By Jon Best

In last month's Splash, reading Bishop's article "Hampton Roads" Musicians on Trial got me thinking.

In the article, Bishop makes a case for paying local bands more money for gigs. I can't fault him for that viewpoint, certainly; I myself paid my bills for several years as a member of a local band, Falstaff, and this is a hard area to do that in for anyone.

I think a few points need some closer scrutiny, though.

A band playing in a club is a business providing a service for another business. Period. Many smaller restaurant/club owners enjoy and want to support local musicians, but they have to look at it from a business perspective. No responsible business owner is going to pay for a service that returns less than is spent. The more music friendly clubs may just be happy breaking even, but it's not unreasonable, as a business owner, to expect that $X paid out averages $X+ taken in.

Here's an example, pulled directly out of my butt. There's this bar. The owner/manager thinks it'd be cool to have bands. There is a willing band. Great. Now, what is fair? Well, let's break it down. The average profit per drink sold is $1-2 each, give or take. Let's be charitable to the band, and say $2. The band asks for $300 to play that evening.

For the club to break even on the deal, they need to sell at least 150 more drinks that evening than they would have without the band. If there's advertising (say, a monthly $400 ad for Friday and Saturday nights, or 8 nights a month), then that's another $50 a night, or 25 drinks. Remember, this is just to break even.

Let's say that, across the crowd, teetotaler to raving drunk, everyone averages three drinks a night.

In this specific example, that adds up to 60 extra people the band needs to bring in, just to be worth $300 for the evening. Even that assumes the band is providing sound- if the club owner is expected to pony up for the PA system, that's another 15-20 people.

Can your band reliably expect to bring in 75 people that would not have otherwise shown up? Congratulations. You're worth, as a business, $300 + sound per night.

I know this example is really general- different bands are going to attract different crowds that eat and drink differently. Clubs charge different amounts for food and drink. Longer and shorter set times are going to affect things. There may even be a cover, although when was the last time you saw a small to medium bar charge a cover without the Hampton Roads bar-hopping crowd throwing a fit?

The point is, in every business relationship, there is an equitable agreement to be made. If the band can't pull enough people to add $500 to the bar's bottom line, then they can't expect to get paid that much.

There will always be bars that won't pay (or make) over $50 a night for bands, and there will always be bands who are willing to play for cheap. Just like there will always be $15/hr. recording studios, and dudes that will draw your band's logo for free beer. Does that mean that bands, studio owners, and graphic artists should throw shit fits over it? Of course not- in the face of competition, you make sure you're worth what you're asking, and ignore the bottom feeders.

If it's your livelihood, spend the extra 20-25 hours a week you have access to (over and above the hobbyists) making your endeavor more worthwhile than theirs. Treat it like a business, and put together a plan of where you want to be in 6 months or a year, and how you're going to get there. Spend more time writing better songs, practicing, marketing creatively, and calling bars, clubs, fraternities, wherever in other cities, to set up some touring opportunities. Come up with cool stuff at every price point to have at your merchandising table, so that the people who donÕt have $10 for an album may buy a single for $5, or a sticker. That merch table can turn a $100 gig into a $250 gig pretty quickly.

The point is, economics drives how much anyone gets paid for anything. On the one hand, you get what you pay for. On the other, you get paid what you've proven to the market you're worth, and we live in a weird market for live performance. I certainly don't think that everyone should take really low paying gigs. Rather, I think that everyone serious has a job to do- prove you're worth getting some of the few $500+ gigs that exist around here, and go find them in other cities, too. If you are honest with yourself about how well you can put butts in seats at local venues, then youÕre a good ways down the road of knowing what's fair for you to charge.
 

Jon Best likes to hear other points of view, so feel free to email your thoughts to jonbest@cox.net. Go easy, though, his wife just had a baby.