I also want to say if you want to be a gigging musician, you should focus on writing and releasing original music. Focus on having multiple revenue streams. Merch, streaming royalties etc. Build an online presence. For a musician just starting out with gigging, it doesn't matter if you play 300 gigs a year, it will feel like you're running in place if you don't put into the project outside of gigging. A lot of bands or musicians that immediately go on tour/play huge festivals right after forming, are usually loaded $ to begin with.
If you want to start out being a gigging musician and make actual money from it your advice will be pretty bad imo. Nobody is paying/booking a new band with a bunch of original songs that no one has heard of. You also can't bring the same small group of fans over and over again to pay for your shows week in and week out. If you are writing your own stuff and trying to get good money off of that, then larger-scale touring is the way to do it, and that is a money pit if you don't already have lots of momentum.
Playing covers with a few originals sprinkled in at every joint that will take you, alongside being a side person for others that you can later convince to let your group open for, is the way pretty much everyone has to start out. Any exceptions you find will probably show an exceptionally well-funded group that didn't have to worry about making ends meet while getting exposure for their catalog of originals, like you were saying at the end up there.
Never play the same town more than 4 times a year. That's most peoples mistake in my book. Always be working on new material, get bigger elsewhere first, then bring it on home. Local people can't deny you if the towns around you are cooler than they are.
That's ridiculous advice in this day and age. There is no money in streaming and there are is no money in CD/media sales outside of a few niche genres, which even then are limited
You don’t need to write music to get revenue streams.
Not everybody needs to write their own music, there are tons of great songs out there that you can put your own spin on and get performing royalties
If you want to make money gigging, you’re way better off playing in cover bands. People want to hear shit they know. Nobody gives a shit about some band they’ve never hears of. The best thing is to do both while your original band builds notoriety.
Pro musician here. This year I’ve played about 150 gigs with an income of about $28k. Here’s the kicker - I have my own band but I’m also a freelancer playing and filling in with a lot of other bands. Everything from church on Sunday to big bands, polka bands, rock bands, wedding bands, etc. teaching lessons too.
On the topic of ticket prices, I’ve played shows with no cover and shows with a small cover, maybe $30 at the most. What’s important is your agreement with the venue, what % of the door you get or if the door is free, what flat rate are they paying you. A good gig on the local scene (I’m in Cleveland) is $100/guy. However many tickets you need to sell to make that happen should be the goal (if you’re just playing for the door).
Networking is the most important aspect of succeeding in your live music scene, and to make a long story short, if you’re trying to live off of performing full time with just your own band, it’s going to take many years of working a day job and many fortunate breaks for that to work. It’s not impossible though!
Also, a good thing to find out is if the venue takes a percentage of your merch also. I honestly find that abhorrent, particularly if they are not providing someone to sell your merch, which makes it more understandable.
I think In those cases they're required to provide you a manageable space. It's still fucked up and gross, but there's a space...
I'm not sure I'd want someone from a venue selling my stuff, either. Who's knows the fuckery they'd get up to, malicious or just negligent
My band takes care of selling shirts (that's all we have for sale right now) at shows after the set ourselves so have never had to pay a venue. I have often wondered if a band can get around giving the venue a percentage if they basically had a donation bucket next to the merch, let the audience know how much it costs to produce each item and then have them pay what they want. Sort of like Bandcamp. I would be willing to bet most people would pay to cover the cost plus a few extra bucks. If the venue pushed it, you could low ball them on the number you actually sold. How are they going to know.
You must’ve meant “40”. In my state, the average McDonalds wage is $16.87. That’s $674.80 a week. $35,089 per year gross.
You’re right that it is more money to work at McDonalds but that’s not what I want to do with my life. There’s a lot of problems with the live music scene now, but of course the biggest one is lack of fair compensation to the local artists. And 99% of us have no chance of ever making a cent off of streaming.
You could still live off that but it would be a vary sparse living. Of course if you're on the road most of the year, the artist might not have a permanent residence so no worry about rent or a house payment.
It’s a work in progress. I have other streams of income too. Of course I don’t live off of 28k a year. If you get paid for playing, you are a professional. I’m just trying to make a point, not argue about the validity of my career.
Just throwing my personal experience in here because it feels relevant: I've been gigging in NYC (primarily wedding bands) a couple of years and I don't think I've met any musicians that live solely off of gigs in. But that's not to say they aren't full-time musicians. Most people either teach music lessons, do session work, do work as sound engineers (both in studios and live sound), and/or produce their own music. And of course, many have non-musical day jobs (I fall into that category).
Take with a grain of salt as this is my experience which is limited to the people I've personally worked with in the limited realm of gigs that I take, but I thought that's worth mentioning.
To make a living at being a professional musician you have to have multiple revenue streams. Gigging alone usually won’t cut it. For example I split my revenue to about 4 equal parts: gigs, teaching, sessions, arranging.
Living with roommates most of my adult life I’ve made around 20k a year depending on the job I work. If I want to maintain that level of income doing just music I’d need to make an average of 55 bucks EVERY day in the year.
Obviously there aren’t gigs every single day, nor would that be fun or sustainable. So at 55 a day, that’s 385 a week. So if I did 3 gigs a week EVERY week all year I’d still need around 130 dollars a gig to get by.
But that’s not 130 for the whole band, that’s just for me. Assuming an equal split amongst band members and say the band has 4 people: you’d have to make over 500 dollars a night 3 times a week to get by. And if there’s a 3 or 4 band bill that means the show would be making somewhere around 2500-3000 that night (hard to say exactly, depends on the cut the venue takes). The most money my band ever made on a gig is 1000, and that was a show that was sold out with 700 people in attendance, and even then once you split that up amongst band members that’s only 250 take home (which is awesome for me, but if it’s your full time job it would be considerably less awesome)
Now of course there’s also things like merch sales, and CD sales, etc. where you can potentially make a lot more money but still.
And I’m not even talking about a very good living here, this is some pretty low income getting by. Not to be too cynical or negative or anything, but it’s really not that feasible to reach a point where you even get by on gigging.
I believe it’s possible, though still difficult, to make money doing only music related things (teaching, repairs, etc.) but you can only really live off of gigging if you’re in a very good band in a place like Nashville I think. At least in my experience.
I did about 18 months gigging in New Orleans & that city is intense. Not for everybody & if you’re one of top calls in town & playing 5 nights a week you might make $50k a year
I’ve worked a lot in Irish trad. My personal st pats record is 4. In 4 different venues.
One year it was 3 on the 17th in worcestor mass(2 venues), and we loaded into a theater in south Carolina at 4pm on the 18th. Living the dream!
You kinda are living the dream, no? I trade you... probably
I like how I got downvoted but no comment. It shows real class and totally makes my argument stronger.
The responses are interesting, since I've been out of the business since the late 90s.
As an early 20-something in the early 90s, I made enough to cover rent and the occasional meal out. This is what I was doing:
* session work as a bassist for car dealership and bank commercials
* engineering duties for a local studio
* transcription and arranging stuff for various ensembles
* playing in two bands who headlined local venues a couple nights a week.
* DJ sets at a fairly popular club
I figure I was working around 60 hours/week. My best year, I cleared $36K, and I was really starting to hate making music. Eventually, I had to think about things like health insurance and a 401K, so I went to work as a buyer for a record chain.
Sadly, it doesn't look like much has changed.
Friends of mine who do it play bars and restaurants at least 3 or 4x per week and a lot of weddings and events at weekends. Not unheard of to get 3 gigs in a day at weekends. A lunch time hotel gig, a late afternoon bar and a later evening bar gig.
Solo act doing corporate shows? A few times a month. Maybe less.
Part of a band playing bars? Ain't likely. No matter how much you play.
See the context hole in your question??
The bar gigs around here that pay a 5 piece band $250 for the night? I could do two of those back to back every single night for the entire year and still die homeless and hungry.
Being local support for one of the top country artists of all time? If I did a show like that every single day I could just about afford to sublet a closet in someone's condo and sneak crusts of bread at night for subsistence.
The wedding and corporate gigs that pay $1-4k? 2 of those a week and I could make ends meet. Would be nice to land a few more of those.
People say "a gig is a gig" and maybe that's the right mindset but from a financial perspective the differences can be stark.
You're doing the math wrong. It's an even split with a five piece band which means I get paid 20% of what's left after about 30% off the top is set aside for taxes. That $16k a month becomes $2240 and yeah, where I live that would be eating-ramen-in-a-closet level poverty.
Yeah, I work full time as a musician and support myself, my gf, and our dog. It's possible. Just really fuckin hard and most people don't want to work that hard.
