A glimpse into how much semi-big full time bands make?

[ChefKen]

I'm really not sure what to think about this. They say they are "only" making $16k-$18k per year each. So $17k a year to do something you love . . .

I would jump all over an opportunity like this. I barely make $10k a year (for the past decade or longer) doing something I hate. So yeah, it seems likes kind of like whiny entitlement to me.

Tough to raise a family and buy a house on 10-20K......priorities change as you age a little.

10K? Are you a migrant farmer? Mo offense to migrant farmers.....8 bucks an hour is 16.5K annually.....

 

[obimark]

Tough to raise a family and buy a house on 10-20K......priorities change as you age a little.

10K? Are you a migrant farmer? Mo offense to migrant farmers.....8 bucks an hour is 16.5K annually.....

POTD. Exactly, you could possibly live on $16K a year if you moved somewhere with a VERY cheap cost of living, and got out of the pointless consumer, my kids have to go to a private school, I need a new car every other year rat-race... but it would still be tight. Especially when you factor in insurance.

But back Off topic, that band sucks so hard!

 

[BurningTheAltar]

I talked to Burton C Bell, from Fear Factory, outside after their performance on the first Gigantour. This topic came up and he straight up said "Don't get into music if you want to make money...it's not there. You've really got to love it to stay in it as long as we have." I also read an interview were Burt said they've had to take out loans from the record label just to make a record....the support just isn't there.

 

[BurningTheAltar]

Also, Devin Townsend makes OKAY money at best. I remember seeing a pic of him posing gangsta style in front of his new Civic or Prious. Also, lets not forget that he's usually got 3-4 projects going on at a time. The bottom line- he works his ass off and makes a standard, liveable income.

 

[BurningTheAltar]

friaraustin, Acid Bath is the $hit! Dax Riggs is probably my favorite vocalist ever...aside from Layne Staley.

 

[comatosedragon]

Last off topic post, I promise!

Tough to raise a family and buy a house on 10-20K......priorities change as you age a little.

10K? Are you a migrant farmer? Mo offense to migrant farmers.....8 bucks an hour is 16.5K annually.....

LOL. No, not a migrant farmer. I work in the restaurant industry. I can't have children, so no family to raise. And I realized long ago that I would never be able to buy a house, so I don't have to worry about that either. And $8 an hour is only 16.5k a year assuming a 40 hour work week, which is no longer the norm unfortunately. And also $8 is not the minimum wage. As far as priorities changing as we get older, I completely understand that. I am 37 now. I just cut out all unnecessary consumer spending : alcohol, eating out, cars (had my Subaru for 13 years now!), don't buy Christmas / birthday gifts, no health insurance, walk to work when possible, etc.

 

[ChefKen]

LOL. No, not a migrant farmer. I work in the restaurant industry. I can't have children, so no family to raise. And I realized long ago that I would never be able to buy a house, so I don't have to worry about that either. And $8 an hour is only 16.5k a year assuming a 40 hour work week, which is no longer the norm unfortunately. And also $8 is not the minimum wage. As far as priorities changing as we get older, I completely understand that. I am 37 now. I just cut out all unnecessary consumer spending : alcohol, eating out, cars (had my Subaru for 13 years now!), don't buy Christmas / birthday gifts, no health insurance, walk to work when possible, etc.[/QUOTE]
Thats really rough man...I have been in the restaurant business for over 25 years. i started at the bottom delivering pizzas and ended up a 4 star chef. Now i sell to high end chefs and live better. Work hard and show up and you can do way better than 10K!! Take some initiative!!! Show the Chef you can prep....ask questions and tell him/her you want to do more. Let them teach you and then use the experience to move up the chain!!

 

[brianrost]

Seven pages already...geez.

My nephew is in a metal band and he has a day job working in a garage while he waits for his band to "make it". They are constantly losing money due to "pay to play" shows or short tours that pay less than the travel expenses. Forget about the cost of equipment, not only buying it but maintaining it and transporting it.

I've wished him luck and suggested he get some paying musical work on the side so he can afford to keep doing the metal he loves. He's still too young to take that advice, though.

It's not just metal, most of my gigs are in bands that are half pro, half part time. I've worked with guys who have albums out, toured the world, etc. but still will take a $30 bar gig on a Tuesday night because $30 is better than $0.

 

[hrodbert696]

i was a concert promoter in the early 90s. My partner and I paid about 500 dollars for an insider magazine that listed hundreds of bands of all genre their agents contact info and minimum guarantee to book them. It also showed all major tours of the year with revenue and % of tickets sold.

You would be shocked at what most bands get. Metal is a major exception. The clubs and festivals for metal do not have the wealth of fanbase to charge enough....also the whole pay to play thing that metal bands go thru pollutes the whole end of the business.

