I really don't understand how we are supposed to afford this

[socialleper]

I read an article on Blabbermouth.net in which Dino Cazares, guitarist of Fear Factory, who have been playing and releasing music for 30 years, lays down some ugly truth about what is happening in the music world.

"It's kind of like just life in general. Anybody who has a normal job — you're still getting paid 10 bucks an hour, but your rent went up, your insurance went up, food prices went up, gas prices went up, but your pay is the same. It's kind of like how it's been for bands as well. Promoters are only willing to pay you so much, but everything else went up. Now the club owners and the promoters are taking a cut of your merchandise, so it's making harder and harder for artists to survive out there."

Merch was the ONE thing bands could try to make money off of. Small clubs like the kind my band play in are doing this to. We don't even bother bringing merch in anymore because we don't want to deal with it.
And these are shows where typically you aren't getting paid outside the margin you make on tickets that YOU sell. Which usually means they aren't paying you, or you end up owing the venue. Not to mention the gas I have to spend to drive 20-50 miles to the venue and have to pay for parking.

Then there is the whole "buy on" for touring acts. The "management" company were are paying keeps offering us good shows, but they want a buy on for $700 a show, with a minimum of two weeks on the road. Gas, transportation, lodging, and food all out of our pockets. And we have to hope we can cover some of that with merch, which we have to buy up front and hope we sell, or we lose money on that too.
Oh, and then there are the shows they are offering in Europe, which might actually pay, but now we can add plane tickets on top of all the expenses I listed for playing locally.

Fine, playing shows is a money pit. I can at least try to release some music on my own, right? Even if I mitigate the expense of recording ourselves, it can still cost $2k to master the album, and god knows how much to make CDs. Cover Art? Another $1k. Streaming? $0.001 per stream.

Everyone has their hand out.
Venues want to get paid. Studios want to get paid. Recording engineers want to get paid. Merch vendors want to get paid. Jesus, even the guy parking my car at the venue I'm playing at wants to get paid.

But not the musicians. The people actually DOING THE WORK. None of things exist without us, and yet we are the unpaid dopes getting bled dry because we are...what...dumb enough to have a dream?
How are we supposed to do this? How much longer before this house of cards just caves in on it's self?

 

[blacktocomm]

For thousands of years people played music and didn’t get paid for it. I’ve been playing in bands/releasing music for over 30 years and I’m sure it’s cost me more than I ever got paid from it. It definitely sucks that being in a smaller band is so expensive these days, but it’s never really been cheap if youre recording or touring. Music as a hobby can be inexpensive fun or a hideous money sink depending on what you want to get out of it.

 

[socialleper]

For thousands of years people played music and didn’t get paid for it. I’ve been playing in bands/releasing music for over 30 years and I’m sure it’s cost me more than I ever got paid from it. It definitely sucks that being in a smaller band is so expensive these days, but it’s never really been cheap if youre recording or touring. Music as a hobby can be inexpensive fun or a hideous money sink depending on what you want to get out of it.

Yet there is an entire industry of leeches doing pretty well for themselves off of musicians that aren't supposed to get paid?

 

[ChrisB2]

IDK, we got paid $400 plus about $125 in tips for a little 3 hour bar gig Saturday night, and a recent outdoor 7/4 show paid a grand so... both shows were within 30 mins of my house, in bed by midnight...?

 

[gln1955]

IDK, we got paid $400 plus about $125 in tips for a little 3 hour bar gig Saturday night, and a recent outdoor 7/4 show paid a grand so... both shows were within 30 mins of my house, in bed by midnight...?

The difference between covers and originals.

The blood sucking of original bands will continue as long as there are band who don't care if they lose money or think they will be the one in a million who break through to the big time. I don't see it changing any time soon.

 

[blacktocomm]

Yet there is an entire industry of leeches doing pretty for themselves off of musicians that aren't supposed to get paid?

Is every venue, studio, label or vendor expected to work for free just so some band can live their rock star fantasy on the cheap? The real world doesn’t work that way.
I didn’t say musicians aren’t supposed to get paid. Most are underpaid and under appreciated. It’s always been that way. You can either accept that or not. You can’t change it.

 

[socialleper]

IDK, we got paid $400 plus about $125 in tips for a little 3 hour bar gig Saturday night, and a recent outdoor 7/4 show paid a grand so... both shows were within 30 mins of my house, in bed by midnight...?

So I'm going to guess that you are playing covers.

If you are playing original music in a major city like LA, what you are talking about here is sheer fantasy.

 

[primusfan1989]

Is every venue, studio, label or vendor expected to work for free just so some band can live their rock star fantasy on the cheap?

No but venues taking cuts of Merch sales is pretty lame. Im not exactly sure of the circumstance that would justifiably entitle a venue to an artists mech sales

 

[ChrisB2]

So I'm going to guess that you are playing covers.

