House of Drumming.com

Hey Rodge,

you are rich. just not independently wealthy. BOOYAH!!

Deep Fried, it is exactly as Josiah put it in South Jersey. I have a full time 40 hr a week job, but I still do almost two gigs a week average all year long at about 100$ per man, if not more. That is in a band with 5-6 guys, plus a two man crew to move heavy shit and expenses for the band truck. We play mostly 80's rock/pop with some very current dance stuff mixed in. I play in two other bands as well, playing more eclectic covers, but we always make a decent wage. Will it allow me to drive a Maserati? Well no, but it is extra money that I can use to improve my life. Sort of a second job instead of working at Starbucks or WalMart part time. I have a friend who is a decent drummer and he plays 4-5 nights a week year round and supports himself with it. Playing all covers and the occasional jazz gig, which of course is covers as well. Maybe the areas you and willyz are in have grown too big for their britches so to speak. We play all over South Jersey, eastern PA, and northern Delaware, all around an hours drive each way. There could always be more work and more money but so what? Better to be playing a gig and getting some kind of compensation for it, than sitting home watching Storage Wars banging out rudiments on a pad, thinking about gigging.

what are the names of the clubs in south shit hole jersey that you are playing. 100 bucks a head is very nice for average pay. our band minimum is 70 bucks a head. 6 piece band. i want to get our band into some of the casinos in atlantic city. i used to play in a band that played in the bellagio casino. the guys were 29 and i was 40. payed very good. i looked young so i fit in. i sing also so that helps me get lots of gigs. when you play these places that pay the big ben frank are they places you play often? it's nice having a relationship with the bar/joint/owner. looking for some places that pay the band 5 to 7 bills on a regular basis. 4 hundos seems to be the average around my part of town. also depends on the style of music being played.

attention original bands in the south jersey area. let me stop laughing first... ok. original music is dead. doesn't pay. no one wants to go to a club/bar to hear original crap. never mind the musicians getting paid handsomely. they want DJ shit. bands that play music they can relate to and have a great time to songs they know. yes there are venues for original music. people have mentioned them just never ventured out to hear. I'm sure you have heard of the band "don't call me francis". big horn section and entertains the crowd. they sound great. i wanna get a thing like that going and work all the time. they don't pull in much scratch either. they all have day gigs. they have a two person crew that brings in their stuff and sets up. band just shows up and plays. no sound check. they sound great from the first note played.

if i had as many gigs as i do on my hard drive gigs i'd be rich.

Woa woa I wasn't in any way saying playing in a cover band makes anyone less of a musician at all! Come on, I never said that and some of you pounced hard on that non-existent point.


I was talking purely about the ECONOMICS of playing in a cover band. Which, by definition is making money off other peoples music! (Hello? Irony?)
There are zillions of them literally. And like a lot of cover band bars - they will most likely concede to the LOWEST bidder, THEN consider pull. It goes up and down, in waves, bands get juiced into given clubs, it's a whole different market then original music. Then you have DJ's butting in, etc... totally. Totally different market.

It's just a fact, there are more musicians now making money off their original music then EVER before.

Making a lot? Probably not. But hey even my original band pays for itself, gear, slowly building our own recording studio, pays for the rent on our studio, plus a little more. Nothing to live off of but we're a local original band that all 3 members do on the side of other session work and we sell cds and make money.

DeeP_FRieD wrote:Josiah, I swear every time I look at a thread on this forum you are teetering the line between troll and frumpy... what gives?

Also, I noticed your in CO, what city? I'm close enough I could book a road gig up there and see if what you're saying about your locale is true, plus I'd like to get my carve on this season and CO has all the best mountains.

Oh I don't mean to a frump. It's this constant "Musicians aren't making as much because of music downloading" is flat out bullshit. And it's a cop out for not working a little harder maybe then before.
There's more competition, a changing market place and a changing industry. I'm a young guy and I make it work. I surely can't be the exception right?
Why aren't more people excited and stoked to be playing drums and even making SOME money? This attitude of entitlement is absurd.
The reason you can't get your original music heard, has nothing to do with digital piracy. It has everything to do with the monopoly of the industry. Nobody wants to talk about how nasty it is. Go pretend to represent a band and get a song played on a (non-college station), see what happens.
But with a decent demo, EPK or press packet you can book gigs anywhere. I know, I book a lot of the gigs for my original band.
By the way we give out album away digitally, the more people who want it, the better? Someone WANTS our music?! How fucking cool is that!!! What kind of a pretentious person would demand MORE money?


