How many of you funksters make a living or at least a bit of coin out of your musical endeavours?

I'm a sound engineer. I do this for a living.

we played a show once and afterwards, I got $2

and this other time on the road, the singer bought me an Egg McMuffin

I think I'm going to quit that fucking band soon

kidsherriff said:

I made some $weet dimes at mp3.com ($2000!), the year before they got cheap (2001). Last year my band played every weekend for $500. Doing mostly originals.

Here's the tip: we started out as a blues band, and started working funk numbers in. Eventually, we did the first set as quiet blues, and then the 2nd and 3rd sets for butt-knocking funk, mostly originals, and bastardized covers.

Truth be told, we were playing the restaurant circuit, which is pretty demeaning. Yes, you're making money, but unfortunately, for the first 2 hours you're playing to people's backs -- they ain't interested in what you're selling. But, sure, once the booze has been flowing they all get to dancing.

I read a GREAT GREAT article on how to make it independently - check this out if you're interested. This band got TOTALLY wise - started playing preppy/private highschools.

Now, you're thinking, there's NO WAY I would play a high school. No way. BUT. You suck up to these kids, and you're basically nurturing a viral fan base. These kids haven't been to see ANY local live acts yet -- you're all they know. They tell their friends, play tapes, cds, etc. And then, THOSE KIDS go off to college, and suddenly, you've got PR reps all over the country, at COLLEGES, where folks DO go to see live music.

BRILLIANT plan. Here's the article.

http://www.mbajungle.com/...template=0

RUDY don't quit the band (I hope you're kidding about that $2) - start working smarter, not harder. Don't play 5 times a month at any dive that'll give you a gig. Do the PR FIRST - radio, press, flyers, stickers. So when you DO line up a gig, there's the name recognition.

I'm putting together a new band here in Atlanta, gonna push the funk thing full-on this time.

http://www.blindslim.com/1g4d

otan said:

thanks for the cool link otan, I sent that along to my 'mates.

the $2 thing is absolutely true - it's hard to make any money playing original music here in frozen Milwaukee. It's not as easy for people to drink beer to! But I love my crew so we'll press on. www.spilltheband.com if you're interested. new music on the way - not funky, but it rocks

I liked your music by the way, especially 'Iwannabetheone'. funky as hell!!!

a lot of bands playing the local circuits make it by playing covers and eventually throwing in a few originals. Let's face it, everyone out there likes SOME kind of music. So if you can learn to play a lot of styles, there's potential to make a lot of money, and learn some chops while you're at it. There's bars, private parties, weddings, private clubs, schools as mentioned earlier, festivals, all kinds of stuff. (There's always the 'specialty' places too -- blues clubs, teenage clubs, etc.) So no matter what you play, there's probably someplace you can get paid to play it. Once you start getting a few fans they help promote you by telling their friends and so on. I played in various bands for about 10 years and we had gigs every weekend. My last band has been together more than 10 years now and they are still playing out every weekend, sometimes during the week too, and they're booked more than a year ahead. True, if you want steady gigs you might have to play some songs you don't particularly like, but it's still better than a million other jobs I can think of. It takes time to build momentum but there's ways to do it, as Otan mentioned. The most important things are learn your material and be professional about gigs, and HAVE FUN! If it's not fun, then take up something else.

otan said:

I miss those days too. I only got in on the last few months of that deal but I made a killing all the same. Sold over 650 albums via them so far but I havnt earned half as much money as you would think I have thanx to the cheap nature of mp3.com now.

Ive spent the last year making my site independant of third party companies & the CD sales from mp3.com are the last to go. Gonna move my album from them soon as I now have the technology to sell the album myself via my own site without a third party company. Plus my version of the NPGMC, the digital music network will also hopefully bring the moolah factor back to my project.

Since setting up shop on the internet now, I have reached nearly 2000 people in one year & sold 650ish albums. Having your own, professional site is deffinatly advisable

so how much DOES mp3.com pay per download or however they figure profits now?

concordance said:

They no longer pay for downloads & with Cd's you get 50% after they take $6. Hence why Ive had it with mp3.com, will be moving soon

thecloud9mission said:

BUT to rub it in, you USED to get paid on a per-download basis, after 15 songs had been downloaded. Everyday the amount per download varied, because they started with a certain amount of money and would divide it up among all the folks that had downloads each day. SO, that way, their out-of-pocket was the same on a daily basis. (on some days, we made $200!) (okay, only two or three times, but MAN! can you imagine making $200 from people just LISTENING to your music? you don't even have to go perform!).

At some point, they realized that they weren't seeing a profit, so they changed the rules - to recieve the money for downloads, "pay for play", you had to pay $20 per month.

And well, that made sense, as long as you were making more than that per month... basically, I saw it as "kicking a little something into the pot" to keep the money flowing. On TOP of this, if you WERE a paying member, then you could still make 50% on your CD sales -- YOU could set the price,(starting price was like $5.99?) but if you WERENT a member, then you got the current deal - 50% AFTER they got their $6, and the starting price went up to $10.99.