Yes, but the post only said "musician" and I'm a musician that gets paid so.... Yeah, a little trollish but there are musical outlets that pay. And not just covers. That was my point. Which everyone already knows. So yeah, trollish.

Hope you find a situation you enjoy where your efforts are rewarded.

 

[blacktocomm]

No but venues taking cuts of Merch sales is pretty lame. Im not exactly sure of the circumstance that would justifiably entitle a venue to an artists mech sales

I totally agree.

 

[socialleper]

Is every venue, studio, label or vendor expected to work for free just so some band can live their rock star fantasy on the cheap? The real world doesn’t work that way.
I didn’t say musicians aren’t supposed to get paid. Most are underpaid and under appreciated. It’s always been that way. You can either accept that or not. You can’t change it.

But I am? Every original rock back in Southern California is?
What I'm wondering is if this is going to keep going. A while ago people were pursuing the goal of maybe making it. If there isn't a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow anymore, and even major acts are going broke, the talent pool will eventually dry up. Why would kids want to put there time and money into something that guaranteed to never go anywhere? The TB retirement home grouses about these pesky kids and their Tiktok and Influencing. Those are kids that used to try to be artists, but being a creator is just a resource for other people to feed off of now, so they are doing something else. They watch live concerts through there phones because music is just a commodity to them now. It doesn't mean anything any more.

It's so typically modern society to just throw up our hands and say "Well, can't fix it. Let's just drive over a cliff." Music is killing itself. Isn't that something that we as musicians, and fans of music, should be concerned about?

 

[socialleper]

No but venues taking cuts of Merch sales is pretty lame. Im not exactly sure of the circumstance that would justifiably entitle a venue to an artists mech sales

They always come up with an excuse like "You are using space that could be used for customers." Or complain about taxes because sales are happening on their premises but sales tax isn't being collected.

 

[blacktocomm]

But I am? Every original rock back in Southern California is?
What I'm wondering is if this is going to keep going. A while ago people were pursuing the goal of maybe making it. If there isn't a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow anymore, and even major acts are going broke, the talent pool will eventually dry up. Why would kids want to put there time and money into something that guaranteed to never go anywhere? The TB retirement home grouses about these pesky kids and their Tiktok and Influencing. Those are kids that used to try to be artists, but being a creator is just a resource for other people to feed off of now, so they are doing something else. They watch live concerts through there phones because music is just a commodity to them now. It doesn't mean anything any more.

It's so typically modern society to just throw up our hands and say "Well, can't fix it. Let's just drive over a cliff." Music is killing itself. Isn't that something that we as musicians, and fans of music, should be concerned about?

Music isn’t killing itself. I make music because I love to make music. Millions of other people do the same. I don’t have dreams of stardom and I really don’t care if others feel that their dreams of stardom are being crushed by music industry. It’s always been that way. Show business ain’t pretty.
You’re right that people don’t care about music they way they used to. They’re bombarded with it. They have a million different things to listen to at their fingertips. It means nothing to them. Trying to make them care is like spitting back at rain.

 

[Discount Bassy]

Musician: Algae.
The sea is full of big fish.
Art commodified.

 

[Topkat13]

What blacktocomm and Discount Bassy said.

 

[Boundary Effect]

Plenty of parallels here with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes going on in Hollywood, short of the fact musicians are not as unionized.

 

[Low End Scum]

Honestly that struggle of wanting to be a working band is why my second band just actively avoided the money. After years of biting and clawing with my rock band to get a van, pay for the album, sell the merch, sell tickets, sell sell sell for 37 dollars split between 3 bands at the end of the night I was burnt out and jaded. Once my punk band started playing we just said don't pay us. If they forced the issue we just put it on tabs or paid for the other bands drinks. We didn't care. Refused to sell tickets, refused all that stuff. We still got booked pretty regularly, but were totally unwilling to play that game. I'm not going out to sell 10 dollar tickets to "The Door" or "Prophet Bar" in Dallas for a Thursday. None of my friends up in Denton were going to come for that nonsense. Still got plenty of bookings. Still got money thrown at us. Not a living, prolly not enough to break even, but letting it go made gigging fun again for me.

They always come up with an excuse like "You are using space that could be used for customers." Or complain about taxes because sales are happening on their premises but sales tax isn't being collected.

That's hilarious. All of the venues that ever really pushed us hard to either pay for unsold tickets or real stupid stuff like that were usually dead. People hated going there because they were usually one of those bars that can't tell what they want to be. They want to be "hip place for people to come spend a lot of money" but also "have live music so they can draw a 'crowd' for the evening". So the nights without live music, there's almost nobody there because who wants to pay a cover for a 2/3rds empty expensive hole in the wall with an empty inconvenient stage tacked in the corner AAAAANNNND they half-@#$ their sound system so it sucks for the music crowds nights too.

