Music making, as a profession, is both a creative industry and a service industry.
The amount of creativity vs. service depends…
If an artist is hiring you to play guitar on their song, ultimately they are the boss and you’re serving the artist through the song. But they hired you, specifically, because they like your creativity.
You might be a guitar player who likes to accommodate the artist no matter what…heavy on the service side. Or you might the type of guitar player who only wants to do your specific thing, stay true to your own artistic vision…and if the artist doesn’t like it, they are welcome to go elsewhere…heavy on the creative side.
And a thousand places in between.
The hope is that after we have gone too far in one direction or the other, or both…that we’ve found our place on that spectrum where music is both fulfilling and sustainable.