Becca Heer
Live music is one of the things in many areas that just brings people together. Whether it be going out to see a concert of a well known band,
or supporting a local band playing downtown, it is always a great experience getting to see music live in front of you.
However, for these bands, it can be a very costly experience as well. The costs of the lighting, venue/place, promotion and advertisement,
and other things can get really expensive. The problem with this for smaller local bands is that there might not be much profit,
if any, depending on a few different factors that I will get into. It is important to look at the opportunity costs of these decisions and what is worth
it to you.
I am in a local Waukesha area band that has played a few different gigs and shows over the past year. Starting out as a small local punk band,
we didn’t really make any money off of the shows at first, because we just wanted to make an appearance and become a little bit more known.
This, in turn, was actually very expensive for us. Fortunately, at our most recent gig, our band had a friend who was willing to lend us
his store for the night for free. However, booking a place to use and play live music in will usually also be a costly portion.
We had someone take pictures for us as well which cost us around 100 dollars collectively. At the early stages of our band’s career, we couldn’t
charge anything for tickets because we didn’t have much of a following and we weren’t really known, so the very small amount of
money we would make off of tickets was not as important as getting a bit of a larger crowd for free at first. Eventually we ended up putting a tip jar which just barely broke even for the cost of the other expenses, so no profit.
Making money with a full time career in the music industry involves a lot more than just performing live, or covering music. Creating original
music helps a lot with this, and opens a lot of opportunities to earn more money. A survey was conducted for many different types
of music careers, including performing, producing, composing, recording, and more, and relates this all to revenues. In this study with the musicians
they talked to, 12% of their revenue came from directly copyright related things. 10% of sources came from a mixed relationship to
copyright, and 78% came from indirectly related sources. This shows that if you make original music, copyright is one of the big
factors that can play a part in your income, and you can make extra money off of copyright in addition to the live performances and everything else you do.
There are costs to playing live music, but there is also a lot of hope for this industry. If it is worth it for you, take the chance and
build up a living with your music. It varies for every person, and if you’re passionate enough, you might just have a really good career going for you.
Cites Used:
https://arizonalawreview.org/pdf/55-2/55arizlrev301.pdf
https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/recent-releases/livemusic
https://prism.fm/blog/insights/concert-cost-breakdown-where-promoters-are-spending/
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