Other genre fair WAYYYYYY better. Relatively unknown artists within most genres get good money. A good example is Leo Kotke. Not mainstream. Very little exposure outside of a small loyal fanbase. Leo got a 5K guarantee playing 500-700 seats. Still does. If you play solo acoustic 200 times a year for 5K you are doing more then just OK. There were over a thousand similar acts.....more. the big names got 100K-1,000,000 to book a date....half in advance. You would be shocked at some that get over 20K to sign on the dotted line. Man i wish I still had a copy of one those magazines.....my partner kept them.

I would put artists such as the Yardbirds, Adrian Belew, Living Color, Al Dimeola, and most 500-700 seat performers at the 5-10K per gig number. Obscure genres get less......metal is very subdivided. No one outside of the genre has ever heard of most of these guys!!

This is interesting, thanks. It's clear that the promoters take pretty major risks and can wind up taking a bath if tickets didn't sell. I think you have a very good point about solo acoustic performers. My wife and I just went to see Colin Hay (former Men at Work frontman) play solo in a theater that seats maybe 1500-2000 and seemed fairly full. Tix were maybe $30 each. He joked a lot about how his pop star days were over and he doesn't get hits on the radio any more. But the show was just him with four guitars (he also joked about how he used to have a guy who would tune them for him). So maybe $60,000 was made on the night and he wasn't paying for buses and trucks transporting two dozen roadies and heaps of gear. If he got 10% of that and played 20 dates at that rate, not having to split the 10% with anyone, he's making a cozy six figures. I saw Victor Wooten in the same theater, touring with six people, and the place was not more than half full - I'm sure the whole audience was local musicians. Great show. But $30,000 on the night, assume 10% to the musicians, split six ways, starts to look like a $500 gig. I guess the thing to bear in mind from what you describe paying for acts is that that money goes to the artists' organizations - not all to the musicians themselves.

 

[ChefKen]

This is interesting, thanks. It's clear that the promoters take pretty major risks and can wind up taking a bath if tickets didn't sell. I think you have a very good point about solo acoustic performers. My wife and I just went to see Colin Hay (former Men at Work frontman) play solo in a theater that seats maybe 1500-2000 and seemed fairly full. Tix were maybe $30 each. He joked a lot about how his pop star days were over and he doesn't get hits on the radio any more. But the show was just him with four guitars (he also joked about how he used to have a guy who would tune them for him). So maybe $60,000 was made on the night and he wasn't paying for buses and trucks transporting two dozen roadies and heaps of gear. If he got 10% of that and played 20 dates at that rate, not having to split the 10% with anyone, he's making a cozy six figures. I saw Victor Wooten in the same theater, touring with six people, and the place was not more than half full - I'm sure the whole audience was local musicians. Great show. But $30,000 on the night, assume 10% to the musicians, split six ways, starts to look like a $500 gig. I guess the thing to bear in mind from what you describe paying for acts is that that money goes to the artists' organizations - not all to the musicians themselves.

I promise you he made way more then 10%!!!

on 60K he walked with over half!!

 

[hrodbert696]

I'm really not sure what to think about this. They say they are "only" making $16k-$18k per year each. So $17k a year to do something you love . . .

I would jump all over an opportunity like this. I barely make $10k a year (for the past decade or longer) doing something I hate. So yeah, it seems likes kind of like whiny entitlement to me.

The impression I have from the OP is that he's precisely at the point in life where that no longer works. If you're single and in your 20s and don't mind eating Ramen and sleeping on couches, $18,000 a year is enough to live on and you're doing what you love. When you're in your 30s or older and thinking about having kids and all that, it no longer seems so cool.

 

[hrodbert696]

I promise you he made way more then 10%!!!

on 60K he walked with over half!!

Yeah, but what I'm really getting at is what he personally got vs. what goes into the organization supporting him. I'm sure there are agents, labels, producers, and although he didn't have a giant road crew, I'm sure he had some people on his sound and lights etc. I doubt he just drove up in a station wagon on his own to set up for the show.

At any rate, he probably is making good money, especially as he's touring pretty heavily right now. His website shows 35 dates down through May, not the conservative 20 I've been using for number-crunching.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

I remember an interview with Ian Anderson in the 1970s when he said a concert ticket should cost "about the same as a good hamburger". It was a different age.

 

[BassBrass]

I am 100% absolutely in favor of revamping the current financial system in favor of a Basic Income system, absolutely. But that's not in place right now, and it probably won't be until we really see (larger) droves of people being displaced by AI. So in the meantime, got to figure out what works with the world the way it is.

AI is years in the future if we survive, I'd say most people will be employed in Disaster Relief. Right now, there just isn't enough money left in circulation to even make it in retail, the trust and institutional holdings are demanding a 4% return and that means short term exploitation of anything available. But if you come to Boston (where we aren't shot for saying Socialism is normal), there is Lots of that old money and foreign money being invested. Making a minimum of $14-17 plus is normal for kitchen work. (of course renters are being squeezed too) When the next music store goes out of business there are discounts to keep the Dream Alive.

