. 

having played since 71--of course to me it is the merit of the music ==and yes have been growing my own garden since late 70s=
but a much higher percentage is--those hyped as the movers and shakers in the entertainment industry --- rhetoric gobbled up by the targets---

When I started gigging 22 years ago in my late teens, I had groupies. Now I dont even though I learned to play music since then.

quote:

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Originally posted by Tractor1

having played since 71--of course to me it is the merit of the music ==and yes have been growing my own garden since late 70s=
but a much higher percentage is--those hyped as the movers and shakers in the entertainment industry --- rhetoric gobbled up by the targets---

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Good on you to start with music and gardening so late in life.  It's amazing that you started gardening in you late seventies, most folks are giving up on active gardening at that age. 

that be 1970 and 1971