cart, chicken, horse, egg

[Marc Piane]

Just thinking out loud here. I've noted an interesting phenomenon but maybe it is just me getting older and it is nothing new. It feels like as college music programs grow and churn out more players looking to work and the economy shrinks with less paying gigs, musicians are taking lower and lower paying gigs. In most fields pay goes up but my dad (who was a working player) talks about gigs paying roughly the same in the 60's.

So the question...

Are musicians, by not putting their foot down, contributing to the lack of pay increase? Or would place just phase out live music if musicians won't work for what they offer?

Also do you view the 'young cats' working for peanuts as 'scabs'?

I've talked a bunch to other guys around town and thought a good amount myself but I'd like to hear your thoughts before I go any further.

cart, horse, chicken, egg

[smogg]

Bad economy + too many players = crappy pay

[Marc Piane]

crappy pay now + improved economy later = crappy pay later?

[somegeezer]

Everyone has to start off making no money. You show em what you're offering and then say "you like what you hear? Time to start paying."
No point hating people for just starting out and needing the experience. I'm pretty sure that is how it has always been though. Now there are just a lot more people playing music.

[smogg]

Originally Posted by fingers

crappy pay now + improved economy later = crappy pay later?

My guess would be probably yes. Pretty much like if we'll ever see gasoline drop back under $2.00 a gallon. Even if they (big oil co's) could, they won't.

[Chris Symer]

I don't think that younger players are to blame at all. Everyone that works at a club is bassically there to make people want to come in and spend money. If the music you are playing is a major part of getting people in the door higher pay is justified, no matter your experience level or type and quality of the music you are playing. Often from the club owners view though music is more like decoration, similar to paint on the walls and choice of lighting, but cheaper and easier to change. If a club doesn't see a significant benefit (i.e. higher sales, more bodies in the door) from having music they aren't going to pay much for it. And they are probably going out of business in less than 5 years regardless.

The sad part for me is not the low paying club work, but the death of so much film and tv work that used to be available and payed well with benefits. It leaves very few options for making a living other than in the clubs.....

[Marc Piane]

...for the record I was not trying to 'blame' anyone. Sorry if I was implying that.

We were all there. Paying dues and all. I'm seeing older and older players that are changing their standards for what they expect from a gig as the landscape changes. Cats my age and older taking gigs for $50 or less when they wouldn't before just 'cause they fear the hole in the calendar.

Chris. Good point that any gig is really a business transaction. It just seems like a simple supply and demand question to me. There are more players than gigs. Any owner that is hip to that knows he can get a good band for whatever he is willing to pay.

[Chris Symer]

Originally Posted by fingers

..........I'm seeing older and older players that are changing their standards for what they expect from a gig as the landscape changes. Cats my age and older taking gigs for $50 or less when they wouldn't before just 'cause they fear the hole in the calendar............ It just seems like a simple supply and demand question to me. There are more players than gigs.

That seems to be about right from what I see. With a shortage of really good paying work everybody is moved down a bit. People who were only doing film work started doing more TV to fill in the gaps, then started doing showcases too when things continued to slow. Add in all the newer players that come along and it gets pretty crowded. Although I do think it is self correcting to an extent in that with the low pay making a living doing this becomes unappealing for a lot of younger players and they go on to do something else, which tends to thin the herd a bit.

[Time Consumer]

Lol, if my brother and his friends are any indication(have masters from DePaul in music performance and or teaching) not all the young guys are to blame, he teaches during the day and gigs at not and gets by barely but he doesn't bring down the market at all, hell he's gonna play a cruise for the next 4 months, I say all the younger guys just need to learn how to hustle better instead of just takin whatever.

[Marginal Tom]

The poor economy means there are more out-of-work players trying to bring in a little cash. At the same time, barowners are dealing with tighter budgets. The competition live music has always faced has improved. Now we have to compete with karaoke, dj's, cable/satellite tv, DVD's, movie channels, pay-per-view events, concerts, sporting events and the internet for fewer and fewer entertainment dollars. I think things will get a little better if/when the economy picks up, but I don't expect live music to ever regain much of its lost market share.

[superbassman2000]

Originally Posted by Chris Symer

I don't think that younger players are to blame at all. Everyone that works at a club is bassically there to make people want to come in and spend money. If the music you are playing is a major part of getting people in the door higher pay is justified, no matter your experience level or type and quality of the music you are playing. Often from the club owners view though music is more like decoration, similar to paint on the walls and choice of lighting, but cheaper and easier to change. If a club doesn't see a significant benefit (i.e. higher sales, more bodies in the door) from having music they aren't going to pay much for it. And they are probably going out of business in less than 5 years regardless.

