Why bother being in a band and why bother trying?

Drew_TNBD

digitalscream said:

BECAUSE IT'S FUN

Yup. That's pretty much what I arrived at after 6 years of a band, and being involved in music since I was 14. Yikes... I feel like an old fucker! )

digitalscream said:

Besides, @Drew_fx...you already work in the music industry. Imagine all the frustration and irritation that you already have being in a band, and couple that with the soul-crushing despair of actually dealing with other people in the music industry that you have to do in your job on a day-to-day basis.

Do you really want that as your job and hobby, so it then becomes a part of every facet of your life and follows you everywhere you go?

Didn't think so. Keep 'em separate and at least get some enjoyment out of your music

All this. Wisdom.

Doesn't stop me bitching about it though!

IanSavage

guitarfishbay said:

That is an old article, from 4 years ago, I've read it before.

Things have been changing, the whole industry has changed so bands have had to try different things.

For example - financial risk.  Bands with a following (a major caveat) are doing pre-sales via kickstarter type campaigns.  Essentially fans are fronting the financial investment up front.  Whether or not this is positive or negative is a different debate altogether, and so is the 'how big do you need to be before this is viable' debate, but the fact is that for some bands it is an option.

 

Wisdom for this, and also a chance for me to plug my article on the subject from last year: http://www.themidlandsrocks.com/the-pledge-of-allegiance-is-the-future-fan-funded/

strumjoughlamps

digitalscream said:

The answer to your question is:

BECAUSE IT'S FUN

big wisdom

thomasross20

Labour of love - that's it!

I chose engineering over music and have never regretted it - I've got an interesting job and can fund my music habit easily. I'll settle every time for being a weekend warrior, playing in a covers band.

monquixote

That's why I stopped with original material bands. 

I realised that to do anything at the level that interested me I had to work with people who were extremely focussed on getting signed and from those people I knew that managed to get signed they ended up having to make huge compromises in their lives, live in poverty and sometimes be actively prohibited from making music. 

I'd quite happily be in another original band, but I've never found one that was serious about the music, but not about a 1970's idea of "Making It"

mudslide73

lustycourtier said:

jonnyburgo said:

lustycourtier said:

My mate was part of S Club 7 management. They were clothed, fed, hoteled and given £40 a week wages....

They were overpaid

Indeed, but someone was making millions from these idiots. Sold 10,000,000 records according to Wiki....

I read that they finished up with appox. £16k each after working solidly for 4+ years (TV series & movies as well as the music promotion). Criminal.

guitarfishbay

lustycourtier said:

jonnyburgo said:

lustycourtier said:

My mate was part of S Club 7 management. They were clothed, fed, hoteled and given £40 a week wages....

They were overpaid

Indeed, but someone was making millions from these idiots. Sold 10,000,000 records according to Wiki....

On a similar note Lou Pearlman had his contracts set up in such a way that he was making way more than the bands.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Pearlman

"The members of Backstreet Boys were the first to file a lawsuit against Pearlman, feeling that their contract — under which Pearlman collected as both manager and producer — was unfair, since Pearlman was also paid as a sixth member of the Backstreet Boys (i.e., one-sixth of the band's own income). The band's dissatisfaction began when member Brian Littrell hired a lawyer to determine why the group had received only $300,000 for all of their work, while Pearlman and his record company had made millions. Fellow boy band *NSYNC was having similar issues with Pearlman, and its members soon followed suit.^[8]"

mudslide73

From the Comic Strip's "More Bad News":

"Colin: Oh.  (Laughs.)  Okay, okay.  Right, so to sum up the main points again...  The contract lasts five years, but you don't have to put out any records if you don't want to, although if you don't want to, we're still under contract to you, and we're not allowed to make any records for anybody else.  And we get four and three-quarter percent of ninety percent of a hundred, minus fifteen percent of retail, but there's no advance, which means absolutely no cash whatsoever for us upfront.

 

Rachel: Yeah, that's about right, yeah.

 

Colin: Mm.  (Inhales thoughtfully, sticks his pen in his mouth, thinks for a second, looks at Rachel, smiles and nods.)  Well, alright, I'll sign that.  (Signs the contract.)"

Clarky

I just read the article Drew posted

being a touring muso myself that's quite a ways down from the A-list.. so much of that was familiar.. getting sht flight times, flying to airports that are not the closest to the 1st venue, etc to reduce costs.. so having been up since 04:00 so youcan catch your 08:00 flight, followed by a 5 hour drive to get to a 16:00 soundcheck, it's not that surprising that a bunch of zombies wander out on stage at 22:00.. and at 02:30 when you finally arrive back at the hotel, when you hear the promoter say "pretty good show guys, but I think I've seen you play better than that before".. you kinda want to kill him.. but you just don't quite have the energy.. especially knowing you have to be up, fed and in the tour bus by 10:00 cos tomorrow is a 7 hour drive to the next venue

the other prob is the general "internet where everything is free mentality".. cos everyone seems to want / expect everything music related for free.. just give your songs away.. just give away something you spent so much time, effort and cost creating..

a building Co wouldn't just give away houses, so why should bands be expected to give away their music??

