Running a restaurant, a club, a bar, is really hard. There is a lot at stake for the owner. You are trying to get loyal customers that will return because you are offering them something special. If you want great food, you hire a great chef. If you want great décor, you hire a great interior decorator. You expect these professionals to do their best at what you are hiring them to do. It needs to be the same with the band. You hire a great band and should expect great music. That should be the end of your expectations for the musicians. The music is another product for the venue to offer, no different from food or beverages.
Source: Why Music Venues Are Totally Lost: An Open Letter from a Professional Musician – DIY Musician Blog
My take…
As a musician, I totally agree with the gist of the article. Back in the 70s and 80s in Bloomington, I was peddling my strolling guitar restaurant gig, and more than once was told, “Why should I pay you when I can get a harpist from the school of music to play for a trip through the buffet?”
Never mind that in a small space a guitarist strolling from table to table has a much smaller footprint (and much more intimate and immediate listener impact than a concert harpist seated off in a corner of the room), if a penny-pinching restauranteur can get a free harpist, they’ll remove a table to make room for the harp.
As the article illustrates, it might not be the wisest business decision, but from a purely short-term economic POV, you can’t blame struggling small venues (or even well-established ones) for watching the bottom line and leveraging supply and demand in their favor.
That said… the financial constraints a small venue experiences only drives half of the dynamic. The other side of the coin is the legions of musicians so eager (or desperate) to perform to an audience, any audience, that they are willing to play for the sheer love of it.
Do plumbers, electricians, or virtually any other trade so willingly give away their services? Not at all. Even dog-sitters, who typically love animals dearly, are not inclined to do it for peanuts.
I’d say it’s not even “the exposure” that motivates musicians to give away their time and talent… it’s the ya-yas they get from being onstage. Is it an exercise in ego gratification, then? You be the judge.
I’ve often said that one of the biggest problems with the music business is that performing is too damn much fun. Which also helps explain why musician unions are among the most difficult to establish, develop and sustain. When it comes to making music, live performance is the holy grail (even if the response is lackluster), and virtually a drug for most musicians.
Yes, we love our music with a passion… that’s basically a requisite in order to go through the proverbial ten-thousand hours of practice and rehearsal it takes to become even a competent, let alone a great, musician and/or band. Yet it is this same undying love and devotion to our art that makes aspiring musicians so willing to surrender their productivity in the marketplace.
But that’s not all… it slices and dices!
The live music scene is also under attack from a societal shift in perspective and entertainment options. With access to a world of content available online for the price of some hardware and internet access, coupled with a society increasingly unpredictable in terms of unhinged personalities and personal security, cocooning at home in front of a big-screen on the wall is increasingly the way people enjoy music, as well as other forms of content.
Plus, it saves on time and gas… what’s not to love, right?
Staying in one’s castle is considered the smart move this day and age, and the result can be felt in many other industries, as well. For instance, the rapid growth and popularity of home-cooking subscription services like Hello Fresh prove that many people now prefer to stay home, receive the ingredients and recipes for great meals delivered nicely chilled to their door, and go through the rigors of preparing their own meals rather than run the gauntlet to a local restaurant… even one they love to visit.
And need I mention — Amazon?
So what’s the answer to all this? How can musicians position themselves to demand better-paying gigs? That’s an easy one, at least in theory… quit giving away your bloody talent! Set a minimum pay rate and stick to it. Encourage other musicians to up their rates. But all this presupposes that a sufficiently large percentage of musicians will (or can) make smart business decisions. Frankly, this flies in the face of reality as we know it.
What I’ve done personally is to back off from live performance and learning the craft of making videos. It makes more sense to me to capture a musical performance, tweak it to as near perfection as my fledgling videographic skills will allow, and posting my work online.
Even a small monetized YouTube channel can provide musicians better paydays than playing for scraps in live venues. There are many musicians and bands that have successfully built their entire business model around YouTube. A musician can capture a single performance and make it available to the world, not just a small local audience. And instead of a performance that goes *poof* as soon as you play it, the video will live on, if not in actual perpetuity, then something pretty close.
And at my age, that in and of itself is motivation enough to change how I do business.
• A tip of the hat to my brother-in-arms Tim Dooley for posting the article that inspired this post.
