It's easy to raise your rates if you have a "name" and can fill the venue .....no problem.
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I'm going to say no, raising your rates will not result in more gigs. It SHOULD result in an increase in better paying gigs My cousin is in a very busy band in the St. Louis area. He tells me that he uses the "raising rates" option to eliminate venues that they would prefer not to play, but not to get more of those gigs.
I use the metric, if it seems like they are wasting your time then they are not paying enough or they wouldn't do that.
At work sometimes if we didn't want to take on a particular job or maybe we just didn't like the guy we would make an estimate then double it to drive them away. More than half the time he would pause then say, OK. It seemed like the A holes knew they were but were willing to pay for the privilege
I think there is way more to the equation that predicting the impact of increasing pricing without further context is not super useful. What type of gig? What day of the week? What type of band? What is the current pricing? How high is the increase? What is the market pricing for the gig? How often do you want to be gigging?
I like @Jefenator 's comment. Wedding gigs are going to have a much higher ceiling before you become unaffordable. For a bar gig you can outprice your client really fast.
I like @Jefenator 's comment. Wedding gigs are going to have a much higher ceiling before you become unaffordable. For a bar gig you can outprice your client really fast.
Bar type venues here are wet sales. Maybe lite bite food but they don't have the margin from alcohol sales alone.
Many of these places put $1 on each drink..especially beer.
That's fine as far as I'm concerned but I also expect to benefit from it by better fees.
But yes, some places are maxxed out so then its a simple choice of whether you accept the lower fee. Generally if our fee is $650 for 2x1hr then its not cool to also go out for a discounted price. Thats taking your premium customers for mugs, imv.
We just target better venues...
Many of these places put $1 on each drink..especially beer.
That's fine as far as I'm concerned but I also expect to benefit from it by better fees.
But yes, some places are maxxed out so then its a simple choice of whether you accept the lower fee. Generally if our fee is $650 for 2x1hr then its not cool to also go out for a discounted price. Thats taking your premium customers for mugs, imv.
We just target better venues...
As in Thorstein Veblen, "Conspicuous Consumption?" Yeah, to expand on that, the premise is that there are certain goods where you spend the money on them in order to show other people you can afford to spend the money on them. Gucci bags, Rolls Royces, luxury resort hotels (especially in the age of social media, where can post selfies from them), designer jeans, and so on. The extra cost is self-justifying, so to speak, because the whole point is to communicate that you can afford to waste money.
I think the ultimate band example of a "Veblen good" in that sense would be the billionaire who gets Maroon 5 or somebody to play his daughter's wedding reception. For the rest of us, it would be a lot harder to present as that kind of a product, but a band that was VERY sharp about presentation - clothing, sound system, lights, as well as actual music performance - could potentially do it. You're not going to get that cachet playing in your dungarees unless you really ARE the Allman Brothers. And it's going to be GB bands for corporate events and weddings and things, not bars.
Last thought on that is that the busiest I ever was gigging was about eight or ten years ago with a three-piece classic/southern rock bar band power trio, that played cheap dives for $300. Now I'm in a bit more of a general four-person bar band that charges twice that, and I'm very nearly as busy as I was then - maybe 40 gigs a year, vs. 50 [EDIT: I just checked this year's calendar, vs. the busiest year with that band, and it's 44 gigs this year vs. 48 then - virtually the same]. So the higher price doesn't seem to have diminished the amount of gigs, anyway.
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It was never true, at least not for bar gigs. Such nonsense. There are probably 20 (or more) bands competing for every gig. What gets more gigs is making more money for the establishment. Play the songs people want to hear, dress professionally, put on a show - that’s what gets more gigs, not just arbitrarily raising your price.
This is the crux. If you raise your rates, you are leaving one market behind and breaking into a more upscale market. If you are going to be successful in this upscale market, you better be bringing the goods expected by those venues. You also need be able to hustle gigs in those new upscale venues and establish yourselves as a great, reliable and professional band. A mediocre band being in high demand at better venues because they raised their rates is a fantasy.
It’s the difference between anctually experiencing something and “hearing” about it.
I’ve “heard” the earth is flat.
What if I had written:
I'm off to something more worthwhile...