 

thomasross20

Good point clarky - pretty shocking! I still buy my music, as ancient as that may seem!

CabbageCat

Clarky said:

a building Co wouldn't just give away houses, so why should bands be expected to give away their music?? 

People do give away their music. If one builder was giving away their houses for nothing then the builder charging £££ for it might not get as much custom as he hoped.

ESBlonde

The music business has always seen 0.01% of the stars earning 30% of the income of all musicians. There is only so much room at the top and your Eltons, Bowies, Stones etc. got there first. Plenty of horror stories of 'successful' artists being left pot-less (Bill Nelson of Be bop Deluxe being a recent public declaration). A few stars have been ripped off (Barry Manilow had to do another album and go on tour recently when the bank account was found empty). There have been stories by Fish about the cost of doing business today and the knife edge viability.
Fashion is fickle too, once your star wanes it is often impossible to relaunch your career in a meaningful way, having a 'name' helps on the circuit even though for the most part only one or two original faces are in the band. Some bands like the Hamsters worked and toured relentlessly and earned a living at it, but they travelled a lot and were very active in their own promotion and online sales.
Few singer only artists survive for long without a lot of management. Think Diana Ross, Tom Jones etc. Otherwise those that write/(wrote) the songs have historically earned significantly more than there performing band mates. The ideal is to have a large back catalogue with a couple of perennials for your pension (Slade/merry Christmas for example, although it's not enough for Noddy to live off).
So the wastage level in musicians is high, try listing the record companies that have existed throughout compared to those back in the day!
It's a jungle out there, have fun but DONT bank on being rich and lazy.

Drew_TNBD

CabbageCat said:

Clarky said:

a building Co wouldn't just give away houses, so why should bands be expected to give away their music?? 

People do give away their music. If one builder was giving away their houses for nothing then the builder charging £££ for it might not get as much custom as he hoped.

Just because one builder gives away his houses doesn't mean you get to squat for free in a builders house who doesn't wish to give them away for free.

CabbageCat

Drew_fx said:

CabbageCat said:

Clarky said:

a building Co wouldn't just give away houses, so why should bands be expected to give away their music?? 

People do give away their music. If one builder was giving away their houses for nothing then the builder charging £££ for it might not get as much custom as he hoped.

Just because one builder gives away his houses doesn't mean you get to squat for free in a builders house who doesn't wish to give them away for free.

Yup.

Fazer

there is also a trend with many creative industries of the financial viability of making them a 'career' being wiped out - photography, writing fiction/journalism .... everything is expected to be 'free'.
whereas perhaps in the past you could start for 'free' or 'free-ish' and hope to build up to a career, now there is such a glut of 'free' from everywhere (whether given freely or stolen) that nobody ever expects to pay for it

as well as the songwriting/performing side, i also wonder about the loss of production and engineering expertise.
who is going to pay £1000s out of their own pocket to record and produce beautiful music that no-one will pay for, is it all just a loss leader to sell a few t-shirts?
the technology is great that means i can do so much at home, that i can record things by myself, but its a half-assed bodge job, recording/engineering/production is also a skill/expertise that needs honing and developing

all this would be fine if the human population was dramatically shrinking and there just wasnt the need for people to do all these things, but there are billions more humans all the time, what exactly are they meant to do? you would think there would be more opportunities for creative careers, not less

Clarky

Drew_fx said:

CabbageCat said:

Clarky said:

a building Co wouldn't just give away houses, so why should bands be expected to give away their music?? 

People do give away their music. If one builder was giving away their houses for nothing then the builder charging £££ for it might not get as much custom as he hoped.

Just because one builder gives away his houses doesn't mean you get to squat for free in a builders house who doesn't wish to give them away for free.

zakleee

carlos

66 million USD last year... bitches!!!

Clarky

CabbageCat said:

Clarky said:

a building Co wouldn't just give away houses, so why should bands be expected to give away their music?? 

People do give away their music. If one builder was giving away their houses for nothing then the builder charging £££ for it might not get as much custom as he hoped.

fair enough... different bands / artists etc have different approaches to making money out of music..

and I totally get why some folk give some stuff away..

but at the end of the day, when it costs you to create something, you have to have some sort of return to at least recover your costs.. ok so a band has a few different ways of generating money, but giving one product away [in this case the music] means you need to ensure that you have an even better return from the others [merc / touring / sponcorships etc].. it mostly never quite adds up..

it'snot an easy industry to make a really healthy living at [unless you're A-list or a session player with a very full diary]

Grunfeld

Clarky said:

...a building Co wouldn't just give away houses, so why should bands be expected to give away their music??

Because everything has changed. 

If houses were somehow digitally reproducible, say some super-duper 3-D printer could knock you up a house for pennies then people would be pirating architects' plans and having amazing houses for next to nothing.  No one would need a mortgage and the banking racket would have to go in search of new prey.

But music IS digitally reproducible and therefore it is free.  (Whether one wants it to be is another matter.)  So, as a musician, one is not going to earn a living trying to sell something which is free.

Is my take on it.

thisisguitar

This is the Bill Nelson article mentioned earlier in this thread:

http://www.jagshouse.com/music/billnelson.html

Depressing doesn't even begin to cover it