On Working Musicians

As a music student I spend a lot of time working through minor anxiety attacks over how I’m going to make anything resembling a living. But this past month in particular has been an intense meditation on the professional, day-to-day work that goes into being a musician.

The first catalyst for this above and beyond meditation is of course the literature review I’m writing. What began as a survey of studies on jazz marketing has turned into a 40+ page monster hybrid research paper, and much of the research I conducted involved reading depressing reports like the 2002 NEA study of working jazz musicians in four US cities (Detroit, San Francisco, NYC, New Orleans). From the report:

Many jazz musicians are woefully underpaid—almost 66 percent earned less than $7,000 in 2000 for their work as jazz musicians in the San Francisco area, according to the RDS study—especially relative to the level of higher education that they have attained. The study also showed that while a respectable percentage of union members had retirement plans and health coverage, more than half of the musicians surveyed through RDS had no retirement plans or no health coverage.

While this may not come as a huge surprise to the readers here, statistics like these, along with much anecdotal evidence pointing to the almost complete elimination of a wage for musicians working clubs, will serve to illustrate the point I eventually hope to make in this post.

Factor number two in the “meditation” this month has been the career designs class that I’m in with Vinny Golia and Julie Feves. I mentioned this class on the blog briefly, but really should have been updating after every single class. This semester we’ve discussed personal brand management, the finances of concert production, booking strategies, instrument insurance, tax policies for musicians (apparently there is actually a line in the IRS training handbook that tells new employees to practice on musicians and actors who are notoriously terrible record keepers), international performing visas, press releases, music copyright laws, grant writing, and several other topics. Needless to say, I come away from most classes with my head spinning.

Then, there’s been the internet:

Earlier this year musicianwages.com had a post called “How To Actually Make $50,000 A Year As A Musician” that outlined the normal collection of potentially exciting and potentially really dull service jobs that musicians need to amass in order to sustain a living. Of course Jason Parker immediately comes to mind not just because he blogs about making a living this way (oneworkingmusician.com) but also because he seems a prominent example of making that kind of a career really work for yourself and your personal goals.

Then just this week NPR had two pretty great posts: “How We Don’t Talk About Musicians” is a feature on FREEWAYarts, a group that posts short interviews with everyday musicians on the real groundwork that goes into building a career. “Once Again, Just What IS The Future of Music?” uses the latest Berklee conference as a springboard for discussing the shifting dynamics between increasingly DIY musicians and the services, from distribution to promotion to production, that they need.

Long story short, there’s been a lot to think about lately. And if I had to summarize one takeaway from all of it, a takeaway besides the standard mantras that depressed musicians have always known, it would be this:

There are really two music industries in America, and only one is set up so that musicians can earn a living. The first music industry is the one that everyone supposes they will get into when they decide to be a professional musician. Venues, record labels, TV or movie studios that use your work, they all have established systems (no matter how complicated and exclusive to the medium they may be) for paying musicians what they are owed for work. In the second music industry, none of these channels exist or matter. If you play original music at a club, ASCAP and BMI don’t pay you any money. The club might not even pay you any money. Wages, contracts, musician riders, mechanical and synchronization licenses, even copyright law itself becomes absolutely meaningless unless there is enough money being moved around for someone in a suit to sit up and care. As soon as that happens, the American music industry starts working for you. Lawyers spend time tracking down money you are owed, collection agencies find that your music was broadcast on internet radio in France and there’s money in your checking account. But until that happens, until serious cash is being generated by what you’re doing, all of the mechanisms that are in place to pay musicians fail.

While this may not be a revelatory statement, taking a moment to really think about the fact that there are no standard wages for musicians playing a venue freezes my brain in the same way that trying to contemplate eternity (or eating an ice cream cone in one bite) does. Of course it doesn’t make sense for a record label not to care about you unless you can sell a lot of records, but is it so unreasonable to expect that someone will pay you a set amount of money when you provide a service for them? When the senior vice president for A&R at Interscope talks about being a “great brand” and being “relevant to the masses” in the “Once Again…” piece, it shows how disparate the two music industries in America really are. Relevant to the masses? We’d be happy if someone just paid us for our work.

This post is not meant to be another cry for pity on the part of a disillusioned musician. Indeed, I’ve never been more optimistic about my career, even if the only reason for that is that I finally know exactly what it is I want to do. Rather, what I’m trying to say here is A) that the infrastructure in America that is set up to pay musicians is a failing system that favors only high revenue generating musicians. And B) I’m trying to point out a reality that exists so that musicians are better prepared to deal with that reality. Being an obscure musician means sending thousands of emails to clubs and hearing back maybe five times. It means practicing for thousands of hours and rehearsing with bands all on your own time. It means composing music in your room by yourself and playing it in a bar where people may or may not pay attention. It means putting together an electronic press kit, networking with people, and selling yourself online and on the streets. It means learning a lot of stupid things, like the fact that it costs absurd amounts of money to bring in international musicians to play a show at your festival. It means paying a $2,000 backtax on a a flute you bought in Europe seven years ago. Above all, it means that the dream you had in high school of playing great music all the time and being able to then buy a house is a false dream. Music is a job like any other job, and sometimes playing the drums means just that: performing a service. But being an obscure musician also means that you can achieve a certain type of satisfaction that is difficult to describe. It also means that you can make a living if you are aware of reality and are not stuck on “making it big.” It means that if you work hard, you can be really, really happy.

It is important to note here that when I talk about a broken infrastructure, I’m not trying to insinuate that we should socialize musician wages. We live in a capitalistic society, and if that society doesn’t deem it necessary to pay musicians a standard wage for the services they provide, then alright. But look, in capitalism if you generate a lot of revenue you get a lot of money. In music culture in this country, though, even helping a restaurant generate a small amount of revenue isn’t rewarded. I’m not saying rockstars shouldn’t be paid more than obscure musicians, they should. But there is currently not even a scale to account for these differences. It’s almost all or nothing. Famous or not. Paid or not.

As a result, I think it’s important for musicians to consider what they can do to help a working, educated segment of the population that overwhelmingly is uninsured and underpaid. Me? I’m not playing any more free gigs for causes I don’t believe in. End of story. It’s a small, maybe meaningless action that probably only saves myself some time. But that’s time I can use to work on my career, instead of throwing my services away.

As the record industry continues to collapse, one can only hope that the inevitable re-writing of America’s musical infrastructure will result in a system that works for all musicians, instead of just the top percent.