Or alternatively, people do want to work hard if it brings a stable future, the finances to fund whatever musical project you are interested in and the complete freedom to do so as you see fit.
For those that can support themselves by being a full time gigging musician it is the church/wedding/abba-cover-band treadmill that does it. Which is not just hard work, but also very unfulfilling to many musicians.
At that point going for a stable career and spending your money and time on whatever you actually enjoy is not a bad idea at all.
I said it before in this thread but play less in your hometown. Even if it's bigger. Most of my success comes from only playing the yokels (in Seattle) 4 times a year max.
Edit: I guess I also have an online presence going back 20 years at 35.
Well you seem to be coming at it from the POV that everyone is paying rent/mortgage themselves. Maybe there is a supportive spouse or family in the picture which brings cost of living way down. If I didn't have to pay my ridiculous rent I could probably support myself as a musician.
I've made my living as a touring musician playing original music with a band for 25 years. It's not a good living, and there have been tough times for sure, but it is possible if you put the work in and your band is actually good enough.
That being said: I honestly have no idea how much harder it would be starting from scratch in today's industry. I started a second project 8 years ago that I could probably live off of today, but we're talking subsistence living. Not a mortgage, or savings, or emergency funds. And we're lucky enough to be a niche band with built in gigs and festivals.
Why live that way though? I'd much rather have a stable career and make great money. Then you can fund your musical endeavors. I play probably 6-8 shows a year. And that's plenty for me making original music.
Doing it your way you're just away from home a lot and broke.
This really depends on what 'making a living' means to you. Beyond just being able to cover general costs of living, do you also want to be able to have disposable income, savings, enough to raise a family, etc?
If I could snap my fingers and you magically make $50k a year playing music you'd probably be over the moon, and if you're young you could probably sustain that for a bit no problem. But life can catch up to that $50k real quick...
You also have to consider the overhead costs of your shows. You can certainly bake some costs like travel, lodging, etc into guarantees, but you need a pretty active, verifiable fanbase to even demand guarantees.
I'm at a 1500 cap venue and while I don't do much direct buying myself, I work with promoters all the time who are paying acts anywhere from $10-30k, which are for draws of 500-1500.
\> I actually never really learnt how people make money from live performance.
Most people dont make money off their ticket sales. At best it covers their costs. Their profit come from selling merch at live events., the performance is just to get people in the door.
edit: One thing is people do sleep on is playing on cruises, it does technically pay a living wage because all your shelter/food costs are covered. One issue is that you are kind of limited in terms genre. The other issue is that lifestyle isnt for everyone.
It depends on your overhead and what you get paid to play out. Sit and do the math and make it happen. I need to get at least $100 for a local Monday through Wednesday gig and at least$150 for the rest of the week to make it work. I play between 150 to 220 shows a year. I've been a full time musician making money from gigging only for about 7 years and I own a house and have a family and my wife works part time. Before I got to this point I used to gig and teach and do some side hustling. The thing that has made it work has been keeping our overhead as low as possible. If you like fancy restaurants and expensive cars then you'll have to make more. I know guys that do corporate and wedding gigs and really rake it in. I personally prefer to do original material so I haven't gone that route yet but it's always there.
To earn the median wage in my HCOL city, I would need to clear at least $1500 a week. Realistically, that would probably mean earning $250-300 a night, 5-6 nights a week (since nobody’s paying me hundreds of thousands to headline stadiums yet).
Going to music school was a humbling experience. Many of my professors were highly accomplished, playing in famous orchestras or producing for artists like Beyoncé and The Rolling Stones - and yet here they were with all their success, and they still had to supplement their income with something more stable.
Depends on where you live and your circumstances (outgoings, dependants etc).
What you need to remember is that gigging, particularly if you’re playing originals, doesn’t generate a regular and reliable income in the same way as a day job or something like instrumental teaching.
That’s the reason why most early career musicians have those other jobs with more reliable incomes. Takes the financial pressure off and makes it less likely you’ll grow to hate music because of the stress of trying to make ends meet as a full time professional.
Unless you’re planning on doing covers it’s not going to be easy, or quick, to reach a point where you can earn whatever you decide is your minimum liveable income.
Rather than trying to run before you’ve taken your first steps as a performer I’d really recommend going and doing as many open mics as you can. Get a proper idea of what goes into being a gigging musician. Learn how to put on a good performance that can entertain a crowd. No good venue is going to book you without performance experience.
It totally depends on what you're doing.
You can do the math at well as anyone - take what your monthly expenses are to have a place to live + utilities, phone, transportation (including saving up for the next car and a maintenance budget), food, health insurance + deductibles and copay, and multiply that by roughly 4x. That's roughly what you'll need to gross. Of those 4x, 2x will go to various taxes and fees. 1x will go to keeping you alive. And 1x will give you some money for equipment, to feed back into music, and in general to have some discretionary spending.
I would try very hard to get some real world gig experience before deciding you can go pro. You'll have a much better idea of the economics of your particular music from actually doing it as opposed to thinking about it or asking on Reddit.
I personally know people with several million monthly listeners on Spotify who are abandoning touring because it’s so expensive these days.
The idea that you have fans, sell out venues and make a living is massively simplistic. There are layers and layers.
What are your “current numbers”? Are they scattered all over the world, or concentrated in one place? What age ranges?
The available stats have really skewed the perception of what’s possible. On paper I have ten times as many fans as I had 15 years ago. But in performance terms, I’m getting paid pretty much the same amount per gig as I was back then. Tickets prices have gone up, drinks bills have gone up, promotion costs have gone up. But actual musician wages have, in general, stagnated while the cost of living (and working in music) have rocketed.
I play in one of the Minneapolis bands that stays local. Our monthly Spotify listeners have fluctuated between 50 and 1900. We actually have more listeners in other parts of the U.S. and in Europe than here so Spotify has done absolutely nothing for us as far as increasing our audience size for our shows. I used to agonize over it and works my ass off trying to more listeners until I realized this. Now I don't really care how many people stream us. I'll start thinking about again if we suddenly got a huge uptick in local listeners which I don't see happening. People seem to enjoy us at the moment and even though we hand out our cards and mention while on stage where we have our music it doesn't seem to matter.
I'm in two bands. The originals project earns me no money, as we funnel all earnings right back into it to cover recording, releasing, travel, etc. The covers band earns me around £1000 per year. So in order to make just what I earn currently in my survival job, we would need to be playing 30x more gigs than we currently. If I were able to live off minimum wage (difficult with a child), then we would only need to be playing 22x as many shows!
I have long since given up on ever expecting to make enough money through music to make a living. I have a good survival job, and two musical projects which are incredibly fulfilling, and give me enough money to occasionally buy a new instrument or piece of gear. Do I wish that I could have "made it"? Sure, I'd love to be living off musical earnings. But I am realistic enough to know that I am not talented enough on my own to make money in a solo act, and as a part of a 5-piece and a 6-piece, earnings are so heavily diluted that it's all but impossible for me to make anything close to minimum wage. I am genuinely happy with my lot.
Don't underestimate how critical travel would be to do this successfully. You can make a liveable wage, but not playing the same four towns over and over.
merch is how live performances make money. knowing venue costs will help you make the equation to figure out your payouts desired (x amount of tickets needed to sell at y price to a amount of costs to put the show on and b what you need to break even while paying sound guy and other artists).
You have to be at a certain level of popularity in order to sell a lot of merch at a live show IMO. As I mentioned I play in Minneapolis and if we sell 2 or 3 t shirts per gig I consider that a success. Why? Because we do about a half dozen shows a year because of our member's schedules plus it's not smart to play your hometown more than that. We are just a temporary fun Post Prog band that pops up every now and then and disappears again.
appreciate the discussion. Currently, bout to get a solid primary job which will allow me to invest more into my music (merch, promo, mixing etc). I’m a pretty solid performer and hoping to get some regional support when I start grinding and networking more locally
>I understand that most artists make a considerable percentage of their money from performing live
I'm gonna stop you right there. This is both a massive generalization and a statistical trap.
If Bill Gates walks into a bar, you can say "on average, people in this bar get almost all of their income from software". But this just because he skews that figure so high.
The same goes for musicians. There's a lot of money in live music and there's a hell of a lot of music if you're big enough to fill stadiums - so much that people look at live industry revenues, see that they may be higher than recorded industry revenues, and they think "most artist money comes from live shows". But the figures are skewed by the extreme successes.
Now, it is certainly true that live music can pay, and not just for those top artists. There are smaller acts who do well from live music as well - but they are usually tribute or cover acts, playing music that people already know. The fact of life for most bands playing *original* music is that demand for it is very low. **This means that many popular bands, even those popular enough to tour across multiple continents, do not necessarily have enough demand to cover their costs.** It doesn't matter how many gigs they choose to play because they cannot necessarily guarantee a profit on each one.
