General Music Chat

Art ... Creation ...Quality ... Intensity ...Higher Evolvement ... all imprisoned by mythical "money" and all the filth it brings with it. Good Thread and excellent comments and Posts ... Venue Owners are now getting hit by Regulations and in some cases have a bounty on them. Regardless of which side of the guitar or mike or drums or keyboards you may find yourself on ... the Truth is that almost all elements involved have been dictated more and more by mythical "money". A very sad commentary on Humanity and what it's creative endeavours have all come to.
If one is a real Artist then one does Art originating from within and one does it regardless of economics, wealth or location. Real Artists have been a vanishing breed for quite some time now. Understand that I accuse no one here of anything and Post this only to invoke thought and self examination. Good Luck to everyone ... things are about to go from bad to worse. But I like to think that no matter how bad it may get there will be some making music and creating. Live Well Die Well

Regardless of which side of the guitar or mike or drums or keyboards you may find yourself on ... the Truth is that almost all elements involved have been dictated more and more by mythical "money".

nice to see you over here talking music and art, vamp.

as for "mythical money"......like most musicians and artists who try do this as their sole gig......i rely on that "mythical money" to pay for mythical groceries, mythical bills, the mythical tools i need to perform and create, and to put mythical gas in my mythical vehicles.

thanks for weighing in.

One final thought: Often the sound men make more than the musicians. Saturday there were five bands; each had to chip in $25 out of their earnings for the sound man. I would not even mind that so much but the guy was terrible. I'm really getting sick of playing live.

Jimmy - if you don't mind me asking, how much were the bands paid for one set of music?

Mike, it's proportionate to your draw, after the $25 for the sound man. So if the cover is $5 and you only have five paying customers, you get nothing. If you have twenty people, the band would make $75 (100 - 25) and so on. You need to draw 100 people for each band member to get paid decently (5 x 100 = 500 - 25 = 475, roughly $120 a man). There are no guarantees playing original music.

but how does thart work out with multiple bands on the bill..... do they actually try to determine how many ea band is 'drawing' or is it all cumulative and split equally among all the bands?

Ok, that's basically 'pay to play' without the paying up front! I know things can be different in cities, but around this area you can't get many people to cough up $5 cover charge for a full night's music, let alone for 1 band playing 1 set.
Meanwhile, the bar is selling drinks and paying $0 for the entertainment.

I quit the band scene back in the mid 80s when around here clubs started going to the '1 set per band routine' - schlepping & setting up equipment was the real work at any gig, now it was to play for a 45 minute set for 1/3 of the money we used to get? And now you had to set up and be ready to play in 10-15 minutes, break down in 5-10 minutes - no fun.
It was hard enough to get people to come week after week after week to our shows and pay $1 or $2 cover charge for a full night's music, but to convince them to come out for a single set? the "draw" of seeing other bands didn't really matter, as most people who come out just stick around for the one band they know.
And its still happening around here, too, although many clubs/bars have gone under, specially since the smoking ban.
Jimmy - if you can get 100 people out to see you guys do one set and pay $5 each, on a regular basis, more power to you!

I went to see a band from the studio next to mine at a bar in Mesa on a Friday night. They gave me the ticket for free since we would always shoot the sh*t in the hall and I expressed some interest in seeing them live. They payed the bar $100 for 100 tickets. The bar suggested they sell them at $5 each, but didn't really care, most likely. There was no one there except for their wives and girlfriends. They sounded pretty awful, seeing as how the drummer and the bass player never stopped soloing and the guitarist had the weakest tone in the world. The club was within a 5 mile radius of the #1 party school in the country, but it was the middle of July, so it was a ghost town.
I could see doing the $100 for 100 tickets thing, but not for a 30 - 40 minute set.

I have no prob. w/ playing for the gate, but never pay-to-play. At least if you're playing for the gate, there's an expectation folks will pay some amount to hear you--in effect, you're being paid for what you can draw. If you can't draw enough folks to make it worth your while--assuming the venue isn't some dump that can't even draw roaches--that's on you. If 100% of the gate goes to the musicians, they should also get to determine the cover charge; folks'll kick in anywhere from $1 - $5 easy enough, but when it gets up around $10+... And the musicians should get the entire gate; the venue gets all the food & drink proceeds. Everyone gets a slice of the pie, and just how much is determined by what you do.

I can see doing a gig like what Rui describes, as long as it's music I really enjoy playing; if I don't make a good piece of change, at least I have the satisfaction of playing the music. On the other hand, if I'm sitting in for a band where the music is nothing special (to me, anyway), I'm more inclined to agree w/ Mike; I have no desire to huff my rig and hustle my azz off to do something I'm not all that crazy 'bout anyway. In that scenario, I can only see the fleas for the dog.

But pay-to-play is nothing more than a way for venues to rip-off musicians. They get all the proceeds from food & drink and a fee from the musicians?? NFW! These are the disreputable types I was referring to above. I don't know of any acts who drive folks away--even a lousy band has friends who will come to their gigs--so worst-case scenario, an act is going to at least draw in a few folks; even if it's only 5, that's 5 folks buying food & drink who wouldn't be otherwise. So the venue benefits coming and going, at the expense of the musicians. I've heard of venues that will spew BS about why you need to pay, but if a venue can't bring in enough biz on their own, it has nothing to do w/ the musicians; asking them to make up the shortfall or guarantee a venue's proceeds--and that's what it boils down to--is like saying, 'yeah, this place sucks and loses money every night, so if you wanna play here, you gotta pay us.' That's the sort of place you wouldn't want to play at anyway. If you're desperate for an audience and are willing to pay for it, there are much better ways to go about it.