Ep 27: Let's Get Real Specific About Money

In this episode, John revisits one of the topics that generated the most feedback from listeners: money. Back in March, he released a two-part series called Let's Talk About Money, and while the conversation sparked good discussion, many musicians wanted something more concrete. How much should you charge? What are venues actually paying? What's reasonable for a winery, brewery, corporate event, private party, restaurant, wedding, funeral, or retirement community?

This time, John gets into actual dollars and cents. From local bar gigs to high-paying corporate events, you'll hear practical insights drawn from years of booking, performing, and negotiating. If you've ever wondered whether you're charging too much, too little, or simply making it up as you go, this episode offers a candid look at the numbers behind a working musician's career.

Transcript

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You are listening to the Gig to Live Podcast. Welcome everyone. I'm John Foles and I'm a full-time working musician. This podcast is about building a music life that holds up over time. It's practical, enjoyable, sometimes uncomfortable, but it's always about helping you stay in the game and actually enjoy the life that you're building. We'll meet some wonderful working musicians from time to time. So whether you're just getting started or you've been doing this for years, you're in the right spot. This podcast is for you. Hello, hello. I hope everybody's having a good time gigging. My weekend of gigging was fun. It was interesting. It was varied. On Friday night, I played at an outdoor venue, and it was kind of weird, honestly. Um, I mean, I love the venue, but it was weird because it was outside, which I'm, you know, I have a love-hate relationship with playing outside. Sometimes it's absolutely beautiful and it feels good to be breathing fresh air. But this particular evening was cloudy, it was windy, and my allergies are horrible right now. So the wind wasn't helping anything. The crowd was small because of the weather, and even the ones who stayed outside and enjoyed the music for a bit, they got cold. You could see them shivering, putting on their coats and going inside. They'd walk by me and they would apologize as they went inside. And then I watched the warm fire pits burning everywhere with no one sitting by them at one point in the gig, wishing that one of the fire pits, just one, uh, were by me as the temperature kept dropping outside. I was getting so cold. You know, if you're a guitar player, you know this. If it's a little bit chilly and you don't have fantastic circulation, even if you have good circulation, your fingers can get so cold, uh, especially on your fretting hand. So there's like one hour left in the gig, and zero people were there. That's right. Zero. But I kept playing as I was hired to do. The staff was up there with me, working the bar. Um, they were all on their phones, waiting, waiting for somebody to show up, clapping every time I finished a song. But with 40 minutes left, a crowd came in off the street, and they made a point of telling me that they heard me as they were walking by. And then even more people came in and they had requests. And my goodness, I knew all of the requests. That doesn't happen all the time. They were happy. I got to tailor my set to this small crowd that showed up, and I made more tips in the last 30 minutes of that gig than I did in the previous two and a half hours. So stick with it. You never know. And then let's see. Uh oh. Then I took Saturday off, and I was excited to do that because I knew it was going to be a busy Sunday. So I rested on Saturday. On Sunday, I did an afternoon show that was supposed to be outside, but it was pouring rain. So the venue brought me inside. It was amazing. It was a packed venue. People were super cool. I even played longer for free just because I loved being in the environment. And truth be told, I was trying to milk the tips. So that one went well. Then I had a two-hour break, and I did another gig that started late afternoon and went into the evening. An amazing family. They've hired me before. They had a bunch of friends over. You know, there was there were fun cocktails, they grilled some wonderful food. It was out by the lake. It was absolutely gorgeous outside. They were very generous about wanting me to take breaks, eat with them, have a cocktail with them, sit around the campfire and tell stories with them. And so that gig actually ended up going way longer than I planned, but my actual play time was exactly what I planned. Anyway, I don't know why I felt the need to share all of that with you, except I think it's fun to share gig stories with you. And my goodness, if you have stories about what's going on in your life, I want to know. You know, hit me up, send me an email, gig to livepodcast at gmail.com, or you know, get in touch