I live in CO Springs, there's a decent cover scene here but the original scene is crap. For an original gig in the Springs my band will maybe make $100 for a 45 minute set (not counting swag/cd sales). Way more up in Denver where we can open for national acts, big crowds, etc
Denver is a HUGE music scene, cover bands there pull a lot higher pay rate because of it. I know guys that make a living playing JUST for churches. Or just for 1 particular cover band.

We have the BEST snow AND mountain bike riding. Last years snow was really really really bad, but they are predicting some pretty epic snow levels in the high mountains this year from all the smoke in the air from the fires.

It's cool that your group is doing well. But I'm sure you realize that your experience 'making it work' is all that you have to draw from. you really don't know any other way, so I find it a bit insensitive that folks can simplify it as, "simply not working hard enough". Can you really blame older musicians who aren't happy with what's happened to the 'world as they know it'? There's a threshold of being able to make a living from music and piracy has only widened that gap. It's true that the Internet has opened more distribution channels, but those are effectively (or can be) negated due to the ability to steal music or video, digitally. I'm not trying to pass judgement and I'm not sure if you remember the industry prior to the Internet, but I feel like a lot of guys might be thinking " how the heck would you know anything about the industry or making it, when all you've ever known is what it's like 'post-Internet'?" Some people might even say that 'just being happy to play drums and make some money' is part of the problem. What happened to making a living from music? What, we're supposed to enjoy getting 30 bucks for one set? Be happy with giving away our music? Reduced to making 40 bucks a night selling t-shirts? We're musicians, not fucking walmart, right? Right. What happened to really making it? Now its like we should just give away everything, be paid 1960s wages and be happy about it? Look, I get it, times have changed, things are different now. But don't call it bullshit that a lot of guys aren't happy about being reduced to making more money selling fucking tshirts vs. their own music. I think the disconnect (and I could have read your post wrong) is that you dont make your living from music. The guys who are pissed about piracy DO.

Mr. Seipel, you are absolutely right.

The standard doesn't exist anymore want perusing a legitimate career in music is almost taboo these days, even to a lot of musicians. I believe we may have had this sort of discussion before? (Unions and what not?)

I know I'm a younger cat, but if I can see dramatic changes in a scene that prides itself on its music culture (perhaps a little too much), I think most other towns will be suffering as well. It's not coincidental that it's regressing at the same time as digital distribution is soaring and the labels and physical media are suffering.

I have a friend that works as a talent manager for one of the few major-ish labels in town... he doesn't really have that many CD's. It's kind of sad, actually... All iTunes downloads, Spotify, and the whatnot.

deep fried, just as Josiah, I live in a town so tiny that you have probably never even heard of it. Yet, I and other musicians I know can work just about as much as we want. 4 sets, 25$ hr, or at least 100$ a man per night. Or I could travel further and make more money in a metropolitan area any where from a 90 minute drive to a 3 hour drive. For most, cover bands make all the money around here. One band in this whole region is doing well with originals.

circh bustom wrote:deep fried, just as Josiah, I live in a town so tiny that you have probably never even heard of it. Yet, I and other musicians I know can work just about as much as we want. 4 sets, 25$ hr, or at least 100$ a man per night. Or I could travel further and make more money in a metropolitan area any where from a 90 minute drive to a 3 hour drive. For most, cover bands make all the money around here. One band in this whole region is doing well with originals.

Enjoy the money while you can. It will dry up, like everywhere else, eventually. Also, don't you find it disconcerting that the pay for musicians has actually gone down over the years? I was making over $100 a night playing covers 20 years ago. Back then, a the money went a hell of a lot further too.

Paul,

thats no joke. There are guys around here who've advised they were in 4 piece groups in the 60s and their contracts were 400-500 bucks BACK THEN!

Sure it's sad that 10 years ago the same band might have pulled in 400-500 more. But Ive adapted. I have a full time 40 hr a week job that is sympathetic to my playing schedule. In 2004-2006 all I really did was music related jobs and i made mad bank. But things change. What can i do but adapt or die. i play in 3 bands now instead of one which turns out to be great. in one week I can get paid to play 80's pop and rock, hard stuff from 70's-'10's, and an anything goes funk, reggae, country, phish, grateful dead band instead of just one band that gets paid a lot more money. Frankly, I prefer my situation now to when I was fully supporting myself with one lucrative project. Im 38 so im sort of in between. I kind of missed the "heyday" down here, but i feel im one of the people in this region that is making the best of it. Around my region, the club/bar owners are sick of the lowest bidder. they get what they pay for.

not sure if you're referring to my response to Paul, but I was saying that bands make the same as they did in the 1960s. FIFTY years ago. A half century of zero percent change in pay. It's just a little more than sad, don't ya think? I'm amazed at how some of you guys rationalize or let these things just roll off of your shoulders. I see your point of view though.