Rick Beato's channel on Youtube was pretty much launched from the viral video where his son Dylan demonstrates his apparently unerring ability to identify individual pitches in note clusters with very high accuracy.
For some musical jobs having perfect pitch can really make a difference. For example singers, musicians playing bowed stringed instruments or a trombone benefit from perfect pitch. Also, conductors frequently have perfect pitch, probably because a strong musical memory and being able to sight sing on pitch from a score are valuable and depend to a certain extent on perfect pitch. See here for a lot more.
Perfect pitch is by no means a requirement for musicians, although it is more common than in the general population, even more so for conductors.
But intonation is equally easy/hard for absolute and relative ears. Some tasks, like transposition, can require more practice for people with perfect pitch.
Source: lived experience from my doctorate in music from Sibelius Academy, Helsinki.
There are some downsides of perfect pitch. For one, choral singers with perfect pitch sometimes have a hard time re-tuning if the rest of the choir shifts pitch. (This can happen naturally over a long piece that has no accompaniment.)
Another downside is that almost all people with perfect pitch lose it when they hit a certain age. Imagine being an accomplished painter. One day, you wake up and see leaves as blue-ish green instead of green. It might be difficult to adjust to no longer being able to see the world in color.
Absolute pitch is a curse for musicians. It's not even an asset unless you are a piano tuner or a transcription professional of some sort. Not many conductors have it. Only a handful of the great musicians in history, from classical to jazz to pop happened to have AP. It's a parlor trick. And many musicians thought to have perfect pitch actually were just great recognizing pitches - pitch memory - which is different from perfect pitch. I can recognize pitches with a ~50% accuracy just because I can either recall the note, or bend my vocal chords as if I would start singing the note and, from pure muscle memory, say "this is probably an E".
Absolute pitch basically spoils the musician's ability to deal with varying pitch and musical temperament[1] situations and instruments. It can drive them nuts, ie if given a C to sing but actually have to detune or transpose it on the fly. It's also detrimental for anyone's ability to purely enjoy music. _Relative pitch_ on the other hand is so much more important. Absolute pitch in fact can mess with your relative pitch, as C and Ab are just that C and Ab, not a minor 6th.
Also, a good sense of being in tune when playing with others is, obviously, fundamental but also a relative, not absolute, in essence. Knowing you are playing in tune, not perfectly pitched, is the asset needed by bowed string players. Relative pitch, not AP, is an asset for someone who needs to sight sing on pitch - just listen to your tuning fork and find that C or Ab.
Music is not a perfect craft, it's not about being digitally precise. Making music is not about frequencies, or hitting absolute hertz. Even pitch itself is not "perfect", it's a flawed system that people, in part for the sake of standardization, settled upon. Pitch is a size that does not fit all. So why would anyone be proud of have frequencies memorized?
I wouldn't go that far — it was occasionally advantageous for me as a singer, when sight-reading music with a ton of weird intervals (e.g. Poulenc's Quatre Motets).
> For example singers, musicians playing bowed stringed instruments or a trombone benefit from perfect pitch.
The benefit is rather small if you look at ear training for professional musicians and what properly trained relative pitch looks like. It basically doesn't matter anymore as soon as a professional musician holds his/her instrument. In short: There is basically no difference anymore as soon as the trained musician without perfect pitch gets provided 1 reference tone (which is why perfect pitch gets commonly attributed to people that do not have it).
It is more like a "shortcut" when it comes to ear training, but ultimately a professional musician with perfect pitch and a professional musician without pefect pitch arrive at basically the same destination in practice, making the advantage minimal when it comes to the things a musician actually does.
Rick Beato has a certain kind of obsession with the topic that makes it seem so much more important than it actually is in the real world.
Also noteworthy that there are disadvantages to perfect pitch (transposing instruments, losing it with age, etc.), and interesting video on that topic by Adam Neely [1] was already linked.
His hypothesis, based on some studies, is that children in ealy age have ability for perfect pitch but later loose it, if it's not utilized. The same way as young children are able to percieve any phoneme of any language, but later loose this ability and only recognise phonemes of the language spoken in the family (that's a known scientific fact).
It's something you commonly see in videos with YouTubers showing off their kids. The adult is trying to make an engaging video and the kid just looks bored or shy around the camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Cb1qwCUvI
For some musical jobs having perfect pitch can really make a difference. For example singers, musicians playing bowed stringed instruments or a trombone benefit from perfect pitch. Also, conductors frequently have perfect pitch, probably because a strong musical memory and being able to sight sing on pitch from a score are valuable and depend to a certain extent on perfect pitch. See here for a lot more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music-related_memory
Perfect pitch is also apparently more common in people who speak tonal languages like Mandarin.