Case in point, LFE (Lisp Flavored Erlang) was created by one of the original designers of Erlang, Robert Virding, has great support for a small FOSS project, true macros, but the popularity of Ruby has rocketed Elixir way ahead in terms of repositories and users. Erlang Solutions has it on the site, but it is not as touted as Elixir. People go with what they know, and let's admit it, Lisp is a great language, but not as popular in the web-dev crowd sans Clojure (which I don't see as so Lispy).
From the early looks of it, having come from industry and academia, Pony lang looks poised to muscle in on Erlang/BEAM/OTP, Elixir and LFE anyway. I personally don't like the syntax, but syntax is not semantics, and you get over it.
Popularity doesn't always win the day if you do something a bit more off the main road, and potential to earn more researching what you love: Look at qdb/k devs and jobs, and Haskell has started increasing in uptake by fintech. Go with what you like, or as Joseph Campbell said, 'Follow your bliss' and the rest will fall into place.
But don't listen to me. I spend many waking moments fiddling with J (jsoftware.com). Not actually the most loved or known PL out there. I think the array languages J/APL/K/Q will have their day due to where software and hardware are heading: Multicores, array processing (GPU/FPGA hybrids, custom computers).
