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Post by drbill on Jul 2, 2016 15:25:52 GMT -6
No, there are many ways to make money - but you have to get outside the old skool paradigms, you have to work hard, and you have to be persistent. If you've worked for 22 years and never received a royalty (and wanted to), then you either aren't looking for any, or you are not doing the right type of work.
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Post by mrholmes on Jul 2, 2016 16:24:11 GMT -6
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 16,083 
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Post by ericn on Jul 2, 2016 18:32:39 GMT -6
The music buissness as we know it is now the Adel Buissness !
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Jul 2, 2016 20:49:13 GMT -6
seems like playing live is the only real money maker, if you can develop a following... Which is exactly how everything worked prior to the late 1960s. |
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Post by drbill on Jul 2, 2016 21:02:55 GMT -6
The problem with playing live is that the scale of wages (at least in LA) is pretty much the same as the late 60's. $50 a man per night. If you're super lucky, you might make $100. That's $1500 to MAYBE $2500 a month if you play 7 nights a week, 4.5 weeks a month, 365 days a year. Deduct travel expenses. You're making less than poverty level. Doesn't sound like a plan to me.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Jul 2, 2016 21:51:05 GMT -6
LA is full of wanna-bees who'll work for little or nothing. Waste of time unless you already have a draw.
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Post by drbill on Jul 2, 2016 21:59:44 GMT -6
I'm not talking about wannabe's Bob. I'm talking about seasoned professionals who have been playing for decades who do have followings. The wannabe kids are going to pay to play. The pro's are making $50 a night for casuals, jazz dates, high end parties, clubs, etc..
$50 in 1967 dollars (still low for a gig back then IMO) is $356 in 2016 dollars. Show me a sideman consistently getting $356 every night a week all year long, and you'll have a burned out musician making a pretty decent wage - low 6 figures. ($124k to be exact.) Nice, but not exactly flush....
No, live gigs alone are not the answer.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Jul 2, 2016 22:33:06 GMT -6
My understanding is that you can earn more outside LA or NashVegas.
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Post by NoFilterChuck on Jul 3, 2016 0:38:39 GMT -6
Uh, club date gigs pay around $200/night per musician here in NYC. Wedding gigs and high-end party gigs start at $400 for the least important members (horns), and go up from there for the more important members (singers, keyboards). Band leaders on those gigs make about a G. So, you're quite wrong thinking that they make $50/gig. Also, Lots of church organists make 40-50K annually, pulling in anywhere from $800-2000 a weekend depending on the size of the service and how much the church values the musician/band. .
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Post by drbill on Jul 3, 2016 1:34:19 GMT -6
Wow. NYC is radically different than LA then. Amazingly different.
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Post by dandeurloo on Jul 3, 2016 20:08:53 GMT -6
I have worked with a bunch of bands. Some of the biggest wannabe's make the most money live. They play covers and do a few originals. I know a number of them making 5k a night. That is pretty good money if you ask me, more then some of the national acts I know get. If I didn't hate covers I would be tempted.
Now, getting that kind of money playing all originals is a lot harder!
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Post by Martin John Butler on Jul 3, 2016 20:38:54 GMT -6
The only answer I see that might work is a proper union of musicians. The unions as they are now are highly ineffective. I don't even have an idea how a better union could be effective, but it seems the only chance we may have.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Jul 3, 2016 20:45:39 GMT -6
I've always wondered why people look down their noses at covers. Mixing a few extraordinary originals with creatively performed covers was the common denominator of success for virtually every major "name" band of the 1960s and '70s.
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Post by drbill on Jul 3, 2016 21:08:02 GMT -6
I have worked with a bunch of bands. Some of the biggest wannabe's make the most money live. They play covers and do a few originals. I know a number of them making 5k a night. That is pretty good money if you ask me, more then some of the national acts I know get. If I didn't hate covers I would be tempted. Now, getting that kind of money playing all originals is a lot harder! Unbelieveable. LA is a completely different world. 1/10th the money, and 5X's more expensive to live there. What you guys are saying normal pay for is very very difficult for me to believe. Guys in LA are finding it difficult to even hold on to the meager earnings ($50-75 a night) they make at this point..... Strange. Are these payout anomalies, or the norm, cause if they are the norm......I've been transported to another dimension. |
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Post by EmRR on Jul 3, 2016 21:17:58 GMT -6
More established cover bands I know of here can replicate what Dan mentions, if they are paying attention to biz. If they're just out to party in a bar, it might be $300-600. Originals, not quite pay to play but not far from it.
I joined a cover band once to get my chops back after not playing out for 5-6 years. Worked better than any other path I could think of, three 45 minute sets a night and a few months were 15-18 dates.
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Post by dandeurloo on Jul 3, 2016 21:30:24 GMT -6
I've always wondered why people look down their noses at covers. Mixing a few extraordinary originals with creatively performed covers was the common denominator of success for virtually every major "name" band of the 1960s and '70s. Well, I know for me it is Pride! haha I started out touring in a original band doing hundreds of shows a year for about a decade. It always chapped me when clubs would ask us to do a few covers and then they could pay us more. On a side note: TRAIN is the only somewhat current band that I know started out doing covers, then hit it big with originals. I know everyone from U2 to the Stones did covers originally. So it use to be a great way into the biz. But today's A&R look down on it for sure (not that it matters much). |
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Jul 3, 2016 22:00:51 GMT -6
Unless things have changed radically, A&R responds mostly to one's ability to put asses in seats! Obviously doing all covers doesn't impress them.