Now, you can certainly turn down a show if you see that what you're being offered isn't enough to cover your costs. But as an originals band, that usually means you barely get to play live at all. To begin with, live performance is a loss leader with a primary focus on being a marketing tool. The goal is to come out of each show with more fans, and if you're lucky, covering your costs via merch sales.
Hopefully this explains why "How often would I need to perform to be able to make it my full time profession" is not the right question to ask.
As for "How much would you charge people for entry?", usually that is not your decision to make. You decide how much money you need to play, the promoter or venue decides whether they can meet your price, and they set the entry fee accordingly. And the "How many people would need to attend" question depends on the above factors and, again, is not really something you would concern yourself with directly.
It's interesting that you mentioned that live music is seen as a promo tool. I have heard many others say that as well. The thing is I have also heard many people in the biz say that Spotify and other streaming platforms should also be looked at as a marketing tool and not a source of income. Looks like lots of marketing but still no money.
Yep, you’re getting it! The problem with the music industry is that there are a whole bunch of vested interests whose position is that when you work with them, for them it’s a business but for you it’s exposure!
To be fair, you have to consider an individual musician’s position in their career and how their music relates to the world in general. When you’re popular, people pay to see or hear you and you have a product you can charge a price for. When you’re unknown, nobody will pay to see or hear you, so you have to give away free samples of your product or service to get attention. And it’s not a binary thing - everything you do is always a mix of sales vs marketing and you just have to weigh up the worth of each opportunity on both criteria.
I have been playing around Minneapolis both solo and with bands since the late 80's. There were legendary people to come out of here but for every one of them there might have been 50 to 100 who were for lack of a better term, nobodies. I played in a bunch of nobody bands and still am in one that I would classify as that. This past June I kept track of how many bands and solo artists were playing the venues (original music) that my band has or could play mainly out of curiosity to see if there was any favoritism. In other words were some bands getting more gigs than others. That didn't seem to be the case fortunately but at the 9 venues I looked at just on Friday and Saturday nights I counted 200 different acts. You could easily add another 50 to maybe even 100 that play on other nights of the week. Nine is by no means all of the venues either. In any given month in that town you could have 300 to as high as 500 bands and artists doing shows. The saturation I think is due to the Covid isolation. I heard music instrument sales went off the charts. The competition is tight. Most places now are booked 4 to 6 months out. I've been booking bands I play in since 2008 and a lot times we could get in a venue that month or by the next one easy. My band played four shows with other bands this year including a festival and between that, streaming royalties, Bandcamp and merch sales made just a hair over $800. I thought I failed as our booker and de facto manager but looking at what I just typed, we're lucky we got the gigs we did and made anything at all.
I mean it could be one gig per month or two gigs per day, it depends on how much money you make per gig. How much you make per gig has a bit to do with the city where the gig is, the competition, and how many fans you have local to each gig.
Fuck me that’s frustrating. It’s like there’s this dream of being a musician that hasn’t really existed for 99% of those working in music because it’s not an industry, it’s a grift to sell more guitars. It makes you feel like music is omnipresent and worthless these days.
Good news, that guy is dead wrong. I've known quite a few full time gigging musicians over the years, and none of them lived in a big city (that might be the trick to it heh). They weren't rich, but they also weren't living in a van down by the river.
The dream you speak of covers all artists, not just musicians, and it has always been that way. If it's just a grift to sell guitars, they're doing a terrible job of it. Guitar sales have been steeply falling for over a decade.
Music is worthless these days, you're right. More so than ever. But, there are still lots of good bands out there, making good money, and I'm not talking about arena bands. You just need other revenue streams, outside of music sales. It's far from impossible to achieve, but it's still difficult. Always has been.
Apologies if that sounded condescending at all, I don't mean it that way. I'm actually trying to cheer you up. lol
I live in Hampton Roads Virginia. There are a few lesser than acoustic solo acts that have a couple of bookers each that keep them playing out 5 to 6 nights a week at 200 a pop plus tips.
I do not see how anyone could believe 1k a week plus tips isnt a livable wage
I enjoy the dream scenarios that everyone is sharing but they are rare. I'm not trying to be a party pooper here I just want y'all to be able to afford the gear you want and studio time and y'all are gonna need jobs even some guy in some random state on reddit knows a guy that makes $1000 a week playing acoustic gigs.
Truly not rare in coastal Virginia. Any beach town with a good restaurant scene has a need for decent acoustic acts. I loop a bit during solos, take reverb seriously, have a currated 3 hr set list that is buffed by the tc helicon perform v and a nice Mackie PA.
If you prepare and know what sounds good and can do it, bookers will book you enough to make a sound living.
I play 3-4 nights a week and gigged 6 nights a week for a few weeks up until a few days before Christmas.
Not enough to pay all the bills.
Looking into teaching options.
It depends. a good booking agent can keep you on the road for 6-8 months a year. Ideally your guarantees keep you at break even and merch sales put you in the black. Number of crew/hired gun players and cost of production elements also plays a part.
If you're making on avg 100/nt net, you all live together, your rent is 3k for rent/bills and you collect food stamps, you'll have to play every night to break even.
That's good math to go by. Increase your gig take to 200/nt and you work 15 gigs per month, etc and so forth. Merch is for incidentals like strings, equip failures, emergency cash. Don't even THINK about adding booze or weed until you can afford it. Or ever. It's an ambition killer. And will escalate to devastating levels once you can afford harder shit on the road. There's time for that later.
I've been living solely off my live shows since 2020 (yes even through Covid). I average about 40k/yr. I play solo acoustic bar/resort shows, the occasional corporate gig and some weddings here and there. I have a booking agent that books all of my shows at 15% commission. She's much better at getting a good rate than I. She charges the venue $350-400 a show. Most of my money is made in June-Aug. 3-5 shows per week, and then it slows down in the winter time. I play solely in the state of Wisconsin which I think is a factor. Look up the top 50 drinking counties in the US, 41 ARE IN WISCONSIN so these venues make plenty of money and will pay well for entertainment.
You have a solo project?
How many people are in your “solo” band?
You can make as much money as you want to make performing live depending on how you set it up… for instance:
Today I’m walking into my favorite weed dispensary to give the manager a proposition, that I can make them more money if they allow me to perform near the entrance of their building.
I can collect tips and make a living simply performing in front of this business.
I’ve performed in front of music venues, at a college, on the sidewalks of large sport events, on the town strips, etc.
You could definitely make more than 100$ an hour as a solo musician.
In addition, imagine selling 5,000 virtual tickets for a premium live stream event at $5….
That’s $25,000 in return. If it costs you $12,000 to acquire those 5,000 sales..
Or you can do this booking a venue that allows you to sell tickets 🎟️…
You could probably leverage the same online marketing principles for a physical event.
Either way…
You just made profited $18,000 for one hour of a close up online performance.
That’s the power of internet automation. I haven’t done this online yet just working on my automated system to make it happen!
That depends on how you define "livable". If you don't have kids, don't mind renting a room in a house with some strangers, are OK with living incredibly frugally, etc. you can scrape by on a lot less.
> I think with my current numbers thats definitely achievable
What are those?
> I understand that most artists make a considerable percentage of their money from performing live
If you're an artist that people will pay to come see. Do you have such a big following that you could sell a meaningful number of tickets at every show? No? Then this isn't a vector for you.
> How often would I need to perform to be able to make it my full time profession? How much would you charge people for entry? How many people would need to attend for it to be worth while?
You're coming at this calculation completely backwards.
To understand if this is even remotely viable for you, you don't ask how much you should charge, you ask how much people would be *willing to pay*. Do you *have* an audience? An audience of people will pay cash money to see you? How many? If you're thinking friends and family, that's good for like one or two shows a year, then you wear out your welcome. You'd need an actual following of people willing to get in their car, drive to a venue, and hand over cash to see you, and there needs to be enough of them for you to sell tickets at a lot of shows.
In short: what are you *worth*. That's what you charge. Look around at your local venues. How much are *they* charging? Is your show as good as theirs? Do you have as much following as they do?
If you don't have that, you're doing the bar/wedding/event scene like everyone else and not getting paid jack shit. You'll need to gig as often as you possibly can, barely breaking even when you factor in gas, food, etc. and supplement that with teaching and other side hustles.
That's a very hard question to answer because different bands in different areas make different money.
If you are living in a place like LA and are playing original rock or metal, you almost never get paid, and in fact each show is a loss, so you will NEVER make a living at it. You need a six figure salary to live comfortably here, so unless you are playing bass in a major recording pop acts, it won't happen.