with me uh through this platform where you're listening, or on Instagram or the Facebook page. I'd love to hear from you. Okay, here we go. Back in early March, I did a two-episode podcast called Let's Talk About Money, and it got a lot of traction. Oddly enough, the second part was listened to more than the first part, and I think maybe that's because of where I placed the top 10 list. It was in the second part. But I thought the first episode was pretty foundational, so I highly encourage you to go back and listen to that if you haven't. What I didn't cover in those episodes was information that is specific to what I actually charge at venues, how I figure that out with an actual dollar amount and so on. So I got some feedback after those episodes where people wanted me to take it further and talk about what I actually charge and how I figure it out. So no problem. I have nothing to hide. I think that rates for musicians are generally the same no matter what part of the state you're in. And I've heard from other musicians that rates are surprisingly the same as you travel throughout the world. So if you're in Europe listening right now, it's probably the same as the states. At least it doesn't seem like they differ that much. There are a few variables when figuring out what to charge a venue, and I will share those. We'll talk about the variables. But first, I'll get very specific about my standard rates without the variables. So, first, let's start with hometown venues. And by this I mean bars and coffee shops and breweries. As I've been around the U.S., I find that standard pay for musicians is basically an hourly rate of $50 to $100 an hour for a local spot, meaning that the smallest gigs are offering about $150 for a three-hour show. And the venues who do a little bit better have a larger built-in crowd, maybe they've established themselves as a music venue, they are closer to $300 for a three-hour show. That means that one bar down the street pays twice as much as the other for three hours. And that's a big swing, honestly. My standard rate, what I ask for from a venue, is $100 to $150 an hour, depending on what kind of venue it is. I try to keep my shows to three hours. Some venues definitely want a four-hour show. I have some of those coming up. I definitely ask for at least $100 an hour in those four-hour venues. If it's a weekday show, I may choose to do $150 for three hours, but most likely not. There are gigs everywhere that will pay $200 for three hours on a weekday. Now, venues that have me back over and over again on a monthly basis, and those where I have a residency, they get the $100 an hour rate. And again, I will talk about variables later, but that is my standard. I need at least $100 an hour, but $150 an hour is the target. Some gigs offer a door percentage, and I always want a minimum in these cases. And I will try a door percentage one time. One time. If I don't like the outcome, I don't do the gig again. Not with those specifications, no matter what. I am not in a position to constantly gamble on a venue. Exposure is sometimes used as leverage. Uh, I think exposure is dumb as negotiation. I never fall prey to that tactic. At the risk of sounding cocky, I don't need the exposure because I've built a network. Uh, but exposure is a silly idea, silly idea for a local venue. Exposing my music to the 50 to 100 people that are showing up at the bar that night does not really have any lasting payoff. Not that I've found. Anyway, maybe you have found something different. I've had local venues pitch to me that they have musicians play for free the first time to see if, you know, if they like them, and then they decide if they'll have that musician back. I think that one is extremely laughable. My answer is usually jokingly and lightheartedly that I will do that if they will allow my wife and I to come eat and drink at their restaurant for free for the first time to see if we want to come back. Hmm, silly willies. One final note on local gigs. Venues talk to one another. I highly suggest that you keep your rates consistent across the board for venues that are in the same town, or at least be able to explain why someone is getting a better deal than the other venue. Okay, let's talk about corporate events. First of all, corporate events have larger budgets. They expect to pay more. They have expense line items for the very thing that you offer. They're paying for high expectations, and there is a much greater responsibility for you with a corporate event. What you do will affect their client relationships, their boss's expectations, maybe the outcome for the fundraiser that they're hosting. It definitely affects their branding and their image if they're trying to impress potential clients. So it's a big deal. There's often a dress code, there's a specific load-in time to work around setup and caterers and like the decor teams. And in my experience, it often takes an