Fashionable and loud artists understand it's demeaning (5,3)
I believe the answer is:
infra dig
'demeaning' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'fashionable and loud artists understand' is the wordplay.
'fashionable' becomes 'in' ('in' can be similar in meaning to 'fashionable').
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'loud' becomes 'f' (A musical term).
'artists' becomes 'ra' (Royal Academy).
'understand' becomes 'dig' (digging is a kind of understanding).
'in'+'f'+'ra'+'dig'='INFRA DIG'
'it's' is the link.
(Other definitions for infra dig that I've seen before include "Demeaning (Latin)" , "Beneath one" , "Rigid fan may be lacking in dignity" , "Beneath oneself (from Latin)" , "degrading" .)