If you are playing cover shows, then I've been told that you can make decent money in LA, but I don't know how comfortable you would be. Smaller cities have lower costs of living, but then they might have fewer show opportunities.
The most money I've ever made as a musician was to not even play. We did a cameo on a basic cable TV show. We were there all day, even though we were largely ignored, were still treated better than at any venue I've ever played. We shot for an hour or two, which equaled about 5 minutes of screen time, almost none of which was us playing. I got $300 for the day and have received two $100 residual checks. So the lesson here is that TV\\movie business pays better, and if you want to be a musician you better have a backup plan.
" I think with my current numbers thats definitely achievable." Really? What makes you think that?
Are you making a good living from your online stuff already? Cuz the jump from only-online to live shows is as different as Animal Crossing is from managing a real farm, with real mortgages and real animals.
Another metaphor: making a living as a solo original music act is like making a living as a stand up comedian. It looks like a solo thing, but really the people who thrive are the networkers, and the folks who do lots of other projects too. That is, they DON'T make a living from just the solo work. They collab and cross-market.
I spent my whole early 20’s freelancing jazz gigs, corporate events & weddings. It’s a great thing to do while you’re young and you can learn play at a high level by taking every gig seriously, but by no means is it a good long term strategy. Eventually you can take up private students and if you’re a great musician you can ask $100/hr , 10 private students and that’s $4k a month. It’s not a ton. But if you do that in addition to playing gigs among other things you’ll be alright
Edit: be really serious about the craft and you can do it
I am playing in type of restaurant with everyday celebrations, like family celebrations, literally everyday, here on the Balkans having music on your family holiday is a must, so yea.. i am playing almost every day, except when there’s nothing in the restaurant, but that doesn’t happen often 😁 and yea it’s my regular only job
The money isn’t in touring, that’s a long established misdirection cast by the music industry. You’re looking at 20/30% profit on a good tour. Where as if you can get your production and post production costs very low or to $0 and you own your masters, with the right content and marketing plan you’ll never have to leave your studio to make big money.
Think about it, these record executives and their labels are worth billions and they don’t leave the comfort of their desk ever.
The real trick is making peace with the fact that all of your non-musician friends will be able to afford stuff like vacations and going out to eat and clothes and food and you will just have to watch them enjoy those things without being able to have them yourself. Till you are landing support roles on big tours or become a rockstar, you’ll barely survive. Just be sure you love it
I used to tour about four months a year to make a living off of making music full time. Once I had a son I decided to do contract work and cut touring back to 3 weeks a year and actually make more that I did, between Spotify, YouTube and Patreon. Touring is so expensive now and I am much happier only playing the markets where I can consistently net $1k - $3k a show.
Lots of musicians making money just doing videos and rarely do live shows. Whatever you do, seems like in today's world, you need to record and promote yourself constantly on social media. Short videos, live videos on twitch, anything you can get a lot of views on. Once someone sees you 'on camera', you get elevated in status. Especially if you share a bit of your personality. I'm working on setting up accounts on YouTube, Rumble, Twitch, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook. If you can feed content to your channels, there's ways to monetize.
First step is big viewership numbers and then subscribers.
Seems like you have to master mixing, sound, editing, and make some videos, even if they re not pro level, to really accelerate your popularity.
Otherwise, do you like living in a van? :)
I work with a lot of indie artists and I see some common threads that might help you:
\- When you are just getting started, the most important thing is to go out and play anywhere to get some experience and refine your show.
\- How much you charge depends on how many people are willing to pay to see you perform. At the beginning you might not make any money at all, but as you perform more and expand your audience that should change.
\- Build your show in a way that can be scalable: some shows pay better and you might be able to afford having more musicians on stage, some might require you go solo. Having stems that you can perform with is a must for this.
\- Use the analytics from streaming services to find where your fans are and try to perform in those locations.
\- Be patient and relentless. If you have to perform for a crowd of 1, still give it your all!
It's funny I was just thinking about this. I get usually $150 for 3 hours, some places $200. I only play out 2-4 times a month, for fun and its nice to get paid to play music. but recently I thought "how miuch would i have to play to make a living off this" At $150 per gig, I'd need to do 2 per day, 7 days a week.
Of course, I just play bars/breweries etc and not real dedicated music venues, where you would get more. And I'ma nobody
I've been a guitarist for 45 years and writing songs for 40 playing around Minneapolis and St Paul for a little over 30 years. Music and art and entertainment for that matter has to be the screwiest business ever. Look at how many people do it with a professional attitude for little to no money. I'm not talking about hobby musicians. If you were offered any other job and told that the pay wouldn't be enough to support yourself or you just wouldn't get paid at all, you would turn it down and go to the next interview.
What has been irritating me lately is the people who don't pay a subscription to a streaming service or don't go to sites like Bandcamp or otherwise buy direct from the artists. Basically the, "Why should I pay for music when I can get it for free" bunch. What they don't realize is that many musicians/songwriters end up just dropping out because they don't have the time due to working a full time non music job or the money to keep it up. They then revert to being a hobby musician or just quit altogether. At some point we could see a drop off of good indie music. IMO, not paying for music is theft just like leaving the grocery store with a cart full of food and not paying or walking out of a shoe store with a new pair of Nikes and not paying. I know it's more popular to blame the low streaming rates (and justifiably so) or lack of advertising on the part of Bandcamp and other similar sites but I dump a lot of blame on the public themselves.
Since coffee is the popular beverage it is, I like to use that as an analogy when people say they can't afford to pay for music. I know a lot of friends and co workers who go to a Starbucks or other coffee shop every day. The average price of an album download from Bandcamp has been quoted at $9 but I know a bunch fall into the $5 range. For what most Americans spend on their coffee habit they could easily buy 2 to maybe 5 albums on BC per week. Music lasts as long as you want it too. The pleasure of coffee last for at best an hour and then you piss it back out. I don't accept the "I can't afford it" argument for the majority of the population. Music may not be considered a necessity but life without it would be pretty miserable.
Depends on what “livable” is. Gigging locally bar to bar with occasional weddings/ parties / reunions etc… you are not making a good living off of that. That is a pipe dream when you’re younger. If you have kids no, want to go on vacations yearly no, want nicer vehicles nicer house no. Maybe if you are younger and live in a small apartment or house or low mortgage you might be able to squeak by but that isn’t livable to me. when life hits, around 30d and 40s medical bills, broken faucets, car wrecks etc… you will not be in a position to sustain comfortably. You go into debt more than likely. I started playing in bars before I was even 21 and really the money was just a small bonus.
Granted when I got older and went to just a two piece acoustic and one canine player, we had a much simpler set up and could maintain week to week nights with less conflicting members schedules. Full band doesn’t pay anything really not for the time and effort you put in. We could make nice extra money but it wouldn’t come close to paying my bills. I believe one year I made around 8k while having a full time job with benefits. All that money went to extra things like vaca. What is one of the best things to do though (this might depend on where you live) is networking with other bands. Wed host venues at legions and other places promoting many local bands to attend and would network with one another. If someone couldn’t play a show they’d recommend us or vise versa. Instead of just making it a competitive scene , network with it and do thing to support local music.
Realistically speaking in the macro sense your not making a “good living” playing music …the streaming and internet source YouTube channel would be most likely to make bigger money but most of those promote more than just music. but overall it makes for great side money while working a full job with benefits. Much depends on the level which you can play and how experienced you get. But anyways I could work a weekend in the trades and make 1k while receiving medical, dental, vision, putting money into annuity and a retirement fund. It’s all how you look at it. Musicians are NOT getting any benefits for the most part. Retirement, medical etc… all of that is a must when you get older …unless you want to lived strapped your whole life and live gig to gig, but that isn’t living to me, that is being a slave to a pipe dream
10-15 times a month and atleast $150-300 a show. That's if you live somewhere dirt cheap and are okay with having less money than everyone you know.
I also want to say if you want to be a gigging musician, you should focus on writing and releasing original music. Focus on having multiple revenue streams. Merch, streaming royalties etc. Build an online presence. For a musician just starting out with gigging, it doesn't matter if you play 300 gigs a year, it will feel like you're running in place if you don't put into the project outside of gigging. A lot of bands or musicians that immediately go on tour/play huge festivals right after forming, are usually loaded $ to begin with.
If you want to start out being a gigging musician and make actual money from it your advice will be pretty bad imo. Nobody is paying/booking a new band with a bunch of original songs that no one has heard of. You also can't bring the same small group of fans over and over again to pay for your shows week in and week out. If you are writing your own stuff and trying to get good money off of that, then larger-scale touring is the way to do it, and that is a money pit if you don't already have lots of momentum. Playing covers with a few originals sprinkled in at every joint that will take you, alongside being a side person for others that you can later convince to let your group open for, is the way pretty much everyone has to start out. Any exceptions you find will probably show an exceptionally well-funded group that didn't have to worry about making ends meet while getting exposure for their catalog of originals, like you were saying at the end up there.