entire day, or at least a very good portion of the day for a corporate event. There's usually a much more strict contract, there's customized playlists, there's no tip jar for a corporate event. Uh, usually, you need to calculate what you would normally expect in tips to the base price. I usually work up a fee based on a few things. Um, my hours spent in the day, extra hours for prep and communication, hassle of setup, the perceived value of the event, the type of client. Is it a hometown client or a big company? Are there any special requests? What does travel time look like? And a general feel of the event plays into it for me. Is it going to be casual? Is it going to be black tie? And then I start with a base rate of $800. I add in travel expenses, so maybe a hundred bucks is an average. I add in travel and setup time. I want to make $100 an hour when I leave the house to when I return. If there are any special requests, I usually charge $150 a song that is unique to the event. And then I figure what I'd be losing in tips, and I add that back in. So let's do some math. Let's say it's a three-hour corporate event. This is how I look at it. Start with the $800 base. Add in $100 for travel expense. From the time I leave the house until my return is eight hours. So I add $200 to my $800 base. And now we are up to $1,100. And then they they want a feature song. They want me to play a song I have to learn. So that's $150. Now we're up to $1,250. I figure that I'm losing about $300 in tips that night because it's a Saturday. So the total cost for this corporate event will be $1,550. If it's a huge company that doesn't blink an eye at costs for professional entertainment, and I know that, then I may add 10 to 20%. I might round up to $1,800. All in all, it usually works out to be about $500 to $6 an hour of actual playing time. So that math that we just did works well. That works great. I definitely ask for a non-refundable deposit of 50%. Corporate gigs have stuff happen all the time. They change dates, they go to a different venue, you know, they take it in a different direction, and that causes them to have another venue. They got a bigger budget and they decided to hire a full band. You know, they want five or six people in the band and no longer have a solo artist. By the way, I've seen corporate gigs pay $10,000 to $15,000 for a full band. So if you have a band, don't sell yourself short. Okay, let's talk about private parties. First, I pretend it's any other gig, but at private parties, for me, I don't put out a tip jar unless when I get there they say, hey, where's your tip jar? Then I'll put it out. But I go into the gig saying I'm not going to put out a tip jar. So I have to figure that in. My starting rate is good local gig pay plus the expected tips, starting at $600. Okay. So if it's right around the corner, I may do $500 as a base. I do a deposit through gig salad. If it's a private party, usually most of the time, and I'll talk about gig salad in a bit because people ask me about that all the time. If they want special requests, I have to figure that in. Most private parties I do end up being 600 bucks. And I require food and drinks and a 15-minute break every hour. Weddings. I never do a wedding lower than 800 bucks. That's my starting rate. It's just for the ceremony, by the way. I add more for the cocktail hour and the reception. I include one dance song for the bride and groom or you know, for mom and son, or dad and daughter. Those songs have to be in my playlist, though. So if they have a special request that I need to learn, I charge them $150 per special song. If there's travel fees, they pay. If there's an overnight stay required, they pay. I will write them a song for $1,000 extra, a personalized song. And some people take me up on this. I give a break. If multiple things like a cocktail hour and a reception and a ceremony are included, I'll give a break of 10%. That can be helpful in negotiation because if someone's paying $1,200 for a wedding and you knock off $120 because of the bundle of music, then they're very happy. And I figure out a couple of packages and I A B the event. You can do this or you can do this. And sometimes I will do an option C, but I don't really want to confuse them. I certainly will go back and rework another package deal if they have other ideas. Deposits for weddings are a must. I do 50% non-refundable. My average local wedding package is $1,200 to $1,300, $800 for just the ceremony, but you know, it ends up being a little bit more than that. Weddings are a big deal, and people expect to pay. I had someone reach out to me on Gig Salad a couple of years ago when I was in Michigan. They wanted me to play their wedding near Yosemite, the National Park in California. I told them, I mean, I thought for sure they didn't want to do this, but I said, you know, I have to bid this very high. You'll have to pay for my stay, uh, pay for my travel