This

Originally Posted by fingers

Chris. Good point that any gig is really a business transaction. It just seems like a simple supply and demand question to me. There are more players than gigs. Any owner that is hip to that knows he can get a good band for whatever he is willing to pay.

Also this.

I wouldn't say the bar is in complete control of how much to pay, as in most economics, it's a give and take, but that's what it is. If the band doesn't help make the bar any money, they can't expect that they will get paid that much either.

I don't think that a lot of musicians understand that they generally aren't hired by a bar to "further the arts". Its about money, plain and simple. If a musician wants to make money playing club/bar/coffeeshop gigs, they should learn what will get the patrons to spend more money.

So in the end, my answer to the question is that money talks. It's even louder when the economy is rough. It doesn't matter if you graduated from Berklee with flying colors or whatever, you need to be able to work the particular crowd. That's why bands like Maroon 5 is going on world tour and the majority of us are sitting on our computers complaining that we don't make enough money

[Marc Piane]

Sort of a OT but...

Originally Posted by superbassman2000

I don't think that a lot of musicians understand that they generally aren't hired by a bar to "further the arts". Its about money, plain and simple. If a musician wants to make money playing club/bar/coffeeshop gigs, they should learn what will get the patrons to spend more money.

True though I don't think lots of club owners understand that adding live music to their business plan is going to make them money. At some point there the owner does need to want live music to be part of their image and business plan.

Places that are hoping adding live music will drum up business are the same ones that complain to the band about not bringing enough people in and end up ultimately cutting live music.

[Phil Smith]

There's still no real answer as to why people aren't getting paid the 2010 equivalent of 1960's $50.

$50.00 in 1960 had the same buying power as $367.26 in 2010.

or

$50.00 in 2010 had the same buying power as $6.81 in 1960.

http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

[Chris Symer]

Originally Posted by Phil Smith

There's still no real answer as to why people aren't getting paid the 2010 equivalent of 1960's $50.



http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

I'm going to have to go on ignoring this simple fact......

[superbassman2000]

Originally Posted by fingers

Sort of a OT but...

I don't think it's all that OT, because your original thought was that musicians aren't seeing an increase in pay. I was putting some of the responsibility on the musicians, saying that a lot of them need to understand better that they aren't getting paid based on their music. They are getting paid based on their ability to draw a crowd who will spend more money at the bar.

True though I don't think lots of club owners understand that adding live music to their business plan is going to make them money. At some point there the owner does need to want live music to be part of their image and business plan.

this is not always true though. A band can also chase people out if the patrons wanted to just hang with friends and talk, or say it's a jazz band and people don't like jazz...there are a lot of ways that live music doesn't guarantee making money. It's like any other investment--they can fail too

Places that are hoping adding live music will drum up business are the same ones that complain to the band about not bringing enough people in and end up ultimately cutting live music.

So now I think you just answered your own question from the first post. This is why musicians don't get paid more than before. The bars tried to drum up business with live music, and if they get bitten enough, they won't have the money to pay the band more than 50-100 bucks per member. If a band that demands 600 bucks to play there and only can manage to pull in an extra 300 bucks, then the bar loses.
My flawed method for building a following is to play a few free shows so that the following can develop, as well as anything extra the venue makes off us is pure profit to them, and then the band has the power to demand 1000 dollars for a show, because they can promise 3000 dollars in profits for the bar, and that's a pretty decent investment. If i can ever convince my bandmates to get a little bit of merchandise, then we can play the free shows and at least try to make some money in the process. I know that this may not work for a musician who doesn't have a day job, because they probably want to pay rent lol but it's been working for me so far

[superbassman2000]

Originally Posted by Phil Smith

There's still no real answer as to why people aren't getting paid the 2010 equivalent of 1960's $50.

http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

I'll venture a try.

Let's look at it from the other direction--the payoff was much bigger in 1960. How many people would come to a show? How many people would buy a drink or six?
Compare that to today. I

t's like how in the 1600s and 1700s it could be very lucrative to invest in the land-exploration industry, whereas today, If I sent out a mass PM asking for money to set sail to find the northwest passage, I probably wouldn't get a dime, rather a recommendation for some shock therapy lol
The opposite holds true in that you probably wouldn't get much backing if you solicited people in the 1600s for money to start a colony on the moon, you'd get some blank stares, while today, it's much less ridiculous to consider...times change. You either adapt or die out

It's a new world that musicians need to adapt to, just like every other industry. You can make the equivalent to 367 a gig if you want to, you just have to market to the demographics, needs, and wants to today's audience, not the demographics, need, and wants to 1960's audience. The musicians that don't adapt to the new way of doing things will just die out

[jallenbass]

FWIW, when we were in Austin TX several months ago we heard a lot of music. From our perspective and the way that the tip jars were being passed around it looked to us like the venue didn't pay the musicians at all. It was all about the tips which I liked because it was up to me to pay the band. So I tipped generously. Based on what we saw these guys were making a lot better than $50 each. Is that the reason there is so much live music in Austin? Maybe you Austinites can enlighten us.

