Maybe they just wanna play for the sake of playing. There are those of us who just enjoy playing music. And don’t care about the money
Big +1
That describes me!
As long as I get to play music, I’m happy!
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Play for free, huh? Not cool!
- Thread starter DWBass
- Start date
Big +1
That describes me!
As long as I get to play music, I’m happy!
Big +1
That describes me!
As long as I get to play music, I’m happy!
Same here I don’t care about the money. I’ve recorded toured been in a major magazine,TV and at this point I’m happy just playing. Both bands I’m in now get paid and I give the money to homeless people or to make sure everyone has some gas fare. Money comes and goes music lasts forever.
I'm not surprised that a band will play for free, but advertising it is not going to win them any friends among the local musicians, who might otherwise be inclined to network with them.
Making money running an established club with free help, OTOH, is not so hard.
Not everyone is playing music to make money. What's the big deal?
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
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- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
Sure that is possible. A band needs to be worth what they’re charging. I’m not a business owner, but let’s go through a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say a band charges $1000. Lets say they’re fairly popular and and guarantee 50 people in the door. Each person would have to spend an average if $20 just to break even. If you’re a business owner, why even go through that risk. All a free band has to do is not lose customers and you’re already making just as much if not a higher profit
not so fast! i've done that before to great advantage and success:
"we will be one of your top bands/draws! we have the 'stuff' and we will put that on the line = we'll play the first trip for nothing just to show you. and when you book us back = it will be for what we're worth/asking! a win/win potential with little-to-no risk for you!"
never had anything but a happy ending! and we raised the bar for everyone! it's possible,* just sayin'.
* it works better if you're really good at what you do!
When we're trying to get into a new place--one that typically hires bands who'll play for half what we charge--we'll offer a discount, with the understanding that if we deliver what we say we will (people drinking and dancing) then we go back to the real price. This, believe it or not, has actually worked for us at a couple places. And not worked at a new venue that hired us for a gig later this summer, then cancelled because the economy-priced bands they were already hiring didn't draw at all. The owners are not the sharpest knives in the drawer: They have done zero promotion on their own. It's not the greatest location--they're attached to a motel right off I-91, so there is no walk-in traffic--but golly gee whiz, fellas, you have to at least let people know you exist!
It's OK, the natural selection of economics tends to take care of such incompetent people in business pretty quickly. Wait for the inevitable management/owner turnover there then try again.
That’s a bit of a simplification. The “build a better mousetrap” theory for product market acceptance has already been sufficiently discredited by a huge body of documented buyer behavior such that nobody takes it seriously anymore.
It’s not so much a question of providing “better product” as it is whether anybody cares enough to pay for the product you’re offering. If the “value proposition” isn’t sufficiently established (or can’t be established sufficiently) then while you may have a product, you don’t have a sale.
$20 / person is not even break even. If there are 50 more people then bar will need another 4-5 staff to handle them. Depending on the state, tipped employees can be cheap or cost the prevailing minimum wage.
If you can't sell it, you don't have a product. It's easy to charge for mowing grass because nobody enjoys doing it. There are no hobbyist brick layers, steel workers, mechanics (with small exception). But playing music is something that people have fun doing and don't really care what they get paid to do it. And it's all about the crowd you can draw when it comes down to it. Mediocre band that has a wide social network and will bring 100 people are going to be a better band for the bar than the world's best prog rockers that bring 10 people. My local venue is Merriweather Post Pavillon. Why does Jason Isbell, Foo Fighters, Jason Aldean, etc get to play there? Because they will draw a crowd and sell out the venue. If you can't guarantee a crowd, a bar owner will go with the cheapest band they can get. More likely they'll have trivia night or show the game.
I think theres a more systematic issue at play here. And that’s the decline in the perceived value of live music and the general lowering of the entry bar.
It’s not so much a question of what you want to do or can do. It’s matter of whether the people you’re marketing to care (or care enough) to make it economically viable by being willing to pay for it.