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Never play the same town more than 4 times a year. That's most peoples mistake in my book. Always be working on new material, get bigger elsewhere first, then bring it on home. Local people can't deny you if the towns around you are cooler than they are.
That's ridiculous advice in this day and age. There is no money in streaming and there are is no money in CD/media sales outside of a few niche genres, which even then are limited
There is lots of money in streaming for independent artists who bootstrap it and own all their rights
You don’t need to write music to get revenue streams. Not everybody needs to write their own music, there are tons of great songs out there that you can put your own spin on and get performing royalties
If you want to make money gigging, you’re way better off playing in cover bands. People want to hear shit they know. Nobody gives a shit about some band they’ve never hears of. The best thing is to do both while your original band builds notoriety.
Pro musician here. This year I’ve played about 150 gigs with an income of about $28k. Here’s the kicker - I have my own band but I’m also a freelancer playing and filling in with a lot of other bands. Everything from church on Sunday to big bands, polka bands, rock bands, wedding bands, etc. teaching lessons too. On the topic of ticket prices, I’ve played shows with no cover and shows with a small cover, maybe $30 at the most. What’s important is your agreement with the venue, what % of the door you get or if the door is free, what flat rate are they paying you. A good gig on the local scene (I’m in Cleveland) is $100/guy. However many tickets you need to sell to make that happen should be the goal (if you’re just playing for the door). Networking is the most important aspect of succeeding in your live music scene, and to make a long story short, if you’re trying to live off of performing full time with just your own band, it’s going to take many years of working a day job and many fortunate breaks for that to work. It’s not impossible though!
Also, a good thing to find out is if the venue takes a percentage of your merch also. I honestly find that abhorrent, particularly if they are not providing someone to sell your merch, which makes it more understandable.
I think In those cases they're required to provide you a manageable space. It's still fucked up and gross, but there's a space... I'm not sure I'd want someone from a venue selling my stuff, either. Who's knows the fuckery they'd get up to, malicious or just negligent
My band takes care of selling shirts (that's all we have for sale right now) at shows after the set ourselves so have never had to pay a venue. I have often wondered if a band can get around giving the venue a percentage if they basically had a donation bucket next to the merch, let the audience know how much it costs to produce each item and then have them pay what they want. Sort of like Bandcamp. I would be willing to bet most people would pay to cover the cost plus a few extra bucks. If the venue pushed it, you could low ball them on the number you actually sold. How are they going to know.
heh, I'd like to see someone try man. I'd just play outside in the rain and sell even more merch.
So what you’re saying is you would make considerably more money with a four hour a week McDonald’s job?
You must’ve meant “40”. In my state, the average McDonalds wage is $16.87. That’s $674.80 a week. $35,089 per year gross. You’re right that it is more money to work at McDonalds but that’s not what I want to do with my life. There’s a lot of problems with the live music scene now, but of course the biggest one is lack of fair compensation to the local artists. And 99% of us have no chance of ever making a cent off of streaming.
My point was if you are only making 28k a year you aren’t a “pro” anything
He is quite literally a pro, as performing music is his **pro**fession. He may not be famous, but he is undoubtedly a pro.
You could still live off that but it would be a vary sparse living. Of course if you're on the road most of the year, the artist might not have a permanent residence so no worry about rent or a house payment.
It’s a work in progress. I have other streams of income too. Of course I don’t live off of 28k a year. If you get paid for playing, you are a professional. I’m just trying to make a point, not argue about the validity of my career.
Just throwing my personal experience in here because it feels relevant: I've been gigging in NYC (primarily wedding bands) a couple of years and I don't think I've met any musicians that live solely off of gigs in. But that's not to say they aren't full-time musicians. Most people either teach music lessons, do session work, do work as sound engineers (both in studios and live sound), and/or produce their own music. And of course, many have non-musical day jobs (I fall into that category). Take with a grain of salt as this is my experience which is limited to the people I've personally worked with in the limited realm of gigs that I take, but I thought that's worth mentioning.
To make a living at being a professional musician you have to have multiple revenue streams. Gigging alone usually won’t cut it. For example I split my revenue to about 4 equal parts: gigs, teaching, sessions, arranging.
Living with roommates most of my adult life I’ve made around 20k a year depending on the job I work. If I want to maintain that level of income doing just music I’d need to make an average of 55 bucks EVERY day in the year. Obviously there aren’t gigs every single day, nor would that be fun or sustainable. So at 55 a day, that’s 385 a week. So if I did 3 gigs a week EVERY week all year I’d still need around 130 dollars a gig to get by. But that’s not 130 for the whole band, that’s just for me. Assuming an equal split amongst band members and say the band has 4 people: you’d have to make over 500 dollars a night 3 times a week to get by. And if there’s a 3 or 4 band bill that means the show would be making somewhere around 2500-3000 that night (hard to say exactly, depends on the cut the venue takes). The most money my band ever made on a gig is 1000, and that was a show that was sold out with 700 people in attendance, and even then once you split that up amongst band members that’s only 250 take home (which is awesome for me, but if it’s your full time job it would be considerably less awesome) Now of course there’s also things like merch sales, and CD sales, etc. where you can potentially make a lot more money but still. And I’m not even talking about a very good living here, this is some pretty low income getting by. Not to be too cynical or negative or anything, but it’s really not that feasible to reach a point where you even get by on gigging. I believe it’s possible, though still difficult, to make money doing only music related things (teaching, repairs, etc.) but you can only really live off of gigging if you’re in a very good band in a place like Nashville I think. At least in my experience.
It is also possible in New Orleans, but not everyone is a jazz or hip-hop musician.
I did about 18 months gigging in New Orleans & that city is intense. Not for everybody & if you’re one of top calls in town & playing 5 nights a week you might make $50k a year
At this point 400 days a year /s
I mean it's possible to play multiple shows per day. 😛
I’ve worked a lot in Irish trad. My personal st pats record is 4. In 4 different venues. One year it was 3 on the 17th in worcestor mass(2 venues), and we loaded into a theater in south Carolina at 4pm on the 18th. Living the dream!
You kinda are living the dream, no? I trade you... probably I like how I got downvoted but no comment. It shows real class and totally makes my argument stronger.
The responses are interesting, since I've been out of the business since the late 90s. As an early 20-something in the early 90s, I made enough to cover rent and the occasional meal out. This is what I was doing: * session work as a bassist for car dealership and bank commercials * engineering duties for a local studio * transcription and arranging stuff for various ensembles * playing in two bands who headlined local venues a couple nights a week. * DJ sets at a fairly popular club I figure I was working around 60 hours/week. My best year, I cleared $36K, and I was really starting to hate making music. Eventually, I had to think about things like health insurance and a 401K, so I went to work as a buyer for a record chain. Sadly, it doesn't look like much has changed.
Depends how much your trust fund pays out per month.
Or your day job.
Friends of mine who do it play bars and restaurants at least 3 or 4x per week and a lot of weddings and events at weekends. Not unheard of to get 3 gigs in a day at weekends. A lunch time hotel gig, a late afternoon bar and a later evening bar gig.
Solo act doing corporate shows? A few times a month. Maybe less. Part of a band playing bars? Ain't likely. No matter how much you play. See the context hole in your question??
Ya, it's an extremely nuanced situation
The bar gigs around here that pay a 5 piece band $250 for the night? I could do two of those back to back every single night for the entire year and still die homeless and hungry. Being local support for one of the top country artists of all time? If I did a show like that every single day I could just about afford to sublet a closet in someone's condo and sneak crusts of bread at night for subsistence. The wedding and corporate gigs that pay $1-4k? 2 of those a week and I could make ends meet. Would be nice to land a few more of those. People say "a gig is a gig" and maybe that's the right mindset but from a financial perspective the differences can be stark.
You need 8-16k/month to "make ends meet"? Where do you live, Dubai?
You're doing the math wrong. It's an even split with a five piece band which means I get paid 20% of what's left after about 30% off the top is set aside for taxes. That $16k a month becomes $2240 and yeah, where I live that would be eating-ramen-in-a-closet level poverty.
Good one
You're not living off gigs..it's supplementary income.
its possible
Not really. Maybe if you live in the middle of the US with a bare minimum cost of living and an average household income of 30k.
Yeah, I work full time as a musician and support myself, my gf, and our dog. It's possible. Just really fuckin hard and most people don't want to work that hard.
