Friday, June 20, 2008

Bleakonomics (Part 2)

Returning to the topic of the economics of live music...

The Principle of Fun leads to an interesting reality for live musicians: the more money you get paid, the less fun you're expected to have (ie. the more you're supposed to pander to the manager, the audience, etc.); the less money you get paid, the more freedom you have to have fun and play some music. There is thus an inverse relationship between compensation and creativity.

Let's look closer at this. By means of illustration, I'll take the two gigs I played last week: in the first gig (Gig 1), I got paid a fair (not great) Miami market rate of $100 for three hours. In the second gig (Gig 2), I was paid $65, which is low by hopefully any market's standards. (I'm sorry Chris and the rest of you Bostonians!) In the first gig, I showed up expecting to play a sideman job: with those sort of fair wages, it is assumed that you will play exactly what the leader/manager/club owner wants. You are getting paid to work, not to have fun. Predictably, the gig went along according to this rule.

Gig 2, on the other hand, was a different story. Since we weren't getting paid well, there weren't any limitations on what/how we should play. The gig was creative, exploratory, and spontaneous - in a word, fun. Not having to "work" for our money (since we weren't getting a lot), we were free to simply play music. Looking back on the great Sex Mob show, this was probably the dynamic at work that night - Bernstein et al were getting paid barely enough to cover their cab rides, but because of that, they were up there playing creatively, doing the material they wanted, and getting drunk. They were having fun, and so was the audience. No economic imperative weighed down on their shoulders.

Perhaps we can illustrate this principle as two lines on a graph, one dipping down (money) and the other up (fun and creativity). As the money goes down, your freedom as a performer goes up. In the center, where the lines comes together, is the hypothetical "best realistic scenario" - you make decent money and you get to have a decent creative say over the performance. It is a compromise that many musicians shoot for in their gig selections.

Of course, the extremes of this model tip the scale completely (those .01% of musicians referred to earlier). When Radiohead gets up there to perform, for instance, they can essentially do whatever they want and people will eat it up. When an act commands that level of demand, they don't need to pander anymore. Witness Miles Davis's audience-disrespecting antics or Nina Simone's legendary stunts. Artists at this level have broken the scale, but they are by far the exception rather than the rule.

No doubt, astute M&M readers, you have grasped the Catch 22 of live music bleakonomics - the better you play, the less money you make. Of course, there are a million exceptions to this rule, but by and large I've found that it holds in most markets.

Musician-readers, please supply your impressions and stories about this little paradox embedded in the dismal science of live music. And be sure you leave a tip for the band at your favorite club next time.

1 comment:

Mark Samples said...

Given the number of musicians reading M & M, I think the conspicuous silence in response to your bleakonomics posts means that your analysis is a little too close for comfort. I don't think musicians want to think about this sometimes!

That aside, the nice thing about doing music for a career is that it usually signifies that the musician has chosen music over economics. We know that we are probably not going to be a part of the .01% who makes lots of money, and we play anyway. It's worth it.