General Music Chat

Free tickets to hand out and large guest lists are the death of a good original band scene.

Club X prints out 50 - 100 tickets for each group it 'allows' to play.
Probably the average of 50 non paying customers show up per band.
Then those non paying cutomers commence to pay for drinks. Then pay for drinks. Then pay for drinks. Then pay... well, you know.

So the club makes plenty of money. The original bands make no money.
The people that come don't really care, because they probably wouldn't have came if it werent for the free tickets.

The club refuses to pay set rates because there is always a line of bands that are willing to play there.

Same old, same old.


What I would like to hear (and I'm looking at you jw123), is some good 'out of the box' creative ideas for generating money and breaking the Club X cycle.

If there's too many bands and too few places and the places are set up with this gig structure then you're screwed. The only way to make any money in this situation is merchandise. The best merchandise is your very own CD. You sell the CD and T-shirts, beads, bumper stickers, whatever at the gigs AND sell your CD all over the internet. The only "gig" in town is thinking globally. Get your own tunes out to the world. Yeah, play the game locally BUT you have other stuff to sell and hopefully make a profit AND you sell CD's all over the world. The local bands making a decent wage are fast disappearing, you have to start thinking about other venues: festivals, business functions, etc. and CD, merchandise sales. Working up a repertoire of covers and getting decent gigs may be a thing of the past sooner than later...

Now that profit is God none of the club owners really give a sh*t about the music anymore. They used to be proud to have a good club that featured quality acts. Now it's just some bozo looking for a profit margin and easy lays.
AND as long as quality acts will play for a pitence of their worth, the club owners will get em cheap.

I say DEMAND YOUR WORTH!
And if you catch some dumbass young punks playing out for pennies, get in their ass about it and tell em what little whores they're being.

In my day we would have set their van on fire for em. And if not we would have been at the club while they were unloading to let em know just what we thought of em
This is NOT bullshit. We had principles and nuts then.
I just went through this with some poser fuks down here about a year ago. The club is now out of business, and that band has no place to play HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I say DEMAND YOUR WORTH!
And if you catch some dumbass young punks playing out for pennies, get in their ass about it and tell em what little whores they're being.

You mean tell them to go away and come back when YOU think they are as good as you believe you are, because you are the local music gestapo? And just exactly how do you convince a club owner who might prefer their music over yours not to hire them? Yeah, right. Like that's going to fly.

What credentials would you show the club owner, who has every right to do whatever the hell he wants because it is his club, or the band who is only trying to earn a little money to pay for their gear or put food on their families table, which they have every right to do in a capitalistic society?

I'd tell you to go f*$%# yourself if you came up to me with those self centered demands.

It's not a Socialist country yet, pretty close, but not quite. They're trying.

Isn't it really a bit of the ol supply and demand?
I remember back in Cleveland in the 80's there were a lot bands and clubs that you could work twice a week playing original music for months at a time no problem.
But as the 90's rolled in some of the clubs became dance clubs and they changed from 3-4 nights of live music to 1,2 or none. Slowly the scene dried up. The demand diminshed.
Most "young" bands are gonna work for little to nothing. Isn't that usually how you have to start out?
You pay your dues with chitty start times, short sets, Sunday night slots etc...

We rarely agree Slacker, but in this case we do. Club owners can hire whoever they want for whatever terms they want, it's their business. And bands can play where they want for whatever rate they will accept. This is the American way.

GT the only original gigs Ive done in the last 5 years, we had a set amount to play on the bills with the club owners. In our market our band can just about guarantee 80 people to show up. These shows were very easy for us cause they provided PA/Lights and we ussually only had to play one long set of an hour to an hour and a half.

I dont see a way to really make money playing original music unless you can bring the people, In my area some of the shittiest bands in my opinion seem to be able to do that.

Some one sid merchandise, yeah maybe that will provide some money, but folks that go to what are basically freee gigs dont want to anty up money for your cds, and you might sell a handful of tee shirts at a gig. The most we got out of a local gig for t-shirts and other odds and ends was around $200 in one night, and that was a good night on that front.

Music is a business, period. Its not about your artistic freedom. That being said you have to be able to deliver people to spend money.