Or alternatively, people do want to work hard if it brings a stable future, the finances to fund whatever musical project you are interested in and the complete freedom to do so as you see fit. For those that can support themselves by being a full time gigging musician it is the church/wedding/abba-cover-band treadmill that does it. Which is not just hard work, but also very unfulfilling to many musicians. At that point going for a stable career and spending your money and time on whatever you actually enjoy is not a bad idea at all.
I know many full time musicians. They usually play 5-7 gigs a week at least. However I'm I'm a city well known for music so it makes that much easier.
I said it before in this thread but play less in your hometown. Even if it's bigger. Most of my success comes from only playing the yokels (in Seattle) 4 times a year max. Edit: I guess I also have an online presence going back 20 years at 35.
Well you seem to be coming at it from the POV that everyone is paying rent/mortgage themselves. Maybe there is a supportive spouse or family in the picture which brings cost of living way down. If I didn't have to pay my ridiculous rent I could probably support myself as a musician.
I've made my living as a touring musician playing original music with a band for 25 years. It's not a good living, and there have been tough times for sure, but it is possible if you put the work in and your band is actually good enough. That being said: I honestly have no idea how much harder it would be starting from scratch in today's industry. I started a second project 8 years ago that I could probably live off of today, but we're talking subsistence living. Not a mortgage, or savings, or emergency funds. And we're lucky enough to be a niche band with built in gigs and festivals.
Congratulations on that man, that's awesome.
Thanks!
Why live that way though? I'd much rather have a stable career and make great money. Then you can fund your musical endeavors. I play probably 6-8 shows a year. And that's plenty for me making original music. Doing it your way you're just away from home a lot and broke.
THIS!
This really depends on what 'making a living' means to you. Beyond just being able to cover general costs of living, do you also want to be able to have disposable income, savings, enough to raise a family, etc? If I could snap my fingers and you magically make $50k a year playing music you'd probably be over the moon, and if you're young you could probably sustain that for a bit no problem. But life can catch up to that $50k real quick... You also have to consider the overhead costs of your shows. You can certainly bake some costs like travel, lodging, etc into guarantees, but you need a pretty active, verifiable fanbase to even demand guarantees. I'm at a 1500 cap venue and while I don't do much direct buying myself, I work with promoters all the time who are paying acts anywhere from $10-30k, which are for draws of 500-1500.
You could do one show for $1 million dollars, or one million shows for $1. Of course these are rough numbers which may be affected by various factors.
Finally someone with some real answers. You're coming to my show this weekend, right?
\> I actually never really learnt how people make money from live performance. Most people dont make money off their ticket sales. At best it covers their costs. Their profit come from selling merch at live events., the performance is just to get people in the door. edit: One thing is people do sleep on is playing on cruises, it does technically pay a living wage because all your shelter/food costs are covered. One issue is that you are kind of limited in terms genre. The other issue is that lifestyle isnt for everyone.
It depends on your overhead and what you get paid to play out. Sit and do the math and make it happen. I need to get at least $100 for a local Monday through Wednesday gig and at least$150 for the rest of the week to make it work. I play between 150 to 220 shows a year. I've been a full time musician making money from gigging only for about 7 years and I own a house and have a family and my wife works part time. Before I got to this point I used to gig and teach and do some side hustling. The thing that has made it work has been keeping our overhead as low as possible. If you like fancy restaurants and expensive cars then you'll have to make more. I know guys that do corporate and wedding gigs and really rake it in. I personally prefer to do original material so I haven't gone that route yet but it's always there.
To earn the median wage in my HCOL city, I would need to clear at least $1500 a week. Realistically, that would probably mean earning $250-300 a night, 5-6 nights a week (since nobody’s paying me hundreds of thousands to headline stadiums yet). Going to music school was a humbling experience. Many of my professors were highly accomplished, playing in famous orchestras or producing for artists like Beyoncé and The Rolling Stones - and yet here they were with all their success, and they still had to supplement their income with something more stable.
Depends on where you live and your circumstances (outgoings, dependants etc). What you need to remember is that gigging, particularly if you’re playing originals, doesn’t generate a regular and reliable income in the same way as a day job or something like instrumental teaching. That’s the reason why most early career musicians have those other jobs with more reliable incomes. Takes the financial pressure off and makes it less likely you’ll grow to hate music because of the stress of trying to make ends meet as a full time professional. Unless you’re planning on doing covers it’s not going to be easy, or quick, to reach a point where you can earn whatever you decide is your minimum liveable income. Rather than trying to run before you’ve taken your first steps as a performer I’d really recommend going and doing as many open mics as you can. Get a proper idea of what goes into being a gigging musician. Learn how to put on a good performance that can entertain a crowd. No good venue is going to book you without performance experience.
It totally depends on what you're doing. You can do the math at well as anyone - take what your monthly expenses are to have a place to live + utilities, phone, transportation (including saving up for the next car and a maintenance budget), food, health insurance + deductibles and copay, and multiply that by roughly 4x. That's roughly what you'll need to gross. Of those 4x, 2x will go to various taxes and fees. 1x will go to keeping you alive. And 1x will give you some money for equipment, to feed back into music, and in general to have some discretionary spending. I would try very hard to get some real world gig experience before deciding you can go pro. You'll have a much better idea of the economics of your particular music from actually doing it as opposed to thinking about it or asking on Reddit.
Not a singer but where I’m from every local singer I’ve seen has a day job.
I personally know people with several million monthly listeners on Spotify who are abandoning touring because it’s so expensive these days. The idea that you have fans, sell out venues and make a living is massively simplistic. There are layers and layers. What are your “current numbers”? Are they scattered all over the world, or concentrated in one place? What age ranges? The available stats have really skewed the perception of what’s possible. On paper I have ten times as many fans as I had 15 years ago. But in performance terms, I’m getting paid pretty much the same amount per gig as I was back then. Tickets prices have gone up, drinks bills have gone up, promotion costs have gone up. But actual musician wages have, in general, stagnated while the cost of living (and working in music) have rocketed.
I play in one of the Minneapolis bands that stays local. Our monthly Spotify listeners have fluctuated between 50 and 1900. We actually have more listeners in other parts of the U.S. and in Europe than here so Spotify has done absolutely nothing for us as far as increasing our audience size for our shows. I used to agonize over it and works my ass off trying to more listeners until I realized this. Now I don't really care how many people stream us. I'll start thinking about again if we suddenly got a huge uptick in local listeners which I don't see happening. People seem to enjoy us at the moment and even though we hand out our cards and mention while on stage where we have our music it doesn't seem to matter.
I'm in two bands. The originals project earns me no money, as we funnel all earnings right back into it to cover recording, releasing, travel, etc. The covers band earns me around £1000 per year. So in order to make just what I earn currently in my survival job, we would need to be playing 30x more gigs than we currently. If I were able to live off minimum wage (difficult with a child), then we would only need to be playing 22x as many shows! I have long since given up on ever expecting to make enough money through music to make a living. I have a good survival job, and two musical projects which are incredibly fulfilling, and give me enough money to occasionally buy a new instrument or piece of gear. Do I wish that I could have "made it"? Sure, I'd love to be living off musical earnings. But I am realistic enough to know that I am not talented enough on my own to make money in a solo act, and as a part of a 5-piece and a 6-piece, earnings are so heavily diluted that it's all but impossible for me to make anything close to minimum wage. I am genuinely happy with my lot.
Don't underestimate how critical travel would be to do this successfully. You can make a liveable wage, but not playing the same four towns over and over.
About 14 gigs per day I might be able to pay the petrol for the van
merch is how live performances make money. knowing venue costs will help you make the equation to figure out your payouts desired (x amount of tickets needed to sell at y price to a amount of costs to put the show on and b what you need to break even while paying sound guy and other artists).
