Posted by: travlin'easy
How to make a living playing music... - 04/29/19 05:33 PM
was the topic of discussion on another forum I frequent. One of the forum members, a guy named Norm, asked for a list of ways to make money playing music. Below is my long-winded response to his question. Thought I would share this with the good folks here as well:
Norm, the avenues for making a living in the wonderful world of music are long and winding. There are dozens of great opportunities out there, many of which are never really explored by musicians because most of the work does not involve music at all, but instead, operating a small business.
The most lucrative areas are very difficult to get into, such as producing short songs for TV and Radio Commercials. This is often limited to studio production types who can spend weeks getting that single jingle put together and recorded in broadcast quality. Additionally, instead of singing a song, you may end up doing voice-overs for the advertised product, which is a sub-speciality that proved quite lucrative for me when I was much younger. I stumbled into this purely by accident when I was a newscaster for a small radio station. We produced our own commercials right in the station studio and after I did the first one for a local car dealership, he insisted that I do them all. Lots of other advertisers demanded my voice as well.
As the link pointed out, the average, full time musician makes less than $25,000 a year, which is true. Nite clubs and restaurants pay the same now as they did 50 years ago and that is not about to change if the owners have their way. This is because there are still lots of aspiring musicians out there that want to get their 15 minutes of fame and some would even pay the club owners to allow them to be on their stage. Most nite clubs and restaurants in the mid-Atlantic region, mid-west and west coast pay an average of $100 for a 4-hour performance on weekdays and $150 for 4 hours on weekends. Same holds true for most country clubs. So, if you work 5 days a week, which the vast majority of full-time musicians DO NOT, you would make about $25,000 a year.
From that $25,000 annual salary, you must subtract your expenses, which are tax deductible. This includes transportation costs, which are a biggie and could consume as much as 33 percent of your nightly fee. Then there is the initial outlay for equipment, which could be as much as $10,000 for a complete setup, keyboard, amp, mic, stands, speakers, keyboard seat, lights, etc... Of course, you don't want to go to work dressed like you just crawled out of a ditch you were digging. I had 2 dozen long sleeved, satin shirts with matching ties, a half-dozen pair of black slacks, 2 pairs of highly polished shoes, cuff links, tie clasps, fancy suspenders, and a couple dozen silk vests. The clothing alone cost me about $4,000. By the time you reach the bottom line, the amount of NET profit, what you get to put in YOUR pocket, most musicians would have made a better living flipping burgers at Micky D's.
The next most lucrative area is the senior circuit, nursing homes, assisted living centers, retirement communities, senior centers, etc... Most have an entertainment budget that is a bit tight, but they are willing to pay more for highly qualified musical entertainers. Not only must you be a reasonably good musician and be able to play just about any song from the early 1940s to as late as the early 1990s, but additionally, you must be a great singer. If you do not possess both skills, then all bets are off. If you are willing to work, you can easily make $50,000 to $65,000 a year working the senior circuit. Additionally, you must have great people skills and be able to easily communicate with people of all ages. Most of the activity directors will be in their late 20s to mid 30s, while your audiences will range in age from 55 to 100 years of age.
You must be versatile. Be ready to play everything from Happy Birthday, to the Anniversary Waltz, God Bless America, Hava Nagila, polkas, Latin, Italian and a host of other venues. I learned a dozen songs in Latin and another dozen in Italian and was unable to speak a word of either at the time. I learned them phonetically. You need to be able to transition seamlessly from one song to another, from Old Time Rock And Roll to Santa Baby, to In The Still Of The Night, to Autumn Leaves without blinking an eye and never missing a beat. This is not easy, it takes a lot of forethought and advance planning, but this does not mean you go to a song list and stick to it - that is a big mistake.
I always considered a song list as a feeler, something to determine what the crowd wants to hear. You must be able to look at your audience, read that crowd, and determine what songs they respond to and how well they receive those songs, and go from there. If you cannot do this, you will quickly lose the audience and it's game over. Usually, at least from my observations, musicians that play very loud do not have the ability to read an audience. They try to overcome their shortfalls by cranking up the volume to ear bleed levels, believing that this will entice people to get up and dance. What they fail to understand is that if you want an audience to get up and dance, you must play music they can dance to. When you have accomplished this, you have learned to read the crowd.