expenses. I need a stipend for food. I need you to take care of me when I get there. And I don't even want to tell you right now what I quoted that wedding at because it was huge. There was a lot involved. And they did it. People expect to spend a lot of money for their wedding. One time early in my career, I charged way less for a wedding. And then I found out that they paid $8,000 to rent the venue for three hours. So yeah, yeah, I never looked back. I upped my rates. All right. Let's talk about funerals. Funerals can be tough because uh, you know, death. It's a sad time, and you don't want someone to feel like you're taking advantage of them. I had to get over it. I charge $300 for a funeral, and that's for a basic funeral. If they have a bunch of special requests, it may be more, but usually it's a couple of hymns or spirituals and the family's favorite country song or something very easy. So most of the funerals I do are $300. All right. Let's talk about the variables. First of all, variable one. Do I want to do it? If I don't, if I don't want to do the gig, I up the price to see if they buy it. Hmm, you know what would it be worth to me to do this gig if I do want to do it. I may adjust the price downward to be more competitive if I want to do it. But I usually don't do that. Maybe I just want to have the experience, you know, so I do a special little price for them. But do I want to do it is a big variable. Second variable. Do they hire me all the time? Man, recurring gigs, they are a blessing. I need a consistent income. If they want to hire me four times a month, they get a deal. Variable number three, are they a large or small venue? Depending on where you're at in the world, the average cocktail bar is going to have somet somebody spending, you know, thirty dollars to fifty dollars a person on drinks for the night. Not to mention appetizers. Now, now we're at about $70 a person. If they have a hundred individual people in that room for the three hours I am playing, not the hours they're open, but the three hours I'm playing, that means that they have generated $7,000 in revenue for three hours. And I brought in at least 20 of the people that are in the crowd. So there you go. I take that into account. Now I know they have overhead, they have expenses, but I used to own a venue. I know if you've got $7,000 coming in in three hours, you can expect to pay your musician what they're asking. If it's the corner bar, they can't afford the same. So I may adjust it. Here's the next variable. Do they work hard to get people in? If they don't work it at all, if I am doing all the heavy lifting, I am posting repeated posts on Instagram and Facebook, and I'm reaching out to my friends individually. And I look at the venue's social media and they're doing absolutely nothing with any of the people that they host. Well, guess what? I'm gonna charge them more. I'm just gonna do it because I know that it's gonna be a smaller crowd, tips are going to be smaller, and come on, people, we gotta work together. Here's the next variable. Are they easy to work with? If not, if they're difficult to work with, then I may add what I call the wiener tax. Next variable. Is it a weekday or a weekend? A Wednesday afternoon lunch gig for three hours is cheaper for a venue. I will charge less. And I look for filling those awkward times. I do quite a few midday gigs for about 150 bucks. And you know what? I am happy to do it. Another variable. Is it a retirement community? They usually only have a $150 to $200 budget. But here's the thing. They usually only want you for one hour. They usually do a happy hour. It's pretty consistent across the board, one hour for a retirement community. Every once in a while they'll do a big celebration, like I did a 4th of July celebration once, and they wanted me for three hours. Well, I charged them accordingly. But I take that into account. Sometimes uh retirement communities have a much more strict budget. And usually they'll hire me again and again and again on a weekday at a time where I'm usually not filling gigs. Here's another variable. Do they want me to add musicians to the mix? If so, I figure that in enough for the musicians to have their decent pay plus the time that it's going to take me to write the charts and catch the musicians up to speed and do all of the work for that gig. Most of the time, honestly, if I'm putting a band together, it's not like the whole band is jumping in and saying, How can I help? Can I chart something for you? Can I, you know, uh be the manager with the venue and help you with all the details? No. If I am putting a band together, they're looking at me as the band leader. They want to do the practice, they want to show up, play, and get paid. So I always make more if I am putting a band together than the other musicians. I have no problem with that, but I want to make sure that the musicians get paid well for that. And I will bid