 

[interp]

This band is TERRIBLE. They sound exactly like 10,000 other TERRIBLE bands. How is that guy a "singer?" How many bands can this genre support, anyway? It's not exactly diverse.

Here's another song:



And another:



I can't tell any difference at all between these songs. The "singer" uses the same note almost the entire time.

I've been working day jobs since the seventies. Why should these guys get paid anything more than what they're making? Shouldn't they at least try to play music that has an audience? How is this even "metal?" I don't recall metal sounding like this.

This is a joke, right? It's a parody of "music," right?

 

[ChefKen]

Yeah, but what I'm really getting at is what he personally got vs. what goes into the organization supporting him. I'm sure there are agents, labels, producers, and although he didn't have a giant road crew, I'm sure he had some people on his sound and lights etc. I doubt he just drove up in a station wagon on his own to set up for the show.

At any rate, he probably is making good money, especially as he's touring pretty heavily right now. His website shows 35 dates down through May, not the conservative 20 I've been using for number-crunching.

i did a few shows like that one....I am sure his agent took 10-15%.....I did Taj Mahal and he made me rent ( and tune) a piano....he showed up alone with a guitar. my roomate picked him up at the Ithaca airport. Leo showed alone with two guitars. No manager....he did it all himself. Richie Havens traveled with a sideman guitarist. They each had a guitar. No suitcase even. We picked em at the airport, fed em and dropped them at the hotel room( I made reservations and paid). These guys all did it right and made huge money. Black Uhuru showed up with two massive tour busses and over 40 people. Same venue.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

This is interesting, thanks. It's clear that the promoters take pretty major risks and can wind up taking a bath if tickets didn't sell. I think you have a very good point about solo acoustic performers. My wife and I just went to see Colin Hay (former Men at Work frontman) play solo in a theater that seats maybe 1500-2000 and seemed fairly full. Tix were maybe $30 each. He joked a lot about how his pop star days were over and he doesn't get hits on the radio any more. But the show was just him with four guitars (he also joked about how he used to have a guy who would tune them for him). So maybe $60,000 was made on the night and he wasn't paying for buses and trucks transporting two dozen roadies and heaps of gear. If he got 10% of that and played 20 dates at that rate, not having to split the 10% with anyone, he's making a cozy six figures. I saw Victor Wooten in the same theater, touring with six people, and the place was not more than half full - I'm sure the whole audience was local musicians. Great show. But $30,000 on the night, assume 10% to the musicians, split six ways, starts to look like a $500 gig. I guess the thing to bear in mind from what you describe paying for acts is that that money goes to the artists' organizations - not all to the musicians themselves.

To be fair on those six figures he needs to pay various income and payroll taxes, insurance against sickness (either long term, or potentially for missed performances, although various layers will have such insurance), travel, hotels, pension costs, back office, etc. At 50 shows a year (good for someone with a career mostly in the 1980s) that would probably net out to $150k before income and payroll taxes, which is good, but any more than a three piece and you'd want more income than a 50 date tour. If you look at a band like Throwing Muses (now a three piece) then only one is a full-time musician who also does things in other media and solo stuff.

 

[LowNloud1]

NPR Radio's Marketplace did a segment a few months back where they interviewed a touring band who were openers for a headliner after a listener asked them to do a story on it.. I was shocked to hear that these guys were barely covering expenses. They were paid between $250 and $350 a night and had to survive off of that. By the time they paid for hotel, meals, gas and other expenses.....it showed me to be happy that I could stay home and sleep in my bed after a gig, even if I didn't make anymore than they did.

 

[pklima]

FWIW top DJs cost about a quarter million to book these days, and don't need to split that with a bunch of band members either. Although semi-big DJs, like Nick Thayer whom I mentioned in the original post, aren't making much either, they're probably closer to solo acoustic performers than to people who play in bands in terms of the ability to make a decent living.

I remember an interview with Ian Anderson in the 1970s when he said a concert ticket should cost "about the same as a good hamburger". It was a different age.

Yeah, and that was before that overpriced authentic artisanal burger crap came along!

 

[ChefKen]

To be fair on those six figures he needs to pay various income and payroll taxes, insurance against sickness (either long term, or potentially for missed performances, although various layers will have such insurance), travel, hotels, pension costs, back office, etc. At 50 shows a year (good for someone with a career mostly in the 1980s) that would probably net out to $150k before income and payroll taxes, which is good, but any more than a three piece and you'd want more income than a 50 date tour. If you look at a band like Throwing Muses (now a three piece) then only one is a full-time musician who also does things in other media and solo stuff.

Taj mahal always played between 250-300 shows per year. He has a sweet home in Maui....Those that can get work do. Many of the old timers tour fanatically!