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Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

>they will not take that poorly paying weekly gig and spend a year or two refining their performance and learning to read the audience which is a major part of making it in music.

they literally cannot afford to do such things unless they are already homeless. It could have been an okay side hustle as recent as a decade ago. But today you're not gonna do much more than grab grocery money without being in a very specific scene. That meal you mention can easily cost as much as what they were paid for the gig.

It's been declining for decades, no doubt. But when the economy starts getting hard, "passion projects" dry up. being paid $100 a week is much closer to a passion project than a side hustle at this point.

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That is entry level for people who have no audience, the musicians equivalent of a paid internship and pays better than most entry level jobs with a bar so low, three chords will get you through the door, two if you are good. Beyond the flat rate there is often a tip jar and merchandise sales, a $50 gig can easily bring in a few hundred. And you make connections, get more gigs, develop an audience, make a name, etc. Once you develop a name you get paid better and even start getting a cut of cover and bar sales. The weekly house band gigs are pretty much being paid for band practice.

Unless you are working two full time jobs or the like it is easy money and affordable, broke teens working 30 hours a week washing dishes manage it. You may only make $50-$100 a gig starting out but you make it in an hour or two and as soon as you start drawing a crowd you will start getting better gigs.

>the musicians equivalent of a paid internship and pays better than most entry level jobs

what entry level jobs are you talking about? The horribly low Federal minimum wage is $7.25. minumum wage part time would come to $600/month. That's the extremely conservateive bar minimum I'd consider for anything to be "paying" (extremely poorly, but making something resembling cash flow).

So with that metric: what scene are you in that brings in $600 in tips or 6-12 gigs a month?

>You may only make $50-$100 a gig starting out but you make it in an hour or two and as soon as you start drawing a crowd you will start getting better gigs.

Not even close to reasonably paying and you greatly underestimate how hard it is to draw a crowd these days.

I'm treating this as a means to live, not some little hobby you do on the side. This isn't even close to an "entry level". my first gigs in tech had me making $12/hr for 20 hours of work during the school week, and people would rightfully call that way below my worth. But it passes my metric of $800/month, so it can be considered "entry level".

>So with that metric: what scene are you in that brings in $600 in tips or 6-12 gigs a month?

Why only in tips? $100 weekly gigs are not terribly difficult to get these days especially since no one wants to do them anymore, that is $400 a month right there without tips or merchandise sales. 6-12 gigs a month is also not difficult to manage, two gigs a week is very doable and most every musician I know who did the weekly gig also did a show on the weekend somewhere else (weekly gigs are almost always mid week). Why does it have to be a single scene? almost as arbitrary as it being tips only. Beyond that if you play regularly you will get more gigs without trying including private parties and the like, you will get asked to sit in with other bands, be on their recordings, session work, etc, it all adds up. But I was referring to hourly rate, not monthly earnings. Entry level has nothing to do with pay, it's the level you enter at for the field and for some jobs this is an unpaid internship or or poorly paid apprenticeship, doesn't matter what you think it should be.

Drawing a crowd is not difficult but you need to learn to read the audience so you can play to the audience first, one of those things the poor paying weekly gig is great for, you can't expect to draw an audience solely for being you.

The method doesn't matter, just the fact you can get there. Maybe you are talented, but I reckon most people can't turn that musical talent into a $600/month hustle.

>but you need to learn to read the audience so you can play to the audience firs

And you uncovered the issue: musicians can't just use raw talent most of the time, they need to also be an entrepreneur. An entirely different set of skills independent from music itself. Thars why most indies in any industry can't make it. You need to mix two ideas of art and product which are almost diametrically opposed to one another.

And it's a shifting formula. Because what's desired in art shifts constantly. It's a job in a job to get what's probably not even paying rent unless you're Low COL.

>but I reckon most people can't turn that musical talent into a $600/month hustle.

