Quality has its price

I just got a gig cancellation from a wedding client who ultimately decided to get someone from the family to do the music rather than go with me. Their rationale? They want to save money. Nor is this the first time this has happened to me this season--and I doubt I’m the only musician to have had a cancellation of this nature.

In these tough economic times, I can understand how some people might think it to be a better alternative to get someone to do a gig for free. But hiring musicians on that basis is like hiring an apprentice plumber and not a real pro to fix your leaky faucet--you get what you pay for. As I pointed out in my May 2008 entry, amateur musicians generally don’t have the time to develop their musical craft to the level of a professional, because if they don’t want to make money making music, they have to make that money doing something else.

Now, while that entry was about the advantages of hiring a professional as opposed to getting someone less experienced, some people think they shouldn’t have to pay a professional musician the price that they quote because they feel it’s too high. I beg to differ. It isn’t just the performance you’re paying for--there are lots of factors that go into a musician’s price, and this is what this entry is all about.

I believe that we as a society have become so conditioned to the “crutch of recordings” that we tend to forget that there was a time when recording technology didn’t even exist. In those days, the only way you could have music in the home, aside from having someone in the family studying an instrument, was if you were wealthy enough to hire your own ensemble. Then analog cylinder and disc recording systems came along, and musicians realized, “Hey, we don’t even have to be in a particular place and our music can still be heard there!” Hence the fundamental reason why today’s recording artists cry foul when people download their music illegally via peer-to-peer networking systems such as Kazaa or eMule or Limewire: a recording represents a reproduction of an artist’s musical services. And I think that we as a society have forgotten what music is really worth.

Look at some of the better-known musicians such as Britney Spears or Herbert Grönemeyer. Do you know how much they would charge you to play a private gig at your home? That’s right, you’d likely have to take out a mortgage on your home to afford their services, precisely because they’re such big names. So it makes much more economic sense to go see them at a concert when they come into town. Still, you might wonder why their ticket prices tend to be high. The answer is simple. The ticket price doesn’t help to cover just the services of these star performers, but also all the people behind the scenes: the background dancers, the choreographers, the lighting technicians, the band members, the stage crew, show security and so on. It also covers gig-specific logistics. If the show involves pyrotechnics, for example, then the technical crew may have to secure the services of a fire safety inspector, and so a portion of the ticket price would have to go toward paying his fee. None of these background people would be there if they weren’t going to get paid, and if they weren’t there, there would be no show at all. And then there are transportation and accommodation costs on top of that--not just for the star performer but for all the background people too, and so part of the ticket price goes toward these expenses as well.

Now, take a look at us professional musicians who either aspire to get to that career level but aren’t there yet, or choose to go to a certain level and then stay there. Like our bigger-name counterparts, we are performing a service. We are bringing you our years of training and on-the-job experience. We are bringing you the result of countless hours spent preparing the material we present to you--the performance you see on stage doesn’t just magically “happen”. A talented singer, for example, could hardly be expected to put together a band from scratch and play with it the very next day a forty-song show that leaves its audience absolutely spellbound. We also bring you our business savvy, because this is exactly what we are, a business. For every entertainer that you see all but senselessly gossiped about on tabloid shows like Entertainment Tonight, there are thousands who are trying to make a living for themselves too, with varying levels of aspiration of how far they want their career to progress.

As businesses we have to keep track of our earnings and expenses so that we can properly report them when we file our income tax. Not every professional musician has the budget to hire managers or accountants to take care of that stuff for them. From time to time we also have to purchase or rent tools of the trade--stuff like instruments, PA equipment, lighting equipment, microphones, cables, sheet music, music stands and so on. Again, there are transportation costs involved, particularly if a gig is out of town. Sometimes musicians have to buy special clothing for certain gigs.

Then there is the continuing cost of promotional materials and advertising. For example, in order to simplify the process of getting our music heard by the people we want to hire us, we have to produce promo kits, and this involves the production of a promo CD, a professional 8x10, and a well-written resume. This all costs time and money. What about promotional posters for an upcoming gig? What about the photography or artwork involved in that? What about the printing and distribution costs? What about a listing in the Yellow Pages?

And these promotional materials need to be made as slick as possible within the confines of the musician’s budget. The reason for this is simple: the musician is competing not only with all the big-name performers that are featured on TV or in the occasional local concert, but with the other small-name hopefuls who are trying to get their name established too. The musician has to do something flashy to make the people who would hire him notice him, and he has to do it on merit alone unless he is known to have done lots of local gigs on his own before. If he doesn’t have the budget to create flashy promotional material, he’s stuck.

For a union professional, there are of course expenses related to the American Federation of Musicians or some other musicians’ union. There are annual dues that vary by Local. There are work dues that have to be paid--a certain percentage of the scale portion of the musician’s earnings, a percentage that varies by Local and sometimes by gig. And depending on the Local, the musician has to charge the client a pension fee (which is a certain percentage of the scale portion of wages--again, a percentage that will vary by Local and sometimes by gig), and then forward that amount to a pension fund.

Then there are administrative costs such as office supplies, office equipment, filing systems, administrative software, music production software and so forth. If a musician has material he wants other musicians to learn, he needs to buy CD-Rs or cassettes to make the appropriate copies. If a musician lives in Canada and wants to work in the States or vice versa, he has to procure a work visa--which, by the way, is much easier to obtain for an AFM member than a non-member. For Canadian musicians who want to work in the States, this process takes four months at a cost of US$320 per musician, but in a time-crunch situation a work visa can be expedited within one month at a cost of US$1,000 per musician.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. And that’s just the business side of the expenses. Suddenly the prices that a union professional would quote don’t seem all that high after all, do they?

So when we quote you a fee and you think it’s high, we’re not trying to be greedy. We’re trying to be fair and competitive at the same time. I’ve been playing weddings professionally for about twenty years now, and as a result I feel the $150 I charge per wedding here in Ottawa is far more than fair given all the economic factors that I’ve outlined here.

Remember, some of us local musicians of today may well end up becoming the recording artists of tomorrow. But it’s hard for us to get there, let alone at least make a living locally at what we do, if we aren’t supported on the level we should be. Music is an expensive business that is endangered by those who think it should be free--endangered to the point where the music industry as we know it may well one day die completely. Who wants to regress to the musical logistics of the 1850s?