A Musician’s Worth
Time to reassess your value.
If you’re a working musician, you’ve played shows at most of the local venues in your town. You and your four bandmates have gathered your gear, made the haul, spent a couple hours loading in and sound checking, played a 45-minute set to a decent sized crowd, and been handed $100 by the venue at the end of the night. $20 per band member.
This may come as a surprise to some music fans, but this is not an uncommon practice. National touring acts excluded, venues typically promise only the door money to local bands (minus the sound person fee and occasional room and door man fees). Leaving almost nothing for the artists.
There may be several factors as to why this happens in Seattle. The city is a music destination where artists abound. Bookers are inundated by bands interested in playing on their stages. There’s no shortage of artists eager to share their music, leading to a saturated market. Second, like any successful company, venues are in the business of making money. If a band can draw a crowd, more drinks will be sold and more money will be made. Most local bands don’t have huge followings. They play frequently in the same handful of places in town or have not been around long enough to gain support. Consequently, a guarantee is not in the cards.
A third reason is the most interesting though. And that is the rampant problem of artists and bands undervaluing their own self worth.
Ask any musician and they will surely tell you that at some point in their career they played shows for free or next to nothing. Some people think it’s a right of passage. You’ve got to do your time. Play the dives, the small stages that the band doesn’t fit on, with no sound person or one who visibly despises his job. The best coping mechanism for this is to convince yourself and your bandmates that most successful bands also experienced this early on in their career, and in some twisted way, it may be preparing you for dealing with adversity or at least for appreciating the finer stages in your future. At what point though, does the hazing end and your self worth chime in?
The music industry has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Free online streaming obliterated revenue for artists since they are essentially giving away their work for next to nothing now. But rather than rejecting these types of services, musicians are clamoring to get onto their playlists. Rather than passing on playing festivals for free and shows for ‘exposure’, bands are happy to oblige. The point is – we are doing this to ourselves.
Live Nation recently announced plans to shift its policies in ways that further stick it to the artist, including lowering guarantees across the board by 20% and enhancing cancellation penalties in ways that place more burden on the artist than ever before.
Now that live music is on hiatus, it’s a good time to reflect and to reconsider the value of live performances. Musicians should take this time as an opportunity to reassess their worth. Because if history is any indication, we can already predict how this is going to go once the industry opens back up. Save the venues, save the community, save the rainforest. And once again, musicians will be left holding their d-cks in their hand.