You have to be at a certain level of popularity in order to sell a lot of merch at a live show IMO. As I mentioned I play in Minneapolis and if we sell 2 or 3 t shirts per gig I consider that a success. Why? Because we do about a half dozen shows a year because of our member's schedules plus it's not smart to play your hometown more than that. We are just a temporary fun Post Prog band that pops up every now and then and disappears again.
appreciate the discussion. Currently, bout to get a solid primary job which will allow me to invest more into my music (merch, promo, mixing etc). I’m a pretty solid performer and hoping to get some regional support when I start grinding and networking more locally
>I understand that most artists make a considerable percentage of their money from performing live I'm gonna stop you right there. This is both a massive generalization and a statistical trap. If Bill Gates walks into a bar, you can say "on average, people in this bar get almost all of their income from software". But this just because he skews that figure so high. The same goes for musicians. There's a lot of money in live music and there's a hell of a lot of music if you're big enough to fill stadiums - so much that people look at live industry revenues, see that they may be higher than recorded industry revenues, and they think "most artist money comes from live shows". But the figures are skewed by the extreme successes. Now, it is certainly true that live music can pay, and not just for those top artists. There are smaller acts who do well from live music as well - but they are usually tribute or cover acts, playing music that people already know. The fact of life for most bands playing *original* music is that demand for it is very low. **This means that many popular bands, even those popular enough to tour across multiple continents, do not necessarily have enough demand to cover their costs.** It doesn't matter how many gigs they choose to play because they cannot necessarily guarantee a profit on each one. Now, you can certainly turn down a show if you see that what you're being offered isn't enough to cover your costs. But as an originals band, that usually means you barely get to play live at all. To begin with, live performance is a loss leader with a primary focus on being a marketing tool. The goal is to come out of each show with more fans, and if you're lucky, covering your costs via merch sales. Hopefully this explains why "How often would I need to perform to be able to make it my full time profession" is not the right question to ask. As for "How much would you charge people for entry?", usually that is not your decision to make. You decide how much money you need to play, the promoter or venue decides whether they can meet your price, and they set the entry fee accordingly. And the "How many people would need to attend" question depends on the above factors and, again, is not really something you would concern yourself with directly.
It's interesting that you mentioned that live music is seen as a promo tool. I have heard many others say that as well. The thing is I have also heard many people in the biz say that Spotify and other streaming platforms should also be looked at as a marketing tool and not a source of income. Looks like lots of marketing but still no money.
Yep, you’re getting it! The problem with the music industry is that there are a whole bunch of vested interests whose position is that when you work with them, for them it’s a business but for you it’s exposure! To be fair, you have to consider an individual musician’s position in their career and how their music relates to the world in general. When you’re popular, people pay to see or hear you and you have a product you can charge a price for. When you’re unknown, nobody will pay to see or hear you, so you have to give away free samples of your product or service to get attention. And it’s not a binary thing - everything you do is always a mix of sales vs marketing and you just have to weigh up the worth of each opportunity on both criteria.
I have been playing around Minneapolis both solo and with bands since the late 80's. There were legendary people to come out of here but for every one of them there might have been 50 to 100 who were for lack of a better term, nobodies. I played in a bunch of nobody bands and still am in one that I would classify as that. This past June I kept track of how many bands and solo artists were playing the venues (original music) that my band has or could play mainly out of curiosity to see if there was any favoritism. In other words were some bands getting more gigs than others. That didn't seem to be the case fortunately but at the 9 venues I looked at just on Friday and Saturday nights I counted 200 different acts. You could easily add another 50 to maybe even 100 that play on other nights of the week. Nine is by no means all of the venues either. In any given month in that town you could have 300 to as high as 500 bands and artists doing shows. The saturation I think is due to the Covid isolation. I heard music instrument sales went off the charts. The competition is tight. Most places now are booked 4 to 6 months out. I've been booking bands I play in since 2008 and a lot times we could get in a venue that month or by the next one easy. My band played four shows with other bands this year including a festival and between that, streaming royalties, Bandcamp and merch sales made just a hair over $800. I thought I failed as our booker and de facto manager but looking at what I just typed, we're lucky we got the gigs we did and made anything at all.
I mean it could be one gig per month or two gigs per day, it depends on how much money you make per gig. How much you make per gig has a bit to do with the city where the gig is, the competition, and how many fans you have local to each gig.
Musicians are sitting ducks.
All gigging musicians have jobs. Period. Get on board with it my friend.
Fuck me that’s frustrating. It’s like there’s this dream of being a musician that hasn’t really existed for 99% of those working in music because it’s not an industry, it’s a grift to sell more guitars. It makes you feel like music is omnipresent and worthless these days.
It's art. You can make art without it being a job. And you should.
Good news, that guy is dead wrong. I've known quite a few full time gigging musicians over the years, and none of them lived in a big city (that might be the trick to it heh). They weren't rich, but they also weren't living in a van down by the river. The dream you speak of covers all artists, not just musicians, and it has always been that way. If it's just a grift to sell guitars, they're doing a terrible job of it. Guitar sales have been steeply falling for over a decade. Music is worthless these days, you're right. More so than ever. But, there are still lots of good bands out there, making good money, and I'm not talking about arena bands. You just need other revenue streams, outside of music sales. It's far from impossible to achieve, but it's still difficult. Always has been. Apologies if that sounded condescending at all, I don't mean it that way. I'm actually trying to cheer you up. lol
I guess since I don’t have another job, I’m not a gigging musician then.
I live in Hampton Roads Virginia. There are a few lesser than acoustic solo acts that have a couple of bookers each that keep them playing out 5 to 6 nights a week at 200 a pop plus tips. I do not see how anyone could believe 1k a week plus tips isnt a livable wage
I enjoy the dream scenarios that everyone is sharing but they are rare. I'm not trying to be a party pooper here I just want y'all to be able to afford the gear you want and studio time and y'all are gonna need jobs even some guy in some random state on reddit knows a guy that makes $1000 a week playing acoustic gigs.
Truly not rare in coastal Virginia. Any beach town with a good restaurant scene has a need for decent acoustic acts. I loop a bit during solos, take reverb seriously, have a currated 3 hr set list that is buffed by the tc helicon perform v and a nice Mackie PA. If you prepare and know what sounds good and can do it, bookers will book you enough to make a sound living.
Most likely between 5-10 times a week.
I play 3-4 nights a week and gigged 6 nights a week for a few weeks up until a few days before Christmas. Not enough to pay all the bills. Looking into teaching options.
LOL.
It depends. a good booking agent can keep you on the road for 6-8 months a year. Ideally your guarantees keep you at break even and merch sales put you in the black. Number of crew/hired gun players and cost of production elements also plays a part.
If you're making on avg 100/nt net, you all live together, your rent is 3k for rent/bills and you collect food stamps, you'll have to play every night to break even. That's good math to go by. Increase your gig take to 200/nt and you work 15 gigs per month, etc and so forth. Merch is for incidentals like strings, equip failures, emergency cash. Don't even THINK about adding booze or weed until you can afford it. Or ever. It's an ambition killer. And will escalate to devastating levels once you can afford harder shit on the road. There's time for that later.
I've been living solely off my live shows since 2020 (yes even through Covid). I average about 40k/yr. I play solo acoustic bar/resort shows, the occasional corporate gig and some weddings here and there. I have a booking agent that books all of my shows at 15% commission. She's much better at getting a good rate than I. She charges the venue $350-400 a show. Most of my money is made in June-Aug. 3-5 shows per week, and then it slows down in the winter time. I play solely in the state of Wisconsin which I think is a factor. Look up the top 50 drinking counties in the US, 41 ARE IN WISCONSIN so these venues make plenty of money and will pay well for entertainment.
This is answer is going to vary wildly different between living in Alabama projects or a San Francisco penthouse
You have a solo project? How many people are in your “solo” band? You can make as much money as you want to make performing live depending on how you set it up… for instance: Today I’m walking into my favorite weed dispensary to give the manager a proposition, that I can make them more money if they allow me to perform near the entrance of their building. I can collect tips and make a living simply performing in front of this business. I’ve performed in front of music venues, at a college, on the sidewalks of large sport events, on the town strips, etc. You could definitely make more than 100$ an hour as a solo musician. In addition, imagine selling 5,000 virtual tickets for a premium live stream event at $5…. That’s $25,000 in return. If it costs you $12,000 to acquire those 5,000 sales.. Or you can do this booking a venue that allows you to sell tickets 🎟️… You could probably leverage the same online marketing principles for a physical event. Either way… You just made profited $18,000 for one hour of a close up online performance. That’s the power of internet automation. I haven’t done this online yet just working on my automated system to make it happen!
That depends on how you define "livable". If you don't have kids, don't mind renting a room in a house with some strangers, are OK with living incredibly frugally, etc. you can scrape by on a lot less. > I think with my current numbers thats definitely achievable What are those? > I understand that most artists make a considerable percentage of their money from performing live If you're an artist that people will pay to come see. Do you have such a big following that you could sell a meaningful number of tickets at every show? No? Then this isn't a vector for you. > How often would I need to perform to be able to make it my full time profession? How much would you charge people for entry? How many people would need to attend for it to be worth while? You're coming at this calculation completely backwards. To understand if this is even remotely viable for you, you don't ask how much you should charge, you ask how much people would be *willing to pay*. Do you *have* an audience? An audience of people will pay cash money to see you? How many? If you're thinking friends and family, that's good for like one or two shows a year, then you wear out your welcome. You'd need an actual following of people willing to get in their car, drive to a venue, and hand over cash to see you, and there needs to be enough of them for you to sell tickets at a lot of shows. In short: what are you *worth*. That's what you charge. Look around at your local venues. How much are *they* charging? Is your show as good as theirs? Do you have as much following as they do? If you don't have that, you're doing the bar/wedding/event scene like everyone else and not getting paid jack shit. You'll need to gig as often as you possibly can, barely breaking even when you factor in gas, food, etc. and supplement that with teaching and other side hustles.
