Episode 1-Being a Musician, Part 1

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. We are tonight's entertainment.

Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Double Dutch Rudder podcast. I'm your host, Cory Miller.

And I think this week we're going to discuss a little bit about what it is being a musician.

And the current time period. I think it's an interesting topic and this is probably going to be part one of several because I'd like to have some of my friends who are actually gigging musicians and have their own bands. Just kind of get their take on the whole thing.

That being said, I have been in bands off and on for roughly the past 20 years. I've been in original bands, I've been in cover bands, I've been in all kinds of bands. So I do have a little bit of experience what it's like to be in an original band and the economics of that. And being in a cover band as well.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about both those things and my perspective on all of that.

Now, I think when it comes to being a musician these days, I really kind of need to start and talk a little bit about how it's changed over the years. You think back to the early 2000s, even the late 90s. I think most people's idea of what it's like to be a musician and how musicians make money.

Probably have something to do along the lines of you go out, you write music, you play shows, you go get a record deal, and you go on to make millions of dollars from there. For most bands that's typically not the case. There's so many things that can happen in between of all that.

And you know, as a band what you do, you do get together and you write music. Most bands, most local bands have to finance their own recording and all that. When you get signed to a label, the label typically does the financing on that. And you also have to pay the label back in most cases before you ever make any money off your music.

When you're on a record label. Now, things have changed significantly since then for both bands that are on record labels and independent bands. Just as a point of reference, I was in an original band roughly about 15 years ago. We were a metal band. We self-financed all our own recordings.

Making of CDs and any kind of merch. And for most bands, whether they be local, independent, anything like that. I think most people don't realize that bands these days make most of their money from the sale of merchandise. Be it CDs, vinyl records, t-shirts.

Bats, things like that. Because believe it or not, there is not a lot of money that gets made through the streaming services that are most prevalent these days. Just as a case in point, I took the liberty of looking up some information on how much Spotify pays out.

This is more for people who are listeners, fans of bands to kind of get a better sense of the kind of money that the bands that they enjoy are making and what is the best way you could support a band that you enjoy.

So for Spotify, Spotify pays about .04 cents per 10 streams. So for a thousand streams that's around $4. For a hundred thousand streams that's around $400.

Now, to put it in a slightly different context, think about when you would go out and you would buy a single from a band. Typically that would cost roughly around $0.99. So you go out, you buy a song for $0.99. So if you had 10 people buy that song in $0.99, that is $10.

A thousand people go out and buy that song for $0.99, that's $1,000. For a hundred thousand, that's $100,000. So you can see the huge difference it makes between streaming music from an artist and also purchasing music from the artist.

So if you're one of those people who really enjoys a band, really wants to support that band, the best way you can do that is by going out and actually purchasing their music. And that's really how I think the economy on music in general has changed.

So while I will occasionally use streaming services like Apple Music or Spotify to preview something, I do actually go out and purchase vinyl records. I am a little bit of a vinyl head these days. But I'll also go out and download their music. Purchase it off sites like Bandcamp or Amazon.com because Amazon does still sell music.

So there's a lot of different ways you can support bands, again, buying t-shirts and things like that also help. And the best thing you can do is just go out and see them play live. That's another way the bands make money is by playing shows live.

Now, that also depends a lot on how the bands go about getting those shows. That has also changed. But that is also a topic for another podcast. Because I would like to talk to some musicians that do play on a regular basis and hear about what kind of money they make playing live shows.

Because it definitely varies depending on where you play, who you play with, that kind of thing. So it all depends. And there's also, sometimes you have to deal with promoters and things like that. But again, that's a deeper discussion for another show.

But beyond that, just for me from a personal side, because I do write my own music and things like that. I've gotten to the point because I don't really pursue music as a career. It's more of a hobby for me. So there's a lot less pressure for me to make money basically on writing music and things like that.

So I tend to just release my music on places like Bandcamp, places where I can host that music for free and offer it for sale. It's one of those things. It's not important to me whether or not people purchase the music or anything like that.

It's appreciated, but it's also not a necessity for me. But again, because I pursue music as a hobby, I know that there are some bands out there that pursue it as a career. So it is very important for those bands that are trying to make music their career for fans to go out and support them.

And promotion is a big aspect of that as well. Bands that do it professionally. Typically we'll put a lot of effort into promotion. I myself personally don't put really any effort into promotion. But again, it's a hobby for me. It's not a career.

And with that, I think we're going to go ahead and close it up for this week. I should be back next week with another podcast. Not sure what the topic's going to be just yet, but we shall see. Again, this is the Double Dutch Rudder Podcast.

(gentle music)