[Square Bear]

http://www.beatlemoney.com/beatles6063performance.htm

according to this site, in the early 60's the beatles were routinely playing for around 2£ apice (generally, from 10 to 20£ a night for the entire band). that's roughly 5 or 6 dollars a night (using this currency conversion chart). Notice where Paul and John say they "knew they were on the way up" when they got a gig that payed $20 "for the group" plus "all the coke [they] could drink," which was admittedly quite a bit.

i was born in 1983 and have no frame of reference telling me when musicians started making $50 a night individually for a performance. i don't think it was in 1960 though. (maybe approaching that in a metro area like new york if you're really really good?).

i just think there is some inconsistency when we start talking about musician's wages in this way. who was making $50 a night and when? in general, these days a symphony musician working under a union contract makes at least $120 a service (depending on where you are it can easily be twice that or more). i don't know many musicians who make a real living gigging for $50 a night. maybe people with day jobs take these gigs, but you can't really do that alone for a living. my experience was that after i became somewhat established in northern CA i was getting between 75 and 150 a service and teaching for around $40/hour. i was doing two or three orchestra sets a month. me and my wife were paying the bills just fine (she is a hairstylist and had a steady clientele). i left that for grad school and now i'll take what i can get since i'm not established at all in this area. as for the doom and gloom, i just don't see it. the fact is, in a few years you can be living the dream if you work really, really hard. you won't get rich this way, but if your goal is to do what you love for enough money to get by, that you can do.

[TroyK]

This is certainly a well vetted topic with no definitive conclusion.

I think as a profession, if you just look at playing gigs in bars, it is true that pay as not kept up with inflation...and won't. Bars, Resturants and such are terrible businesses and in this economy are at risk of failure constantly, which makes them tough to do business with. That said, in my experience, "working with a venue in the begining" never works out for the band. If you help them build a crowd and can legitimately claim that you were responsible for...say 90% of their Thursday night revenue this month, plus whatever they reap in repeat business, it has never resulted in the greatful venue rewarding the band with a regular gig for aggressive pay.

In my observation, our "young cats" coming out of the Univ programs have the opposite tact, which causes different problems. They seem to have a lot of attitude about being paid for their education and time practicing and investment in their craft and become such a pain in the ass over money that bar owners avoid talking to musicians about gigs.

It's a transaction for the club, they care that you sound and look like they want in their business and they care about how much revenue they receive that night because you were there. I've seen jazz friendly places become singer/songwriter places because the thousands of ss's in Seattle will work for free soda pop and their entire village will come to see them every week. Sad, but true.

And we can't pretend that supply and demand isn't a factor. There are more people wanting to play (work) than there are hiring them and bars/restaurants can always opt for nothing, a dj, their own iPod through the house speakers or whatever they think will work for them.

We don't have a strong union here, but there is a bit of peer pressure about not working below a certain $ amount and you will burn bridges by going into an established place and screwing up the scale for everyone. As you should. But, the other side of that coin to me is that if we try to price fix at what we think we're worth, I think all but a few gigs would dry up in our town and we'd be left with 10% of the musicians working at one or two places.

Playing gigs in clubs is just not a good business. Certain cities and certain clubs probably are the exception.

My long time bass teacher, who is universally regarded as extraordinary just left town and sited this is a reason. He also dabbled in film scoring and talked about how that business has shrunk to a fraction of it's former self as well.

Sad state of affairs. Almost everyone has a primary source of income, be it developing commercial software or teaching high school kids to play bass so that they can swim in this pond with us later.

Hate to be a drag, I'll keep doing it and try to maintain a professional standard to the best of my ability

[hdiddy]

Fact of the matter is that in the early days, Musicians had the monopoly on music. Even vinyl couldn't exactly keep up given the lack of choice (we're flooded with choices these says) and lack of quality. These days music is readily had in every household and with stuff like Ipods, it's everywhere you go. Supply is plenty. I think it's sadly funny that with some rock gigs, the band has to pay to play the venue. Crazy but true.

Top that with academia cranking out more and more musicians... well things start to look bleak. Yeah we've been through all this before. The reality is that you're entitled to a wage for whatever the market wants to give. This ain't 1960 anymore.

The exceptions are places like Austin where the community takes pride in being called "The Live Music Capital" and puts their money where their mouth is. I feel like they see recorded and live music as two separate things, with sometimes a preference to the latter one. We live in a culture dominated by capitalism... so long it continues to be, everything gets commodotized. It's sad - it's kinda like we don't have traditions anymore. It's all be replaced by shopping and accumulating material. Just look at any major holiday.