The Secret to Making Money Playing Live Music

The simple secret to making money playing live music is:

1. Create exciting market worthy music products, both recorded and live
2. Expose your music through every possible avenue at your disposal, both terrestrial and digital
3. Focus more of your time on selling live music interactions to your fans than to night clubs.

Unfortunately, most artists think that making it onto the club circuit will pave the way to financial security and, eventually, that almighty record deal. This is not true. However, until artists truly understand their position in today’s music marketplace, clubs will still be able make them think they have all of the leverage and thereby the upper hand in booking matters. By working smarter not harder, artists can change this perception and build a large moneymaking base from their fans and eventually from clubs who will pay them for live music interactions. Here’s how.

Fans are desperate for more personal interaction with the artists they love. Because booking has been an intimidating task for most fans and something they have never really known how to do, the average person has never booked an artist. On the artist side, most fail to realize that the best source of live music bookings for them is their own fan base.

When a fan wants to book an artist for a house party, private concert or other type of special event, which most booking agents generally don’t want to deal with, they rarely know how to go about doing it. More than likely, cost is not the same determining factor for a fan that it is for clubs. When a fan is booking an artist they love, their priority factor is that they are looking to make a personal connection with an artist and they are willing to pay well for that connection. They get to deal with the artist directly, an exciting factor in and of itself and they control their own event. The price point will usually be much higher for a fan than a club because a fan is buying from emotion whereas a club wants to fills its room with the best talent it can find for the cheapest price so it can sell tickets and alcohol.

Sometimes playing for free makes a lot of sense. Find artists with large followings and sell yourself to them as a free opening act. Go to restaurants and bars with moderate to large client bases that don’t have live music and offer to play for free as long as you can sell some merchandise. Remember, the more you play out live, the tighter your live music product becomes. If friends are have parties, offer to play for free. A party is always better with live music and it makes you seem cool and provides great exposure. Slowly you will lock in a base of “True Fans.” These are the people most likely to pay you money for a a live performance or a CD. Go to malls and offer to play for free. Pass out flyers for future paid gigs and sell merchandise. Talk to high schools and offer to play for free but make sure that you will help the school with something that’s important to them, like raising money for band instruments or team sports.

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