Private parties are a good way to go as long as they do not interfere with your regular musical income, such as the senior circuit. I charged the same hourly rate for private parties as I did for a nursing home. Nursing home jobs, though, usually only last 1-hour, where a private party can be as long as 5-hours. Plus, most of the private party jobs usually involved a free dinner, and more often than not, you got great tips from attendees. Additionally, if you did a great job as an entertainer, you usually ended up with referrals - hard combination to beat.
Political fund raisers can be very lucrative. Granted, these jobs only come along every couple of years at the federal level, but at the state and local levels, there are elections held nearly every year. I had a flat fee for political fund raisers of $500, even if the musical entertainment only lasted 30 minutes. No one ever balked at the price, and I had more work than I could handle most of the time.
At many of the events, not only was I the musical entertainer and singer, but I was also the MC for the event. For more than 25 years I MC'd the largest fishing and boating expo in the USA, didn't have to play a note on the keyboard or sing, and averaged $500 a day making announcements every hour for just 5 minutes. Not a bad day's work and I got a free lunch and dinner our of the deal. That show ran 4 days during the dead of winter, I picked up a cool $2,000, then went back to my regular senior schedule.
In order to do any or all of the above, you must be ready to learn how to run a small business. You are the sole proprietor, the go to person for everything. Not only must you be be a good musician/entertainer/singer, you must also be the public relations manager, bookkeeper, accountant, disbursing agent, advertising agent, equipment manager, purchasing agent, etc... You must be all those things in a single, neatly-wrapped package and never, ever call in sick. This is show business and the show must go on. Regardless of whether you have a headache or toothache, you have to go on stage with a smile, make eye contact with the audience, provide them with some enthusiasm to have fun, and finish the job with them begging you for more.
And that, my friends, is how to make a living playing music,
Gary
Norm, the avenues for making a living in the wonderful world of music are long and winding. There are dozens of great opportunities out there, many of which are never really explored by musicians because most of the work does not involve music at all, but instead, operating a small business.
The most lucrative areas are very difficult to get into, such as producing short songs for TV and Radio Commercials. This is often limited to studio production types who can spend weeks getting that single jingle put together and recorded in broadcast quality. Additionally, instead of singing a song, you may end up doing voice-overs for the advertised product, which is a sub-speciality that proved quite lucrative for me when I was much younger. I stumbled into this purely by accident when I was a newscaster for a small radio station. We produced our own commercials right in the station studio and after I did the first one for a local car dealership, he insisted that I do them all. Lots of other advertisers demanded my voice as well.
As the link pointed out, the average, full time musician makes less than $25,000 a year, which is true. Nite clubs and restaurants pay the same now as they did 50 years ago and that is not about to change if the owners have their way. This is because there are still lots of aspiring musicians out there that want to get their 15 minutes of fame and some would even pay the club owners to allow them to be on their stage. Most nite clubs and restaurants in the mid-Atlantic region, mid-west and west coast pay an average of $100 for a 4-hour performance on weekdays and $150 for 4 hours on weekends. Same holds true for most country clubs. So, if you work 5 days a week, which the vast majority of full-time musicians DO NOT, you would make about $25,000 a year.
From that $25,000 annual salary, you must subtract your expenses, which are tax deductible. This includes transportation costs, which are a biggie and could consume as much as 33 percent of your nightly fee. Then there is the initial outlay for equipment, which could be as much as $10,000 for a complete setup, keyboard, amp, mic, stands, speakers, keyboard seat, lights, etc... Of course, you don't want to go to work dressed like you just crawled out of a ditch you were digging. I had 2 dozen long sleeved, satin shirts with matching ties, a half-dozen pair of black slacks, 2 pairs of highly polished shoes, cuff links, tie clasps, fancy suspenders, and a couple dozen silk vests. The clothing alone cost me about $4,000. By the time you reach the bottom line, the amount of NET profit, what you get to put in YOUR pocket, most musicians would have made a better living flipping burgers at Micky D's.