 

[turf3]

OP, you're in the unenviable position of trying to catch a ride on a dinosaur. Those of us who grew up in the 70s could kind of barely grab onto the very tip of his tail and some of us make a sort of living off playing live music. The tip of that tail's broken off now.

Music has been an unpaid endeavor for something like 99% of its history. The first actual professional musicians probably appeared around 1500. Even then, they were a tiny fraction of the people who made music. It wasn't till there was mass transportation in the form of the railroads, plus mass dissemination of sheet music, plus a mass entertainment industry (first minstrel shows, then vaudeville, also the big traveling circuses and shows like Buffalo Bill), that there were more than a handful of professional musicians on earth. What really drove the growth of professional music in the sense of a large number of people who made decent money, was the combination of mass distribution of not-very-good mechanical reproductions (78s and cylinders), radio, and the American social dancing craze. People wanted music to dance to, records were expensive short and didn't sound as good as real live musicians; but they'd heard enough records and radio shows to know they wanted such music available to them; plus with railroads (and soon, automobiles) musicians could easily travel to performances. Unfortunately, those same mechanical reproductions that helped the boom of live music along, also contained the seeds of its destruction. By the time you get to the 1970s and 1980s, records tapes and CDs were so good, and so cheap, that providing background music, or dance music, by one DJ and a loud sound system and a big box of recordings drove live music largely out of business. At this point, the profession of playing music in person for live audiences and getting paid for it is largely a nostalgia exercise for audiences who're getting older and older and less and less interested in drinking heavily and spending all their money on entertainment. The exceptions are those few super acts, most of whom are just delivering "music-like sound product" with superior choreography and almost no clothes on; and a tiny number of actual interesting musicians who constantly struggle to find ways to extract a living wage from what they do.

It's not that what we see now is the anomaly. No, the anomaly was that period from roughly 1870-1970 when the demand for professional live music was sufficient to keep a meaningful cadre of musicians employed.

We're going back, now, to before that time, when real hand made music was considered an avocation for the vast majority, not a profession .

 

[51PRI]

Maybe this is why it's still pretty safe and financially less risky to be in a cover band. Folks want to hear covers, we play covers, we get paid, we go home.

 

[socialleper]

OP, you're in the unenviable position of trying to catch a ride on a dinosaur. Those of us who grew up in the 70s could kind of barely grab onto the very tip of his tail and some of us make a sort of living off playing live music. The tip of that tail's broken off now.

Music has been an unpaid endeavor for something like 99% of its history. The first actual professional musicians probably appeared around 1500. Even then, they were a tiny fraction of the people who made music. It wasn't till there was mass transportation in the form of the railroads, plus mass dissemination of sheet music, plus a mass entertainment industry (first minstrel shows, then vaudeville, also the big traveling circuses and shows like Buffalo Bill), that there were more than a handful of professional musicians on earth. What really drove the growth of professional music in the sense of a large number of people who made decent money, was the combination of mass distribution of not-very-good mechanical reproductions (78s and cylinders), radio, and the American social dancing craze. People wanted music to dance to, records were expensive short and didn't sound as good as real live musicians; but they'd heard enough records and radio shows to know they wanted such music available to them; plus with railroads (and soon, automobiles) musicians could easily travel to performances. Unfortunately, those same mechanical reproductions that helped the boom of live music along, also contained the seeds of its destruction. By the time you get to the 1970s and 1980s, records tapes and CDs were so good, and so cheap, that providing background music, or dance music, by one DJ and a loud sound system and a big box of recordings drove live music largely out of business. At this point, the profession of playing music in person for live audiences and getting paid for it is largely a nostalgia exercise for audiences who're getting older and older and less and less interested in drinking heavily and spending all their money on entertainment. The exceptions are those few super acts, most of whom are just delivering "music-like sound product" with superior choreography and almost no clothes on; and a tiny number of actual interesting musicians who constantly struggle to find ways to extract a living wage from what they do.

It's not that what we see now is the anomaly. No, the anomaly was that period from roughly 1870-1970 when the demand for professional live music was sufficient to keep a meaningful cadre of musicians employed.

We're going back, now, to before that time, when real hand made music was considered an avocation for the vast majority, not a profession .

Bands were still making money into the 80s and 90s. It has always been hard for local bands, but at least signed bands were able to live on their touring and merch. Now even big bands that have been around for decades are cancelling shows because they can't afford the travel expenses. This thing about the venues skimming a part of the merch revenue is a pretty new thing.

I don't necessarily want the music industry to collapse. I love music, and the bands I like would be hurt the most because they are already at the bottom of the pile. But, I also kinda feel like it needs to happen. What's happening is just gross.