Making a living doing nothing but music. That’s the dream isn’t it? Most musicians I meet never say “I want to be famous”, “I want to be rich”, or “I want tons of free drugs and booze”. The vast majority say they want to be able to make a living doing nothing but music. I’ve been lucky enough to do just that my whole life, music related jobs are the only kind of jobs (with one exception) I’ve ever had. There’s been a big buzz about an article titled “How Indie Musician Amanda Palmer Made $19,000 in 10 Hours using Twitter”. You’ve probably read it by now, it’s about a year old. I’d never heard of Amanda Palmer or the Dresden Dolls but it’s quite a fascinating article, however it’s not really applicable to the musician who hasn’t had a major record contract for years, had your album produced by Ben Folds, has a personal assistant and a fanbase willing to pay $200+ for an empty wine bottle that she drank out of. I can’t sell my empty wine bottles, I have to pay someone to take them away.

So How Is a Decent Living Made By Regular Musicians?

I’ve had a number of different income streams from music-related jobs but the bulk of it has come from live performances. I’ll come to your bar/church/club/house/event and play some quality music and in exchange I need a little scratch to stay alive. How much depends on what you want me to do. If it’s your wedding and you want me to be there for 4 – 5 hours, bring a bunch of sound gear and learn several songs that are specific to your wedding, that’ll cost you a lot more than just showing up and plugging in for a 45 minute set of originals. I can play solo or bring other musicians. I frequently get hired by bands. Wedding bands, original bands, circuses, broadway shows, established artists like Smokey Robinson and unestablished artists like most everybody else. There are other ways to bring in cash but for me this is the most consistent way. I’ve had job security on par (or better) with my friends in corporate America for 30 years now and even now I get calls for more gigs than I can do. It’s like having 100 part tie jobs and most of the musicians I work with that don’t have a day job are doing this same thing.

The Key Part of Selling Out is Selling

I know I do a lot of gigs that other musicians would consider beneath their integrity and playing music you don’t like just to make a buck is equivalent to selling your soul. That’s OK with me, you can have your integrity while you’re painting my house. Sure, I don’t totally love banging out “Brown Eyed Girl” again and again, but I do enjoy seeing the smiles that it puts on peoples faces when I do, so it’s a fair trade. Plus it’s an opportunity to introduce people to what I have to offer musically and sometimes a good version of  “Sweet Caroline” leads to a conversation which leads to an e-mail which results in a CD sale or booking. As long as you’re willing use your skills to get paid the way you stay booked is simply keep asking for the gig. When ever you get a chance, put yourself out there and ask for the gig. Make yourself available and keep asking for the gig.

Other Income Streams

When gigs we re kind of lean I did other things that allowed me to use my musical skill for something besides being on stage. I had to hone my skills in things like doing live sound. Knowing how to setup and troubleshoot a PA system is valuable knowledge, not just because you can use it to make money, but on the gig it’s good if you can speak in terms the sound guy can understand. I had lot’s guys ask me to make their guitar sound “fatter”, what does that mean exactly? Ask 10 people you’ll get 10 different definitions, so knowing to ask for a little extra 2k on my vocal helped me sound better and got the sound man on my side.

Owning a recording studio and having solid knowledge of recording is another way that has kept me paid. Getting calls for studio sessions and producing people’s records has been great too. Typically you get paid at the end of the session but getting a call for the right studio project is something that can keep on paying for years to come. I did some production work and playing early in the career of a band called Built to Spill who went on to do pretty well for themselves and every time their fanbase expanded their back catalog would sell. I got a percentage of some of the early work as a producer/musician so as they gained new fans, I got checks in the mail.

Turning Songwriting Skills into Cash

Obviously there’s writing songs, putting out albums and selling them for money and ideally that’s what I’d like to be doing, but my songs haven’t captured people’s attention enough to make this lucrative enough to keep gas in the car so…….

I wrote some commercial jingles, sadly I didn’t understand how one should charge for stuff like that. One jingle I wrote was used by the customer for at least 10 years after I sold it to him. I took me about 3 hours to write and record it so I charged him $180, 3 hrs @ $60 per hour and thought I did pretty good. In reality I should have charged him at the very least $1,000 and there should have been a time period attached to it, for instance, $1,000 for every year that he wanted to use it. I got smarter after that one.

I did some custom song writing for special occasions like Valentines Day, birthdays, weddings. Those kinds of things can be very lucrative and your customers love it. A song written just for someone, with their name and life circumstances in it makes the recipient feel pretty special.

Soundtrack Work

There’s more to soundtrack work than movies and TV. When you buy a new printer there’s a tutorial disc that comes with it that has music on it. When you’re on hold and an announcer comes on to sell you something there’s music behind him. There’s the local theater company that needs music for their shows. When you start to listen you realize there’s music everywhere and someone has to make that music. Find out who’s putting those thing together and go ask for the gig.

It’s Not as Sexy as Selling $200 Empty Wine Bottles….

but it’s a living, and not a bad one. It takes work scaring up gigs but do your best at every gig you get and you’ll start getting more referrals and more repeat business and you’ll have to work less at that part of it. Just keep asking for the gig, that’s ulimately how it’s done, when you get a gig make sure you deliver your best, on time and with a smile and your phone will ring again and soon you’ll be making enough to keep yourself alive. I’m sure someone as creative as Amanda Palmer would find a way to turn all those skills into bigger money but I’m happy where I’m at. Although, if you have a gig for me, any gig, I’ll take it. Let’s talk.

How do you make a living with your music?

Roaming Royalty website

Roaming Royalty on Facebook

The Twitter Thing

This gentleman came in the bar wearing a lovely red evening gown with some beautiful black heels, and a wig that badly needed some combing. He and a bunch a friends were dressed in their finest evening wear celebrating his 50th birthday. We got him up on the piano and Ron, who was working with Charles and I that night decided it was good idea have him get on his back and do the alligator dance from “Animal House”. If you’ve never seen the alligator it’s when you lay on your back and wave your arms and legs around like you’re trying to roll over. This is not a good dance to do when you’re wearing a ball gown, but hey it’s a party, and he was a good sport. When he got on his back his dress came up and revealed the diaper he was wearing and a collective moan came from the audience as the image was burned in their retinas forever. You’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. Thankfully someone had the where with all to have their camera out so we could all enjoy it. We did a dance remix of of one of our songs to honor this gentleman and this fine piece of photography.

Enjoy the remix in the player below. You can download it into your ipod for free just by clicking the ‘download’ in the player.

Brandy Stiles

‘Brandy Stiles’ is a track that we recorded for the Audio Bacon album but we decided save it as a free track to give out to people so we hope you’ll click on the player below and check it out. There is a tiny little icon in the player with an arrow pointing down that will allow you to download the track for free to your ipod, you just give us an e-mail address and we promise not to send you tons of junk all the time, just  free songs, videos, notices for shows and stuff like that.

GET SOME COOL NEW MUSIC DIRECT TO YOUR IPOD FOR FREE

Hey everybody. We want to send you a couple of mp3′s that will download right into your ipod or iphone or which ever music player you like to use, just enter your e-mail in the widget on the sidebar or click the button below and we will send you a couple of our best tunes for nothing. Sound good?