Gigs are about sharing music with the audience. They don't need to learn a cover so they enjoy it more unless the originals are ridiculously awesome which is pretty rare. A cover doesn't need to be a sound-alike.
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Post by swurveman on Jul 4, 2016 9:26:08 GMT -6
One of the things I've seen in the Midwest is the death of the large nightclub. There used to be large nightclubs where bands would play. In the early 70's the nightclubs would have house bands to warm the crowd up and then the main band that would come from all over the Midwest, presumably because gas was cheap and the cover charge paid them well. These bands had horn sections and played dance/rock/soul/blues covers. Then, when gas got too expensive the large nightclub only had local, smaller bands. The smaller bands replaced horn sections with a keyboard player.
Now, there are no large nightclubs. There are small bars with 4 piece bands who play for peanuts. None of these bands travel and we rarely get touring cover bands that come in from out of town. There is a Casino (seating capacity of 1,600) that books national acts like Cheap Trick/Hunter Hayes/Seal etc., but the touring cover band playing nightclubs is gone from our area of 182,000 people.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 4, 2016 9:57:05 GMT -6
There is right and there is wrong. You don't stop pursuing what is right because it's hard. |
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 4, 2016 9:59:33 GMT -6
Unless things have changed radically, A&R responds mostly to one's ability to put asses in seats! Obviously doing all covers doesn't impress them. Gigs are about sharing music with the audience. They don't need to learn a cover so they enjoy it more unless the originals are ridiculously awesome which is pretty rare. A cover doesn't need to be a sound-alike. And then A&R wants to take 30% in a 360 deal for doing nothing. There have got to be other ways to make money other than playing live music - for the health of the entire industry. |
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Post by swurveman on Jul 4, 2016 10:47:22 GMT -6
Yet, the German government protects German music by mandating a quota of German music being played. Sounds like Germany didn't change with the technology, or the "free market". They protected their music to the benefit of German songwriters, musicians and labels. I had an interesting conversation on this subject with a German label owner in a Venice Beach CA coffee house. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known about it. |
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Post by jimwilliams on Jul 4, 2016 10:58:59 GMT -6
In order to sell a product or a service, there must be a demand. Music has little value nor demand. With everyone being a musician with a PC, who are you going to sell to? What are you going to sell? These questions applied to 1970 as much as today. The difference is the value of the product has dropped significantly.
I remember this gem back at Cal State in 1973:
"Too many mixers, not enough fixers".
They were right.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Jul 4, 2016 11:35:17 GMT -6
Music is not and never has been a commodity unless you are talking about background elevator muzak. It's a luxury that lives or dies by branding. Branding is about the experience you give your fans. There's way too much "build it and they will come" thinking today. It has never just been about the music. That ego trip is why the CD was a total marketing disaster.
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Post by mrholmes on Jul 4, 2016 17:52:09 GMT -6
Yet, the German government protects German music by mandating a quota of German music being played. Sounds like Germany didn't change with the technology, or the "free market". They protected their music to the benefit of German songwriters, musicians and labels. I had an interesting conversation on this subject with a German label owner in a Venice Beach CA coffee house. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known about it. In this case he was not right informed. Year by year someone talks about such a law, but yet it never hit the road. There is a voluntary rate of 35% but it's not a law - private broadcast still plays what pays. I guess public broadcast service is doing it. |
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Post by rowmat on Jul 4, 2016 18:53:56 GMT -6
Although not specifically addressing the songwriting/royalty issue these days you don't require a traditonal corporate record company deal to connect with an audience on a large scale. 'Selling' music is a completely different paradigm to what it was 30 years ago. Playing live is where the money is today PROVIDING you can generate a loyal following and have a well oiled merchandising and publicity machine. This can, and is being done DIY fashion with quite good success by those who are embracing this new paradigm. Courtney Barnett's label, 'Milk Records' is one such example. milk.milkrecords.com.au/about/Another are bands like 'King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard'. kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.comThese guys have just finished their 5th US tour and are packing out venues in the US and Europe yet mainstream radio is almost totally oblivious to them. Tradtional record companies that didn't manage to morph into music streaming (royalty stealing) services are now bleating the loudest. Second are the traditional mid-level artists that believe they are being ripped off by this new model. The reality is they probably never would have made money even with a corporate record deal and would have spent most of their careers in perpetual debt if they did get signed. The biggest opportunities lie for 'unsignable' niche musicians (not so much the 'same old, same old') who would have never been able to engage alarge audience under the old model and can now make their music available to the entire planet for cheap. Maybe cheap to the audience but also at low distribution costs for the artist. From there it's up the the artist(s) to take advantage of any large scale publicity they may generate. So today, for any artist, the world is quite literally their oyster. They just need to work out how to grow and harvest the pearl. Steve Albini summed it up well here a couple of years ago... |
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