In an age where music is basically free thanks to piracy and streaming sites, the live music industry has become a bigger and bigger revenue stream for artists. As their music sales has decreased, their income from performing live gigs has risen. Therefore, this could mean you should be striving to tap into this industry.
However, your ability to make money from this depends on where you are in your career. It is all too familiar that artists just starting out very rarely get paid for gigs, or even have to pay to play! And when you are incurring costs yourself to actually get to the gig in the first place, it can be costly to carry on gigging without any return.
But, the algorithm is simple. Gigs mean the potential for new fans; new fans means the potential for more audience members at future gigs; more audience members means more potential interest from venues to have you perform; and the more interest there is the bigger the pay check you could potentially receive. The reason I have used “potential” so many times is that you have to milk every opportunity you get. If you do gigs months apart then the interest will fade and you may have to start this algorithm again.
Be ballsy as well… don’t always assume that you are playing for free. Don’t be afraid to ask “how much will I get paid for the gig”. If they say nothing then ask “could I at least get paid for my expenses or get a guarantee that if you’re impressed you’ll pay me to come back”. You could even try and negotiate getting a percentage of the bar sales in the venue! At the end of the day the venue needs to make money and if they pay you and no one turns up that is bad for them. Deals like this mean they can ensure they cover their costs before paying you. At the end of the day, sell yourself!
Similar to what was talked about in the last part of this series, you can earn copyright royalties for your performances. If you are signed up to PRS and perform a song that you have written yourself, PRS will pay you money for this performance. Every live music venue has a PRS license to cover the costs of paying out these royalties, so take advantage of this. Do your research on PRS to make sure you do what you need to do to get paid and don’t be afraid to ask questions. If you’re unsure, ask the venue as they should know how it works – and as they aren’t paying you this royalty themselves they shouldn’t have a problem telling you how to get what is owed to you!
Even if the venue is paying you to perform, you can still get money from PRS on top of this!
As with most things discussed in the industry, promote, promote, promote!
If you have active social media accounts and content to show as examples of what your music is like and how you perform live, then venues will feel more comfortable putting that investment into you. If they are totally unaware of how good you are as an artist then it is a huge risk to pay you money as you may not bring people in or you may give a bad performance!
Admittedly, at the very basic grassroots level when you are just starting out, your main source of income will probably come from your intellectual property a.k.a copyright, but it is still worth looking into other revenue streams such as live performance. Check out the first blog in this series, Part 1: Intellectual Property, and look out for Part 3: Fan Relationship for info on these other streams.
The next blog will be the final one in the series and will discuss the importance of having fan relationships and, more importantly, how you can monetise this.
Read Full Article Here: http://www.helpforbands.co.uk/making-money-from-live-performance/
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