accordingly for that venue or that special event. Let's talk about agents for a little bit. Somebody recently sent me an email and asked if I used an agent. Some people have agents and they use them all the time. You know, someone who finds you a gig and they do all the work of securing the gigs and getting you paid. That works for some people. It doesn't really work for me. I've I've tried it before. Uh the agent gets a cut, but at this point in my music career, I've done a lot of networking on my own, and so I don't really need an agent. I'm more hands-on. However, I work with a few companies that do booking for venues where I can't get into that venue to play unless I go through their booking agent, and that is completely okay with me. Again, the agent gets a cut, but yes, I will work with agents in those scenarios. What does the cut look like? It's different all the time. Sometimes it's a flat fee, sometimes it's a percentage of the gig. I work with one company in the Midwest here, and uh they get uh a $25 stipend every time they get me into a venue, and that comes off of the pay. Uh and I will jump on that sometimes because it's a venue that I want to get into, but that's how I use agents. Let's talk about gig salad for a minute. I've been using gig salad for the past few years, and people ask me all the time if it's financially worth it because they charge for the service, they charge a service fee per booking, and people want to know if it's going to add value to them. And I think that's a great question. So let me tell you some of the benefits uh outside of the financial things first. For the person who doesn't know you, gig salad helps them feel more safe, more comfortable. They are going to pay money, and it's good to know that there is an entity like Gig Salad that doesn't release all the funds until the gig is over and the musician showed up. Of course, uh you can ask for 100% up front on Gig Salad, but you may limit your success rate on your bookings. I typically uh will give a quote for a gig through Gig Salad, and I will ask for 50% up front as a non-refundable deposit. Gig Salad then serves as the contract between you and the person hiring you. So you put all of the details for the gig down, and if they accept it and they hire you, the contract stands. I list my deliverables, what equipment I'm going to bring, what I need from the host, the special arrangements we've made, and any special requests that I've agreed to with them. You get more visibility with a service like this that acts like a search engine for people who are hiring. You know, they just enter in the town, say, I'm looking for an acoustic uh singer-songwriter to play at my gig, or I'm looking for a piano player, I'm looking for a full band. You get a pretty steady stream of leads in the area that you mark as your territory, you know, the distance that you're willing to travel. And as you get good reviews and you book more gigs, you have the potential to become a top performer and get even more visibility because that's how their algorithm works. You get verified reviews by only the people who have hired you. And private gigs you never would have heard about come through the platform. In fact, that's mostly what I get through the platform. I rarely get hired by a bar through Gig Salad. I close about 15% of the gigs I bid there, and that doesn't sound like a lot, but many people ask for ridiculous things. Some of the you know requests are far away, so I feel good about my closure rate. I think my stats would be much better. Uh, however, I turned down over 80% of the gig leads that I receive there because I'm already booked in the time slot they want. Now that's pretty significant for the person that may be struggling to find gigs. I think it could be a gold mine for you. On average, and I've been on the platform for about six years now. I receive 20.49 unique gig leads a month through the platform. I've been on there, like I said, six years, and I average about an extra $400 a month being part of it. Now, that may not sound like a lot, but I will also say that many of those leads have led to other gigs. And while I'm faithful to book all of my gig salad leads on the platform, I don't try to cheat the system. If I get a wedding lead, I book it through Gig Salad. But then if I meet someone at that wedding who wants to book me after hearing me, that's just how networking works. I can book follow-up gigs outside of that platform, and I hope that's what you do. So, all in all, Gig Salad has more than paid for itself for me. If I book one gig a quarter, I pay for the fee. I book about 10 to 12 gigs a year directly through the platform, but like I said, those lead to more. And a gig a month from a profile that just sits there with no work from me is a great deal. So there we go. More specifics. You asked for it, you got it. Are you ready for it? Stay creative, stay after it, stay hired. Let me live. Let me live.