During that period, you could STILL put up as many songs as you wanted.

THAT policy went for a year, until just last month, when they changed it to allowing you to only post 3 songs if you're a non-paying member.

And, again, I understand their side, but I'm not willing to pay $20 per month if I'm not CURRENTLY making that much from them. I completely understand their need to make money to keep that site going - it's a HUGE site with all sorts of databases and functionality that just ain't easy to maintain. It's a shame they didn't see a profit with the way it used to work... maybe if they had some quality controls - A&R reps or something to weed out the really BAD stuff, but then, that's what made the site so cool - you would hear AMAZING stuff right next to something that a guy recorded over his phone.

Sorry for the rant.

Hey thanks for this post. I've played in bars (too many) and coffee shops since High School and that sucks.

I've been telling my friends we should treat this like a product and focus group test some music and see what people are in to (in relation to what we play).

My day job is advertising and what this band did (in the link) is exactly what I'm talking about. The problem is that with musicians, they all have ego involved. It's fucking up my big picture plan of producing something ourselves and marketing it.

So now my plan is to scrap what I've been working on with my friends as "a band" and just do it by myself. Maybe having a guest appearance drummer or guitar player and we'll see if I can get some kind of a following with that. Then maybe my Rock Star friends will see where I'm coming from.

thanks for the mp3.com update, otan. Sounds like it _was_ a great way to promote music. Too bad they can't come up with a plan that would work for everybody. $20/month membership seems a bit steep. Maybe $5 would be cool.

Hendrix: ego is a problem in MANY bands. Usually the people with the biggest ones ain't all that either! Don't count too much on those people either, it just feeds the ego more. Even if they are good, don't feed the ego! In time you will find people you can work with who aren't full of themselves -- people who love to play for the sake of playing, and are skilled musicians. You are right though -- stick with your vision and add players along as u go. The only way to find out if you're on to something is to go with it and see what comes. And if u do have a good thang going, people will support your idea and want in on it.

I'll tell you what I learned. Money replaces ego everytime.

I had a band of friends with egos. I replaced them all with solid musicians that played only if there was enough $$. $75 was the bottom rate that they'd play for.

In the beginning, there's no way I would pay that JUST to have somebody do a gig, so I struggled with my group of banditos who were self taught and knew diddley about the professionalism of a band; you know the type - showed up high or drank a TON during the gig, cuz this was a party for them.

Then, eventually, I hired these guys (bass and drums) for a gig or two, and WOW we tore the place up. Suddenly, people were talking to us after the gig, sticking around asking how come we weren't packing houses, etc. FOLKS RECOGNIZED ME ON THE STREET like I was a rock star. It was the same songs, same frontman and side men, but new rhythm section, (to the tune of $150!!).

So, if there's anything I can tell you about your new project, it's go find musicians FOR HIRE. If you can cough up the $75 for the rhythm section, you'll be SOOO glad you did.

Of course -- in the end, I got frustrated because these guys that needed $75 to open their CASES made it impossible to do gigs in places where you had to BUILD a following (difference between restaraunt gigs and night clubs that charge for live acts). To build a following out THERE, we needed to do about two months of free gigs. These guys weren't willing to go that route at all, so, I found myself in a catch 22 predicament. GREAT musicians, the restaraunts loved us, and the people that happened to catch us that night, etc, but we'd NEVER built a solid following... these people were all barflies, only a few of them actually came out just to see us, and the pay was always the same, whether we PACKED the place or if no one was there.

SO there you go. Find musicians for hire, try to get them to do two months for little or no money, with the plan that you'll have built up a following by then and they'll be recouped for those first few "freebies". That's what I'm doing this time.

Hey-

You guys are GREAT! Thanks for all of your advice and input. I think I may try to hire people for recording and then if something gets peoples' attention, then try to take it out to the people.

It all doesn't have to be how that movie "The Committments" ends.

JamesMarshallHendrix said:

Nah - just keep in mind that it all depends on the marketability of your music. If your stuff is oddball, but extremely important to you, then you may need to go the buddy route. If your stuff is popular and marketable, then there will be money to support it. As always, it depends on what you're pimping... sometimes it doesn't hurt to start out giving the people what they want, and THEN start to bend it into what you want to give them, like I did... just expect 6 months of "hey, do y'all know any Motley Crue?" requests.

I told the idiot we were a blues band.

His response?

"Oh. Do y'all know any Van Halen?"

I had to kill him. I had to. Darwinism in action.

I was when I was in New York...getting paid like $25 a gig. My pay varied, then again, I also had to think about my high school grades and stuff.
Now Im in Miami in college not doing anything at all I'll get back in2 the swing of it soon tho...

kidsherriff said:

I M a Music Producer az well az N Artist who performz both Solo, N with a few bandz.

Check out my solo efforts at www.mp3.com/thumpinhard

Feel free 2 E-mail me at Thumpinhard@cox.net

I have played N several countries N all over the statez.
[This message was edited Thu Feb 20 9:57:09 PST 2003 by Thumpinhard]