Most people can't do most things but the vast majority of people who succeed at their goals in life have one thing in common. Lots of people in this world and to make a living as a musician you only need to connect with a tiny fraction of a percent of those people. If you honestly like the music you make odds are there are enough people in the world to support you in making that music, but you need to find them if you want them to support you.

>And you uncovered the issue

I addressed this already, my use of the phrase "paid internship" was not accidental.

>unless you're Low

I lived in Duluth for awhile around the turn of the century. Low worked their asses off with endless touring for the better part of a decade to make their name and kept it up until Al and Mimi had their daughter, but Al kept playing constantly. Every Saturday it was The Black Eyed Snakes and a couple other bands at the NorShor, Tuesdays was experimental Tuesdays the experimental open mic he ran, plus sitting in with random bands, doing random shows, running his label, organizing shows, recording bands, doing all the stuff for Low, endless short lived side projects, being a dad, he never stopped working from what I could see. Charlie Parr spent a few years doing the poorly paying weekly gig every Wednesday at The Brewhouse, he got $50 and bottomless coffee to play for 3 hours to maybe a dozen mostly uninterested people until he figured out how to get them interested and then he packed the place every week and started making his name. Haley Bonar/McCallum used to serve me coffee and make me sandwiches at Amazing Grace, she put in years toiling away in obscurity before making it. Lots of good memories from those years, need to get back there, been too long.

>> unless you're Low COL

> I lived in Duluth

I had to retrace the thread to be confident, but I think you leapt to Minnesota-local from an oddly-capitalized fragment of the phrase "low cost of living".

Nevertheless, I enjoyed your personal perspective on the scene history there. :) I can echo your observations from the Boston scene -- e.g. when the one song gets used in a movie or TV show, and new fans of the "new band" have no idea about the years of hard work and crap jobs and crap roommates that were required to get the opportunity.

Still, I loved those years.

>from an oddly-capitalized fragment

I did. I was done with the thread by that point and put zero effort into parsing the acronym, only responded because of the nostalgia. Half suspected I got it wrong which is why I left "COL" out when quoting, figured I could feign ignorance since I was staying on topic and point.

Well I thank you for it. :)

>my use of the phrase "paid internship" was not accidental.

Is "intern" a different meaning where you're from? For me, it implies an opportunity to learn under a company, where learning is a primary objective over proper payment.

Who are these teachers you're learning under? Where and how are you finding a teacher in music that you aren't paying for but is paying you to learn?

>Low worked their asses off with endless touring for the better part of a decade to make their name and kept it up until Al and Mimi had their daughter, but Al kept playing constantly

If you haven't noticed, the world's gotten (ironically) much less connected over the last 20 years. I can barely get my friends out for lunch. People who already know and assumedly like me. It's simply gotten a lot hard to do that 80's style of living in a van, paying $1-2 a day for food, and playing your passions until you can move to a semi-normal standard of living.

It's not impossible, and I appreciate the pun. But that lifestyle wouldn't really be possible in urban America. Not even a matter of "I don't want to live in a van". Those cities just got a lot more hostile towards loitering and theft is on the rise. A van is just putting a target on your face for someone, legally or for illegal preying. Even just being on the streets because of no homes can get you arrested with where current legislature it going in my area.

its just gotten rough. If you don't have parents supporting you, it is literally a dangerous lifestyle.

>The method doesn't matter, just the fact you can get there.

Well, it's been said 80% of success is showing up :)

Are you in a gig scene? The vast majority of the Brooklyn gig scene have service industry jobs, film sound jobs, or they play a lot of 3-4 hour event gigs (wedding bands but plus all events) on top of their own music projects. It’s not feasible to just do main music project gigs to start out in the slightest. And we all have the cheapest rents in ny.

> they literally cannot afford to do such things unless they are already homeless.

Or already rich

True, but I argue that losing money on a hobby (or "bad business") means you can afford to do it. It's just not making you money, not keeping you off the streets.

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