Accountability in Music • Page 665

If you asked me what a band gets paid to play a date of SXSW I wouldn't tell you $200. I assume they pay based on the popularity of the band but that sounds so small that's like the cost of a single ticket going to them.

I won't pretend to understand the economics of running a festival with dozens of bands but $50 per person at a date doesn't seem even worth considering playing it.

 

Are they headlining or opening the non sx shows they listed? $200 is incredibly low if the former.

 

I think it’s worse than that actually in that if I was reading it right they played 7 shows at sx and were paid for one of them.

 

venues patterning to help make touring bands’ lives easier will literally never happen. their caring about bands does not extend beyond how much alcohol the bands help them push that particular night

 

counterpoint, Long Island is one of the worst places to be a band. i'm not entirely sure what it's like nowadays, but when i was in a band 10 or so years ago, pay to play was the only way you were getting a spot. you either had to sell 20-30 tickets or show up day of the show with $250-300 cash for the promoter, and most times get paid nothing and not even get drink tickets or something. there was also such an oversaturation of bands trying to be the next TBS or Envy on the Coast that it just became a giant clusterfuck of a scene.

 

All exceptionally true haha

PFP is better now, but the state of music itself is generally meh (with exceptions). I get the sense that there are small siloed communities but nothing that you could really call a scene.

 

Streaming would make such a difference income-wise if it actually paid. I'm sure if this band were able to sell $5-10 dollar cds at shows they would profit off this SXSW run. I'm debating switching from Spotify to Tidal's $20 plan because of their Direct Artist payouts, seems like it would cover a bit of the income gap that the industry switching from CDs to streaming left.

 

My tin-foil hat theory is TIDAL got all the bad press and became a meme to dunk on as a streaming service simply because of the rest of the music industry polluting the air to continue to drive everyone to spotify or apple

 

borderline incomprehensible lol

 

if tidal's app was actually workable half the time i'd use it. it would just crash like every day and not let me look at some artists' pages so i bailed out on it.

 

Feel like the idea of switching to Tidal is grounded in the right place but at the end of the day saving the extra $10 and spending it on the one bandcamp Friday a month probably goes a lot further.

 

When people get mad about nepotism in music it's like how else do you think you can afford to be a touring musician or stand-up

 

Yeah no doubt. Or just putting that extra $10.00 aside and buying a shirt or two later with the money you saved.

 

I’m seeing that conversation more at the local level than touring, but I’m also in LA so I may be in a weird sample size. Most of the discussions I’ve been a part of are about pay to play (which has already been mentioned) or venues who don’t pay anything at all. A lot of my work is hired gun stuff and you start to get into a weird space of the artist not making money but needing to pay a band or 1-2 musicians depending on the gig and therefore operating at a loss to gig. Unless you’re the 1% or artists or have any sort of nest egg to pull from, the live music economy is in a really bizarre place right now

 

If there was a way to tip bands directly I would throw some money their way like that. I'm not a fan of most band merch and don't care about owning music on a medium other than CD so bandcamp doesn't have a lot to offer me.

Seems like it isn't great at separating artist pages as well. I play in a local band and it looks like our one release is lumped in with every other band with the same name. Started a free trial for Tidal this morning.

 

I’m confused. Do you want to tip the band, or do you want to get something in return for your money? Buy a digital album from Bandcamp, and pay whatever you want above the selling price. The band makes money and doesn’t have to send you anything.

 

Until even the littlest acts are on Patreon or one of its clones, def just pay-what-you-can on digital stuff on bandcamp, 100%.

(Lightly related to the previous topic, some members of Gustaf posted some funny stuff on personal IGs today about how they literally unload their van entirely when they stay places. Could've been a joke based on some other circumstance, but it was like a whole hallway's worth of stuff haha)

 

Responding in reverse order here but yeah, any tour I’ve been on the van is emptied when we get to wherever we’re crashing. It’s a pain in the ass but it’s worth it to know everything is safe.

In regards to the first point, I don’t think Patreon is really the answer, at least not in a long term capacity. Happy to admit I’m wrong if I’m misunderstanding something, but I’m not a fan of the way it relies on consistent output. I think it works for several mediums and I have seen musicians be able to take advantage of it, but I’m not sure it’s feasible for bands. If I’m prepping for a tour or in the studio working on an album, I don’t want to have to take time and focus away from that to put out whatever I’ve promised to patrons.

 

That's a great point, there definitely aren't enough people out there who would sustain a Patreon that doesn't have much output. I'm going to keep thinking about this!

 

Patreon also requires a steady stream of fan money which they may not have

 

Yeah, not trying to be a wet blanket or anything, just offering my perspective! I guess kind of similarly, I’ve seen hired gun/session players go to Patreon and gain a huge following but then they stop gigging and recording and churning out “content” becomes their focus. Which, if that’s what you want and you’re good with it, more power to you. But I think I’m terms of players who are gigging and recording or for full bands it’s not particularly feasible.

 

Omg I hadn't even finished the chapter when I posted this so I hadn't seen the restraining order stuff. Wtf. And was all the more sad as the chapter spoke about her and Homme in a fairly positive light knowing about the DV trial stuff that happened recently. She seemed to jump into that relationship pretty quickly after the Armstrong stuff and has just been thru bs the entire time

 

Steely Dan kicked Aimee Mann (who is great btw) off their upcoming tour and replaced her with an all-male band for sexist reasons.

Sadly, with this making the news, I found out that Donald Faygen was arrested for domestic violence by shoving his wife into a window in 2016, which I've never heard ever mentioned before with Steely Dan becoming one of the most hip bands to be into for 20-something indie kids now.

 

Aimee Man is a god damn queen. Saw her a few years ago and it was an incredible show.

 

Aimee Mann played the Bronze in Sunnydale which makes her infinitely cooler than Steely Dan will ever be.