When I was doing advisement for startups that conundrum came up time and time again. There’s hundreds of great ideas out there. Thousands of things worth doing. And millions of things people want.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a viable business model in it.
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Well, you did say "every single person in the industry," but I know you were most likely referring to the local bar scene.
I just think there are many more reasons why the live band market is depressed, beyond the scourge of some bands playing for free. I'm sure that if two bands were equal in talent and fan base, the one playing for free might get gigs over the one demanding payment. I've just not seen any evidence to support that, or to support the premise that free bands actually cause payments for other bands to decline. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
I think Bob is touching on something that is very important here.....the word “work.”
For many folks, playing in a band is their “work.” It’s a job. It’s employment. It’s the way they make money. In that scenario, I agree that they should be paid for working, just like any other form of employment.
For other folks (like me for example), playing in a band is purely a fun thing to do as a hobby. It’s not their “work”, it’s not a job, it’s not employment, and it’s not their way of making money. And it is NEVER viewed as work. It’s viewed as a playful thing to do in their spare time. They do it purely for the love of playing music, and they have no interest in getting paid for enjoying their hobby. Certainly, schlepping the gear is not the most enjoyable part of the hobby, and some folks feel that the schlep constitutes work and therefore they should get paid. But there are other folks (like me) who consider the schlep just part of the hobby because it results in the joy of playing music in a band, and therefore they don’t care about the schlep.
So for some of us, playing music is “work”, and for some of us, playing music is the polar opposite of “work.”
Some of the posts in this thread hit on the brutal (and perhaps not very nice sounding) truth that if a gigging band (that relies on band income) feels threatened by those who play for free, then those gigging bands need to up their game to increase their attractiveness to venue owners. The other brutal (and perhaps not very nice sounding) truth that has been stated elsewhere in this thread is, if making money is the goal, then the self-responsibility of career choice decision making has to be considered.
Regardless of what is stated in this thread or any other thread, I know one thing is true: I will continue to do what I have done for the past 35 years, which is, play music purely for the joy of it because this hobby makes me happy, and I will never care about getting paid to enjoy my hobby. I would NEVER want playing music to turn into work! Eww!!! I guess, in some eyes, that makes me an idiotic slut!
And that’s okay with me, because at least I’m a *happy* idiotic slut! You’re painting with an overly broad brush and greatly oversimplifying again. What you’re describing are symptoms rather than the underlying economics. But if that works for you, roll with it. The outcome is the same. The difference is in how you might attempt to effect change if you looked beyond those symptoms. But if you’re good with the way things are (and you seem to be) then why bother?
At any rate it’s not something that’s going to be easy to change, nor will it happen anytime soon. And it’s definitely not something that’s keeping me up nights.
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You’re painting with an overly broad brush and greatly oversimplifying again. What you’re describing are symptoms rather than the underlying economics. But if that works for you, roll with it. The outcome is the same. The difference is in how you might attempt to effect change if you looked beyond those symptoms. But if you’re good with the way things are (and you seem to be) then why bother?
At any rate it’s not something that’s going to be easy to change, nor will it happen anytime soon.
I don't think I'm painting with an overly broad brush at all. Doing anything in a field where many look at it as a hobby is going to face a tough time pursuing it as a career. What's typical? $100 / night / member? Pull out all of your overhead and then taxes and you're probably not making minimum wage. Bar bands are bush league for hobbyists and for people that don't want to step up to the next level. Not everyone can make it to the next level, and that's fine. Cybersecurity pays a lot better than playing in a bar until 1AM, so I can gig when it humors me.
That’s getting closer to the core issue behind it.
And yeah, my IT work and company paid better than music ever did too. But the only time my bands ever did freebies were for charity benefits. I don’t go in for the “vanity press” equivalent of gigging. Whenever I personally feel an urge to get out and play for free I just attend a jam session somewhere. Or, borrowing an idea from Irish musicians and what’s called a “session” in those circles, we get together with musical friends over a potluck (or just throw a party) and make a music night of it. It’s a lot less aggravating and a lot more fun.
