I know I'm going off topic, if you are in a band and not the singer how do you make it in this business if the labels only want the singer? My son plays guitar, bass and keys but he will never get the same attention that the singer gets. I have excepted the fact that the singer gets the glory and my son should work on his craft and be the best musician possible.
Suppose this particular band didn't exist. You could ask the general question of how a young person can prepare for a music career. You could also ask how to get the most bang for the buck in terms of the money that you put into this.
Disclaimer: Personally, I opted out of a music career while I was still a teenager, because I had other passions as well. Today I'm a part time hired gun bassist, and my kids are both heavily into music. So I know a lot of career musicians.
Singer-centric pop music is not the entire music business. It probably takes no more than about 10000 musicians at any given time to crank out all of it. Less and less of it involves analog instruments.
There's an old saying in business: "During a gold rush, sell shovels." There are ways to make a living in the music biz without hitching your wagon to the prospects of any particular singer. One way is to teach. Everybody I know in my locale who is making a reasonable middle class living as a musician teaches music to children, along with performing and other music related activities. Most of them have music degrees. The problem is, either you like kids or you don't.
Religious music could easily be half of the music industry.
My limited involvement as a hired gun (albeit playing mostly jazz, and mostly upright bass these days) is that I've earned my small share of success by having good chops, versatility, fluent sight-reading, and being really easy to deal with. A typical suggestion to young bassists is to cross-train on upright.
Another business model that I've seen work is what I would call the "complete musician" model. My kids attended a string camp last year, and I got to hang out (and jam) with some of those musicians. What I mean by "complete" is that these folks all played one or more instruments at a very high level, were capable of doing hired gun work, sight reading, singing, composing and arranging, teaching, studio work, and so forth. Anything. I was stunned. And they were decent, interesting, supportive people. They seemed to have all hired and worked with one another on gigs, and I suspect they had extensive networks. Each of them was capable of functioning as the leader of a project or band. Leading a band is a way to rise above the grind of constantly hustling for sideman work, and lets you call more of the shots. The same goes for being able to organize complete events.
One of them suggested that if you look at the up-and-coming musicians, a large fraction of them are learning to sing in addition to playing an instrument. So a couple of possibilities for your son might be: Voice lessons, and playing in a band that offers him a chance to sing.