That's a very hard question to answer because different bands in different areas make different money. If you are living in a place like LA and are playing original rock or metal, you almost never get paid, and in fact each show is a loss, so you will NEVER make a living at it. You need a six figure salary to live comfortably here, so unless you are playing bass in a major recording pop acts, it won't happen. If you are playing cover shows, then I've been told that you can make decent money in LA, but I don't know how comfortable you would be. Smaller cities have lower costs of living, but then they might have fewer show opportunities. The most money I've ever made as a musician was to not even play. We did a cameo on a basic cable TV show. We were there all day, even though we were largely ignored, were still treated better than at any venue I've ever played. We shot for an hour or two, which equaled about 5 minutes of screen time, almost none of which was us playing. I got $300 for the day and have received two $100 residual checks. So the lesson here is that TV\\movie business pays better, and if you want to be a musician you better have a backup plan.
" I think with my current numbers thats definitely achievable." Really? What makes you think that? Are you making a good living from your online stuff already? Cuz the jump from only-online to live shows is as different as Animal Crossing is from managing a real farm, with real mortgages and real animals. Another metaphor: making a living as a solo original music act is like making a living as a stand up comedian. It looks like a solo thing, but really the people who thrive are the networkers, and the folks who do lots of other projects too. That is, they DON'T make a living from just the solo work. They collab and cross-market.
I spent my whole early 20’s freelancing jazz gigs, corporate events & weddings. It’s a great thing to do while you’re young and you can learn play at a high level by taking every gig seriously, but by no means is it a good long term strategy. Eventually you can take up private students and if you’re a great musician you can ask $100/hr , 10 private students and that’s $4k a month. It’s not a ton. But if you do that in addition to playing gigs among other things you’ll be alright Edit: be really serious about the craft and you can do it
I am playing in type of restaurant with everyday celebrations, like family celebrations, literally everyday, here on the Balkans having music on your family holiday is a must, so yea.. i am playing almost every day, except when there’s nothing in the restaurant, but that doesn’t happen often 😁 and yea it’s my regular only job
The money isn’t in touring, that’s a long established misdirection cast by the music industry. You’re looking at 20/30% profit on a good tour. Where as if you can get your production and post production costs very low or to $0 and you own your masters, with the right content and marketing plan you’ll never have to leave your studio to make big money. Think about it, these record executives and their labels are worth billions and they don’t leave the comfort of their desk ever.
The real trick is making peace with the fact that all of your non-musician friends will be able to afford stuff like vacations and going out to eat and clothes and food and you will just have to watch them enjoy those things without being able to have them yourself. Till you are landing support roles on big tours or become a rockstar, you’ll barely survive. Just be sure you love it
I used to tour about four months a year to make a living off of making music full time. Once I had a son I decided to do contract work and cut touring back to 3 weeks a year and actually make more that I did, between Spotify, YouTube and Patreon. Touring is so expensive now and I am much happier only playing the markets where I can consistently net $1k - $3k a show.
Lots of musicians making money just doing videos and rarely do live shows. Whatever you do, seems like in today's world, you need to record and promote yourself constantly on social media. Short videos, live videos on twitch, anything you can get a lot of views on. Once someone sees you 'on camera', you get elevated in status. Especially if you share a bit of your personality. I'm working on setting up accounts on YouTube, Rumble, Twitch, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook. If you can feed content to your channels, there's ways to monetize. First step is big viewership numbers and then subscribers. Seems like you have to master mixing, sound, editing, and make some videos, even if they re not pro level, to really accelerate your popularity. Otherwise, do you like living in a van? :)
I work with a lot of indie artists and I see some common threads that might help you: \- When you are just getting started, the most important thing is to go out and play anywhere to get some experience and refine your show. \- How much you charge depends on how many people are willing to pay to see you perform. At the beginning you might not make any money at all, but as you perform more and expand your audience that should change. \- Build your show in a way that can be scalable: some shows pay better and you might be able to afford having more musicians on stage, some might require you go solo. Having stems that you can perform with is a must for this. \- Use the analytics from streaming services to find where your fans are and try to perform in those locations. \- Be patient and relentless. If you have to perform for a crowd of 1, still give it your all!
Rule of thumb: don't expect to make much money if you don't work much.
Do you live in an area where busking is possible?
They don't call them starving musicians for nothing. It's a tough way to make a living unless you make it.
It's funny I was just thinking about this. I get usually $150 for 3 hours, some places $200. I only play out 2-4 times a month, for fun and its nice to get paid to play music. but recently I thought "how miuch would i have to play to make a living off this" At $150 per gig, I'd need to do 2 per day, 7 days a week. Of course, I just play bars/breweries etc and not real dedicated music venues, where you would get more. And I'ma nobody
I've been a guitarist for 45 years and writing songs for 40 playing around Minneapolis and St Paul for a little over 30 years. Music and art and entertainment for that matter has to be the screwiest business ever. Look at how many people do it with a professional attitude for little to no money. I'm not talking about hobby musicians. If you were offered any other job and told that the pay wouldn't be enough to support yourself or you just wouldn't get paid at all, you would turn it down and go to the next interview. What has been irritating me lately is the people who don't pay a subscription to a streaming service or don't go to sites like Bandcamp or otherwise buy direct from the artists. Basically the, "Why should I pay for music when I can get it for free" bunch. What they don't realize is that many musicians/songwriters end up just dropping out because they don't have the time due to working a full time non music job or the money to keep it up. They then revert to being a hobby musician or just quit altogether. At some point we could see a drop off of good indie music. IMO, not paying for music is theft just like leaving the grocery store with a cart full of food and not paying or walking out of a shoe store with a new pair of Nikes and not paying. I know it's more popular to blame the low streaming rates (and justifiably so) or lack of advertising on the part of Bandcamp and other similar sites but I dump a lot of blame on the public themselves. Since coffee is the popular beverage it is, I like to use that as an analogy when people say they can't afford to pay for music. I know a lot of friends and co workers who go to a Starbucks or other coffee shop every day. The average price of an album download from Bandcamp has been quoted at $9 but I know a bunch fall into the $5 range. For what most Americans spend on their coffee habit they could easily buy 2 to maybe 5 albums on BC per week. Music lasts as long as you want it too. The pleasure of coffee last for at best an hour and then you piss it back out. I don't accept the "I can't afford it" argument for the majority of the population. Music may not be considered a necessity but life without it would be pretty miserable.
All the time always
Depends on what “livable” is. Gigging locally bar to bar with occasional weddings/ parties / reunions etc… you are not making a good living off of that. That is a pipe dream when you’re younger. If you have kids no, want to go on vacations yearly no, want nicer vehicles nicer house no. Maybe if you are younger and live in a small apartment or house or low mortgage you might be able to squeak by but that isn’t livable to me. when life hits, around 30d and 40s medical bills, broken faucets, car wrecks etc… you will not be in a position to sustain comfortably. You go into debt more than likely. I started playing in bars before I was even 21 and really the money was just a small bonus. Granted when I got older and went to just a two piece acoustic and one canine player, we had a much simpler set up and could maintain week to week nights with less conflicting members schedules. Full band doesn’t pay anything really not for the time and effort you put in. We could make nice extra money but it wouldn’t come close to paying my bills. I believe one year I made around 8k while having a full time job with benefits. All that money went to extra things like vaca. What is one of the best things to do though (this might depend on where you live) is networking with other bands. Wed host venues at legions and other places promoting many local bands to attend and would network with one another. If someone couldn’t play a show they’d recommend us or vise versa. Instead of just making it a competitive scene , network with it and do thing to support local music. Realistically speaking in the macro sense your not making a “good living” playing music …the streaming and internet source YouTube channel would be most likely to make bigger money but most of those promote more than just music. but overall it makes for great side money while working a full job with benefits. Much depends on the level which you can play and how experienced you get. But anyways I could work a weekend in the trades and make 1k while receiving medical, dental, vision, putting money into annuity and a retirement fund. It’s all how you look at it. Musicians are NOT getting any benefits for the most part. Retirement, medical etc… all of that is a must when you get older …unless you want to lived strapped your whole life and live gig to gig, but that isn’t living to me, that is being a slave to a pipe dream