In this article I discuss the past and present of Station 17, a project made up of disabled and non-disabled musicians, which was founded in Hamburg, Germany in 1988. Station 17 refuse to regard themselves as a pedagogic or therapeutic project. My specific interest is to show how they attempt to solve artistic and economic problems that arise out of this decision. In artistic terms they developed two major modes of production, which both led to a dead end. As a consequence they merged these two modes in order to regain the flexibility of improvisation without losing the benefits of sequencer-based electronic music. Within the pop market the lyrics, which are exclusively provided by disabled members of the project, serve as a unique selling proposition. In economic terms they succeeded in creating themselves a niche within a therapeutic structure that allows them to act as professional artists.