A thought from me would be some sort of outside corporate sponsorship. I did this for a couple of years before the economy went bust. We had a motorcycle dealership, a car dealership, a music store and a bank that paid us to promote them at gigs. Once again you have to have people there that might go to these establishments and buy something from your influence.

Or enlist your own group of bands and bascially rent a facility. Jackson TN had a place like this and we had to make sure they got $300 rent for the night. We got 2 other groups to play with us, they didnt get any money cause we advertised these gigs thru me. After paying rent, we grossed $700 one time and only $250 another time, so I kind of abandoned that idea. It was just too hit or miss to me.

I guess the key is to network with as many people as you can, our last gig I sent out 150 invites thru FB to people that had come to see the band before. We got about 50 that showed up from the invites, which was actually more than we thought we would get from that, but a lot of our friends are FB people. Without FB could we have gotten the word out to that many people? I honestly dont know, the others that showed up were word of mouth or just saw it on the billboard for the place we played.

To me the problem is that all musicians feel like they are owed something because of all the hardwork they put into this business, but if you have no draw then you shouldnt expect to be paid, until you can draw people. This isnt the clubs fault, like you said they try everything they can to drive people in to drink. Your music and how good you percieve yourself isnt of interest to them.

Good Luck

If I were involved in an orginal project I wouldnt expect to be paid, cause thru whatever career Ive had in music, the original side never paid anything. This point of view goes back to the late 70s for me, it is what it is. Thinking that you can play whatever you want and get paid is a pipe dream to me. Even cover bands like mine have to kiss ass and play those songs that we never thought we would play. You have to give an audience what it wants.

I would try to get on bigger bills of similiar type bands that come thru your area, and try to build off of thier followings. Of course they wont pay you.

Its a catch 22

We play 80-90% originals, with a couple of covers thrown in. At the places we play, bands are paid based on the number of people you draw, minus the sound man's cut. So if you draw 40 people, you'll probably make $180. But if you can draw 100 people, your pay jumps to $480. Sure a cover band makes more but they have to play a lot of crappy music. For us, our artistic aspirations outweigh any monetary considerations.

Gt, I guess its like Jimmy says what are your true aspirations in music?

I think I gave the rundown money wise on our last gig.

Basically the club gives any band $150 to set up, then you get the door minus $40 for the doorman. We drew 122 paying customers at $5 each. Thats $610, plus the house money of $150=$760-$40=$720 devided by 4 is $180 a man for a four hour gig. They did tell me that we made more money than any other band that has used this arrangement. If someone ask for a price I tell them $600 a night. This has limited the gigs we get offered, but I think we suffered a little burnout a couple of years ago, when we did around 40 gigs in a year. Not that many on the surface but a lot for weekend warriors like us playing shitty cover music. I am fortuante that we tend to jam in parts of songs and get our musical yuck yucks out, plus in this band we dont ever really practice, where as I guess to be good on originals it takes a regimented practice schedule to keep everyone on the mark.

Jimmy I didnt mean any slam at you on originals, in fact this past gig we pulled out about 10 originals we had lying around and 2 of them our older fans were singing the lyrics too. Kinda weird for us. But it was cool, especially the one I wrote years ago "It all comes down to money, money money money money!" Kinda made me feel good to hear them throwing that back at us!

I think the worst thing over here is that original bands wear these free tickets and passes like a badge of honor.
"We have a 100 free tickets! Get on the list!"

I don't know how to start changing their perception. They don't realize that they are cutting their own throats.
Of course the younger bands think exposure is key and that they are gonna make it big, so you can't tell them anything.

How about... get a forum 'donated' to play at, for exposure to the company or brand of whatever entity owns the place, then charge a modest amount at the door. No free passes.
Maybe free trinkets, or a drawing prize.

That way no money would be owed to the venue, theyd get exposure, the band would get whatever money came in.

And my aspirations right now are just to make some sort of money.
I know it will be less than doing covers, but I'd be fine with 50 bucks per member right now. (Per show)

No prob John. Like you said it's really all about what you want out of it. We usually play 45 minutes to an hour, plus time to drive there and setup another hour or two, so we end up working pretty cheap.