You've obviously had a different experience than some others; I've heard that happens.
I'm off to something more worthwhile...
I can offer a "more than just having heard it example" of it actually happening in the GB space. We got hired to do this mega high-end wedding for a literal billionaire out in rural Idaho. The wedding planner told our band leader that she couldn't offer us as a band to certain clients because our rate was too low. For reference our dead minimum for taking a local wedding gig is $8,000, so we're not exactly cheap and get progressively more expensive as the show gets more complicated (i.e. more players, more special request songs, dancers, larger sound crew, travel expenses, lodging, additional meals, etc.). She told us to give her a rate sheet that didn't go lower than $15,000 as an option to use for clients that she knew would scoff at a band charging less than five figures. We did that, including a list of progressively increasing charge options as described above, and in a matter of months it worked and we had multiple fly dates on the books at the higher rate that we otherwise would not have been a consideration for by the clients. This was back in 2022, so I'm sure our band leader has increased their rates to keep up with our increased pay, inflation, etc. I'm happy to be a sideman who is typically unaware of the business side of things, and just happened to be in the green room when this particular planner had that conversation with the band leader.
This example only applies to the GB side of things. For a bar band I can't imagine it playing out this way, but for the folks saying "no band ever gets more gigs by raising their rates," here's at least one anecdotal example of that not being true.
I suspected situations like this existed though I don’t have personal experiences. I think it tells a story about who the player is and the band and market they’re in when they say raising rates won’t bring more gigs. In some situations, it absolutely won’t. But in others, like yours, it certainly can.
The first time I got exposed to this line of thinking was when I met a pro music teacher through a pro drummer friend. The music teacher explained his real world experience was that lots of people want to compete in a crowded market by offers lower prices to attract more customers. However, he found that raising rates and focusing his efforts on clients with more disposable income allowed him to get more gigs at the higher rate. Of course he had to teach at a premium level to keep clients coming back and for getting word of mouth referrals. Keeping all else equal and only raising the prices isn’t going to work, unless you’re already over delivering at your current low rate.
This is an important piece of the equation that is often overlooked when attempting to get into higher paying gigs. If you perform (musically and in business) like you're an average bar band, you likely won't be taken seriously when trying to land contracts for higher paying gigs.
Fewer gigs. more money total.
Current main band is 6 people (including full time sound guy), so we were never cheap, but our cheapest gig is now double what it was 5 years ago. Many are paying 3x what we used to charge. We're completely priced out of bars, and many of the clubs we used to play are either not booking us or are booking us less often (and making more of an event of it). In turn we're getting booked some places that didn't look at us before, but we've probably cut our number of gigs by about 1/3.
But the numbers add up - 3x£ x 2/3 gigs = double money at the end of the month for less work.
As people have noted of course it's all dependant on having the product. But even with the greatest product a local bar can only pay you so much.
There's also the "medium latte" theory of pricing. Coffee shops offer 3 sizes: small, medium and large. Unless you're a regular customer, or work there you have no idea how big those are. You don't want to look cheap, or greedy so 90% of people go for the medium. When we're booked through an agency, the agent typically offers a few bands - you maybe don't want to be the most expensive, but the cheap band is there to upsell people to the mid-price band.
Current main band is 6 people (including full time sound guy), so we were never cheap, but our cheapest gig is now double what it was 5 years ago. Many are paying 3x what we used to charge. We're completely priced out of bars, and many of the clubs we used to play are either not booking us or are booking us less often (and making more of an event of it). In turn we're getting booked some places that didn't look at us before, but we've probably cut our number of gigs by about 1/3.
But the numbers add up - 3x£ x 2/3 gigs = double money at the end of the month for less work.
As people have noted of course it's all dependant on having the product. But even with the greatest product a local bar can only pay you so much.
There's also the "medium latte" theory of pricing. Coffee shops offer 3 sizes: small, medium and large. Unless you're a regular customer, or work there you have no idea how big those are. You don't want to look cheap, or greedy so 90% of people go for the medium. When we're booked through an agency, the agent typically offers a few bands - you maybe don't want to be the most expensive, but the cheap band is there to upsell people to the mid-price band.
