{"id":1661,"date":"2014-01-13T15:57:14","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T23:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/?p=1661"},"modified":"2014-01-13T15:57:14","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T23:57:14","slug":"musicians-should-you-ever-pay-to-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/musicians-should-you-ever-pay-to-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Musicians, Should You EVER Pay-To-Play?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Payola<\/a>, in one form or another, is as old as the music business:<\/p>\n

Labels pay radio stations to broadcast their music, producers pay DJs to spin their records in the club, and promoters ask live bands to pay-to-play at their event.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s always been a\u00a0hot topic<\/a>\u00a0amongst musicians.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re an artist, should you ever have to pay-to-play?<\/p>\n

Here are two ways to look at it:<\/p>\n

Why You Shouldn\u2019t Generally Pay-to-play<\/h2>\n

Written by\u00a0Shaun Letang<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Ok, so should you pay-to-play? As a general rule, no, I feel you shouldn\u2019t. Let me explain:<\/p>\n

The majority of places which will tell you you need to pay to get on stage, most likely don\u2019t have the biggest audience themselves. If they did, they\u2019d be making money from that audience, and wouldn\u2019t require you to give up your money to get some stage time at their gig or event. They\u2019d be paying for more well known acts who will keep their paying audience happy. This is how the majority of popular events work.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because of this that\u00a0the amount you pay often won\u2019t give you a good value amount of exposure<\/strong>. For example, if you\u2019re paying say $100 or more to perform a gig, you\u2019d in theory need at least 20 people to go on to sign up to\u00a0your mailing list<\/a>\u00a0from there. You\u2019d then need at least 10 people to buy a one off album from you, or three people to become recurring customers. Chances are though, that that isn\u2019t going to happen from performing one gig where the audience isn\u2019t highly targeted. This is especially true if there isn\u2019t much of an audience, and most likely there won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

Now don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m a strong believer that at some stages you have to pay for promotion. That said, the method of promotion you pay for should be able to give you some real results. It\u2019s like paying for a magazine advert; unless you\u2019re combining it with a large scale marketing campaign to get wide-scale exposure, it\u2019s not going to do anything for you. People will see your face, but not hear your music. They\u2019ll then flick the page.<\/p>\n

Pay-to-play events are notorious for not giving the musicians good value for money. Unless you\u2019re guaranteed a set amount of highly targeted people turning up to this event and you\u2019re free to promote to them as you need, than stay well clear. A lot of the time, you\u2019ll be wasting your money paying to play. Instead, find\u00a0open mike nights<\/a>, show case events, and possibly even put on your own show.<\/p>\n

Why Sometimes You Should Pay-to-play<\/h2>\n

Written by\u00a0Lukas Camenzind<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

If you are a musician who feels it\u2019s never OK to pay-to-play, I think you\u2019ve got it all wrong.<\/p>\n

Why? Because that\u2019s an entitled and closed-minded attitude.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an entitled attitude because you should\u00a0consider having an audience and playing music for a living a privilege<\/a>. Do you know how many people dream of being a rock star? Probably most people at some point in their lives.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s closed-minded because it ignores basic economics: If your band does not bring out any people, why are you expecting to get paid? For some reasons many musicians do\u2026<\/p>\n

The same musicians think that because Twitter and Facebook are free services, all music marketing should be free, too. Yet they are much more willing to spend money on instruments, recording gear or studio time. I know it\u2019s more fun to buy gear, but the logic doesn\u2019t make any sense.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen bands play to an empty room for 3 hours and get paid $200. Is that better than paying $100 to play in front of 200 people?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. I\u2019d say it depends. But it\u2019s silly to dismiss one opportunity from the get-go just because it costs money.<\/p>\n

Yes, there are\u00a0shady promoters<\/a>. And yes, you should try to get the best deal you can. But if you think you\u2019re not getting paid what you deserve, don\u2019t just sit there and complain: Rent a space, sell your own tickets and run your own show. If people are actually coming out to see you, you\u2019ll make the most money that way anyway.<\/p>\n

What I suggest is that you look at pay-to-play opportunities like anything else: compare the costs and the benefits. Look closely at what you\u2019re getting in return (and don\u2019t forget to think about what else you could do instead, too). Look at the big picture. Then decide if it\u2019s worth it to you. It just might be.<\/p>\n

Via Musc Think Tank<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Payola, in one form or another, is as old as the music business: Labels pay radio stations to broadcast their music, producers pay DJs to spin their records in the club, and promoters ask live bands to pay-to-play at their event. And it\u2019s always been a\u00a0hot topic\u00a0amongst musicians. So if you\u2019re an artist, should you ever have to pay-to-play? Here are two ways to look at it: Why You Shouldn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[223],"class_list":["post-1661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-tips","tag-marketing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1663,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions\/1663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}