The next most lucrative area is the senior circuit, nursing homes, assisted living centers, retirement communities, senior centers, etc... Most have an entertainment budget that is a bit tight, but they are willing to pay more for highly qualified musical entertainers. Not only must you be a reasonably good musician and be able to play just about any song from the early 1940s to as late as the early 1990s, but additionally, you must be a great singer. If you do not possess both skills, then all bets are off. If you are willing to work, you can easily make $50,000 to $65,000 a year working the senior circuit. Additionally, you must have great people skills and be able to easily communicate with people of all ages. Most of the activity directors will be in their late 20s to mid 30s, while your audiences will range in age from 55 to 100 years of age.
You must be versatile. Be ready to play everything from Happy Birthday, to the Anniversary Waltz, God Bless America, Hava Nagila, polkas, Latin, Italian and a host of other venues. I learned a dozen songs in Latin and another dozen in Italian and was unable to speak a word of either at the time. I learned them phonetically. You need to be able to transition seamlessly from one song to another, from Old Time Rock And Roll to Santa Baby, to In The Still Of The Night, to Autumn Leaves without blinking an eye and never missing a beat. This is not easy, it takes a lot of forethought and advance planning, but this does not mean you go to a song list and stick to it - that is a big mistake.
I always considered a song list as a feeler, something to determine what the crowd wants to hear. You must be able to look at your audience, read that crowd, and determine what songs they respond to and how well they receive those songs, and go from there. If you cannot do this, you will quickly lose the audience and it's game over. Usually, at least from my observations, musicians that play very loud do not have the ability to read an audience. They try to overcome their shortfalls by cranking up the volume to ear bleed levels, believing that this will entice people to get up and dance. What they fail to understand is that if you want an audience to get up and dance, you must play music they can dance to. When you have accomplished this, you have learned to read the crowd.
Private parties are a good way to go as long as they do not interfere with your regular musical income, such as the senior circuit. I charged the same hourly rate for private parties as I did for a nursing home. Nursing home jobs, though, usually only last 1-hour, where a private party can be as long as 5-hours. Plus, most of the private party jobs usually involved a free dinner, and more often than not, you got great tips from attendees. Additionally, if you did a great job as an entertainer, you usually ended up with referrals - hard combination to beat.
Political fund raisers can be very lucrative. Granted, these jobs only come along every couple of years at the federal level, but at the state and local levels, there are elections held nearly every year. I had a flat fee for political fund raisers of $500, even if the musical entertainment only lasted 30 minutes. No one ever balked at the price, and I had more work than I could handle most of the time.
At many of the events, not only was I the musical entertainer and singer, but I was also the MC for the event. For more than 25 years I MC'd the largest fishing and boating expo in the USA, didn't have to play a note on the keyboard or sing, and averaged $500 a day making announcements every hour for just 5 minutes. Not a bad day's work and I got a free lunch and dinner our of the deal. That show ran 4 days during the dead of winter, I picked up a cool $2,000, then went back to my regular senior schedule.
In order to do any or all of the above, you must be ready to learn how to run a small business. You are the sole proprietor, the go to person for everything. Not only must you be be a good musician/entertainer/singer, you must also be the public relations manager, bookkeeper, accountant, disbursing agent, advertising agent, equipment manager, purchasing agent, etc... You must be all those things in a single, neatly-wrapped package and never, ever call in sick. This is show business and the show must go on. Regardless of whether you have a headache or toothache, you have to go on stage with a smile, make eye contact with the audience, provide them with some enthusiasm to have fun, and finish the job with them begging you for more.
And that, my friends, is how to make a living playing music,
Gary
Most of the entertainers I talk with throughout the nation, and that is a large number, say I'm right on the money with my statement about the paycheck being the same as it was 50 years ago. Fifty years ago, when I first got out of the navy and performed in smoke-filled, honkytonk bars in and around Baltimore, the pay was $100 for a 4-hour performance - same as it is today. I know some have guitar will travel guys that do the same job for $75 and seem happy with that paycheck.
