yod wrote:Those are good reasons to do what I suggested. Works everywhere it's tried IF you have people playing music other people are willing to sit through.
But yea, it would take effort. It's definitely easier to complain there's nothing to do.
Not sure why I try here....
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Yeah, stop trying, your advice is useless for an area you know nothing about.
I had to unhide you to see what you were talking about. You obviously don't know the Greater Boston area.
Boston area DJs and tv personalities are paid a lot more than many other areas of the country, they don't do anything for 'free'. Unless you're talking about the college radio stations, and those DJs are mostly just students, so you better be in the under-25 crowd to even get their attention.
'MeetUp groups' - hahahaha, there are dozens of music meetup groups in the area - and NO ONE helps pay for them, only the people running them. We have one for our songwriting group - only because they offered a freebie to one of our organizers because he manages a paid one. A friend has had one for her open mic series for a few years, there are a hundred or more 'members' in it. At a typical open mic she runs there are 12-15 people who show up - and out of those 100 'members', fewer than 25 have EVER gone to one of her OMs. Meet-Ups work best in the city centers (higher concentration of people), the drop off as you hit the suburbs or rural area is exponential.
'Record store' - really? Still living in the 20th century? Yeah, there are still a couple of holdouts around, but they're not about to have live music - which requires town/city permits and ASCAP/BMI/SECAN licenses. Same thing for restaurants - if they are not already permitted/licensed for live music, they're not about to start as its not profitable enough - even a small place has to cough up $1-2K/year for the PRO license, assuming that they can even get a town permit. The places that try it with 'original music only'? They usually give up after 1 or 2 events because the BMI lawyers go after them and say 'prove that none of our songs are being used'.
Thinking 'outside the box' is always suggested as a means to make 'making music' more profitable without any practical ways to actually do so. I'm watching (younger) people who have given up their day jobs to hustle 24/7 to make a living doing music - and then coming back to the community asking others what they think about it. "I want to be free to create" is the usual start - only to find that doing all the 'behind the scenes' stuff - hustling gigs, networking, etc etc takes up more time than if they were working a 40 hour a week job - without any of the benefits of that job, like a steady paycheck, insurance and paid vacations, and keeping their vehicle on the road to get to the gigs that pay 'pass the hat' dollars becomes a 'making nothing' venture with the cost to insure and register (and annual excise tax) in Massachusetts. The few who are 'successful' -meaning they can pay rent on time - are doing cover song gigs more than originals, often 2 gigs a day. There are A LOT of talented people out there, and just not enough money to go around for all of them.
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