Hey, I’m doing a gig… Come watch?

How many musicians do you see complaining about how hard it is to be a musician? Diving deeper, how many musicians do you see complaining about how they don’t make any money off their music anymore with special thanks to streaming services…

Cast yourself back to pre 1994 (or google it if you were too young to rock out in this age)… Streaming didn’t exist back then, vinyl was fading out, compact discs were all the rage and quickly replacing tape. There was so many more music venues (still paying f&%$ all) and Musicians STILL didn’t make enough money…

Personally… I’m sick of hearing about it though… I understand that life is hard as a musician because I left my job to become the “Touring Artist” type (yes, that’s what I called it lol). I made all of $72 over 4 years and I feel I was successful because I somehow managed to break even!?! (Seriously, how!?) But the truth is, I didn’t work hard enough to promote it and certainly didn’t maximise my income opportunities.

There seems to be a strong crop of adult artists these days getting around with a complex about how hard the industry treats them and how they are struggling to survive but they don’t seem to be active promoters of their craft. I don’t see much action apart from the usual local gig and a couple of shares on Facebook the night before the show saying “Hey, I’m doing a gig, come watch”…

Think back to when you were in your early teens and in your first band… Remember how hard you sprayed promo around making sure that every one of your friends, family, pets, neighbors, street etc knew about your show!? Go back to those days!

Personally… If I wanted to go out, take time out of my busy life and away from my family that I hardly see to watch an artist for 3+ hours, I wouldn’t be wasting my time to go see Facebook famous “Hey, gig, watch” person throw down another version of Horses by old mate Dazza… I would be heading out to the artist that demonstrated a HUGE attempt to ensure everyone knew about their work!

Where am I going with this?

The music industry has a lot of money to be made if you look hard enough and are willing to put the hard yards in… The gig itself is 1% of your job (and the reason we all do it)… The other 99% is occupied by networking, promoting, traveling, interviews, promoting, having a cheeky bevvie with the first person who says they love your music, promoting and yup, you guessed it… MORE PROMOTING…

If you promote yourself to venues, they will book you (talent helps too). If you get yourself 2 or 3 gig’s a week, you can rake in enough dollars to get you through the week… If you pull a crowd, you can ask for more and in the end, your place grows in the industry and your wallet gets a little bigger…

In the meantime while you wait for your profile to increase, go out and sling beers on the side, flip burgers, make pallets, teach young ones music and inspire them to grow up with this gift we all have as muso’s… Whatever you can to bring in extra money to survive and continue doing what we love. But most of all… Stop bitching that the $0.00017c you make for each stream is the reason for your poverty… Streaming is simply another tool for promotion and a much easier way to distribute your works. If you don’t have it, chances are, you are heavily limiting yourself of listeners because less and less people buy music these days to download to their mp3 player (Except grandparents who haven’t yet realised the cloud is more than just a build up of moisture floating in the air).

Get out there, don’t stop until everyone has been gifted with the chance to hear you play your sweet sweet tunes…

Shade Out…