I’ve checked the archives and this topic hasn’t been touched on in a couple years.
With the economy and all, I’m wondering whether bands have taken a hit to their rate sheets or not?
I know many groups around here are killing each other for gigs, simply undercutting the other guys and, frankly, the promoters and venues are “getting what they pay for,” with so many inferior quality groups getting what used to be higher-quality gigs.
It’s pretty sad.
We’ve stayed the course and refuse to budge on our standard rate: $100/hr/musician. We’re a 3-man band. We’ve had several bookings bypass us since someone else was willing to go lower – even in a 5man or more. Frankly, that only undercuts our own talent pools and ability to get paid a decent wage for what we do.
When my 3-piece band was going (we were all pretty much newbies in the ITM, ranging from about 1-3 years of experience, though many more years in other types of music, from a bluegrass guitarist to a technical death metal drummer), we did some pub gigs, usually somewhere in the region of 2-2½ hours of music per gig for about $300-400. Not a lot, but being young and inexperienced, we were pretty damn pleased with that.
The vast majority of work could be related to as not real jobs.Dunno whit the Taxman would say tho if I presented that argument to em.Or that the manager of the Pub or whitever is only giving me a tip..or a kindness…ye would be aff in a straight jacket wi that.
Tax Return is a normal term as is Tax Declaration.Anyways this wasnae meant to turn into the Oxford Debate of 2010 just pointing out the wisdom or no of declaring to the world whit ye get.
Uilliam
You put in all those long hard hours at sessions learning your craft instead of earning a wage and not only that, you have to spend money while there to keep in the good graces of the proprieter (and it’s not your fault they hold them in pubs ). You spend every spare nickel you have amassing a collection of instruments (all completely necessary) and then when you finally get paid a pittance compared to what you have invested, they call it a profit…
Sorry, still off topic… For tax purposes here in the States, as long as the income is below a threshold level, many of us can declare the income as hobby income. The good news is that many expenses related to the hobby can be deducted, such as mileage, education, supplies,… Do a search on hobby income at the IRS website www.irs.gov for more info. You also may need to report the income on your State Tax return, which means that you’ll need to check there as well.
Being the simple-minded soul that I am, I gave up trying to figure it all out by myself and found a professional tax preparer who seems to find great joy in lecturing me on reportable income, allowable expenses, and the big one “proper book keeping”.
We were discussing this interesting
observation on the way back from
a gig last week: our guitarist, who
gave it a go as a folk musician in
70’s New York, stated that the more
a person pays you for a gig, the more
they appreciate you. It’s as if their
mind has to justify the price and so
their perception of your performance
is colored subconsciously (in your
favor). So it might be good in the long
run to charge more, especially if you
depend on word-of-mouth.
We also decided we probably were
undercharging most of the time.
Me too mostly. It means no pressure, no performance, no formality and scope for doing what blokes do best in pubs - getting p*ssed and telling each other lies. This isn’t intended to be sexist - it’s just that we happen to have no women in our session, worse luck.
