The beauty of the Blog.... honesty without sensorship!
Please allow me to soap box for just a brief moment.
The Value Chain Is Broken..... Please read on if you dare!

 

What is the value of your time in a per hour basis?

Well, lets see, McDonald's Employees want $15 per hour

lets do a little math on a per person basis for the sake of argument.

Lets say you rehearse two times a week and for 3 hours or roughly 6 hours a week

and lets say as a conservative estimate your rehearsal is roughly roughly 24-25 hours a month.

Lets say your rent to rehearse is $400 or $100 per person if you at leas four members (less is there are more but generally someone can't pay every other month so this is our assumption for now).

So far we have a net costs of rehearsing the act of $400 for the space, gas per guy at $80 per month dependant on the location (assumption is avg of $3.25 per gallon and a mileage count of roughly 20 miles round trip and assuming an older vehicle with less than perfect per gallon mileage since we are giving away our services in a play to play environment)  or travel expense for each member is roughly $20 bucks a week give or take a few bucks or in some cases $100+ a month. So each member just to be a member of the band is required to have $180-$200 a month to rehearse. So with that lets look at the time we spend on gig day....  I spend 2 hours each evening before a gig prepping my guitars and all of my gear for the show.   Again, what should I value my time at here?   Labor of Love equals $0 but for the sake of the McDonald's comparison, lets say its $15 per hour.   We pretend we only rehearse and gig and there is no food, drink or extras involved for this comparison...although in the history of music that has probably never happened since everyone needs food, drink and gear. Lets say you go to sound check at 3pm and the doors open at 8pm.. you have 4 hours generally of waiting to load the gear on the stage, prep the guitars, drums, bass, mic, etc for the show.   There is 1 hr of actual sound checking if your fortunate enough for the venue to give a shizzle and then if the sounds man blesses you with being on time to the performance.   The gig its self usually last 1 possibly 2 hours of actual performance time and add more time for tear down and reloading of the gear + crowd interaction or lets wrap the whole event into 10-12 hours and call it good.   So lets review, we have 2hours of prep day before, we have 12 hours the day of the gig or roughly 14 hours of time utilized in the prep and performance part of the event.   Lets throw another hour a day into the mix for promotion if your like some of my amazing friends who do 4 hours of promotion a day then....well, that's 28-30hours of promoting a week if your just doing the minimum!  Lets add it all up ....rounding up of course.

25 hours a month rehearsing - $200 

14 hours on gig day @ $15 or $210 per person to be at the venue

28 hours of promotion - lets call that FB/Twitter/RN/web site, in person, cell phone, etc.... lets say the value of that if you were paying someone to promote you like a publicist it would be a minimum of $500 a month... lets break that down to a per user costs of $125 a month since its usually organic for the act to do themselves.   So that's roughly a $125 per member of the band or less if your thrifty.  Lets say all total of $500 for fun and round down for this costing... (Although the beauty of this is the actual value will very depending on work ethic and situation)... So if we took and recorded actual work time in a time clock format of punching in every time we do some work for the band or perform.  Presuming a single gig a month, There should be a minimum of $500 expense to rehearse, travel, perform and store all gear and musicians.   The experiment is fun to run when you go back to the original question of "What is my time worth" and then the obvious second question of "What Is The Perceived Value" by others?   In most cases, if you run your band as a business (It is actually considered an Entertainment business by the IRS and taxed as such) so if you look at this as a hobby and only a hobby, this makes sense if you pay to do something you love like say "Drag Racing".... Expensive as hell to do but lots of fun to hang with your friends and enjoy the racing.   We have a Corporation and the IRS doesn't care if we sell the entertainment or give it away but they want to know we are paying the taxes on this business.  The truth is that our time has value - THE END.  The one thing in life you can't always get more of is time.    So is music a business, the government and the IRS say yes.  We run our business in a fiscally responsible manner.   We have a business plan, we have a marketing plan, we use quick books and we have business meetings and yes - we pay taxes.   Answering the age old question of "Is being in a band a business" - Yes it is.   Is your cell phone performing a service?  Yes, it allows you to communicate with other people.  You pay a service fee every month whether you call people or not depending on the plan of course.   The live event / show for this purpose of this conversation is surrounding the question of "Does live music from a band merit a charge to be entertained" - The answer is YES and some services are better than others as are live music acts.   There is loyalty amongst the fan base and great acts (my personal favorites aren't just good - they are great and I pay without question every time) they always deliver a great and in most cases incredible service.   Some local bands have figured out how to become the "PROMOTER" and promote themselves to their loyal fan base after doing the hard yards of building their loyal base of fans up.   The truth about those acts is they do make money because they are the promoter and they are the act so they control the spend, the income and the event.  I personally have witnessed some member of the band practically killing themselves to do the event, the promotion, the merch and the show and its was overwhelming for those guys.   The purpose of this blog was really to get everyone to think about what is the value of live entertainment?   When you go out to see a band, do you want to see great musicians and hear great songs?  Do you want to dance?  Do you want to just drink and mingle.   The rise of the DJ came about in my opinion because it answered one of those questions well and at a reasonable cost to the hosting nightclub or venue.  At any rate, I believe there should be a resurgence of the Promoter and there is value to paying a promoter for his time and also there is usually enough $ to pay the band and everyone involved.   In 2014 we adopted a saying "EGP" or "Everyone Gets Paid" or we just don't do it.   We planned, we booked and we did all of the due diligence to do an "At Cost" Tour even though the bottom line was it was going to be a "Red Line" or lost Leader tour.  We did so with the premise of losing money to gain more fans for the fanbase.   We did a little math on what the "Cost of Acquisition" was per user in doing a lost leader tour.   We realized in the long run that we could get better mileage out of spending that same amount of money in other areas and spending time on what fans really care about and thats "Good Music".

Here we are deep in the heart of tour season recording our next record asking the question what is the value of our time to other people and the question is historically always answered in a decisive manner.  The simple answer to the complex question is really is whether your music is worth paying for.  Is it good enough to make anyone want to buy the CD, Viinyl, Tape, pay to see you live or whatever?   The bottom line is there has to be a consistent quality to make the end consumer a loyal fan or faniac.  This next record is our answer to that question.  "Life Happens Here" simply put is the best music we have ever written in our careers.  If you don't like at least one or two songs on a double CD then we simply got it wrong.   We are convinced beyond a shadow of any doubt in our minds that this recording will not only answer that question but convince you to buy a ticket and come see these songs performed live.   Our time has value, there is value in good music, there is entertainment value and there is quality in this value chain.   Time will tell, but for the record, time is the most valuable comodity we have and we are putting our time and energy into make this a great record for all to enjoy.  Answer the question in this article is simple - "If it has value and the quality of your service (Live Performance) or product (CD's, Merch, etc...) - then they will come and gladly pay you for your time.   I worked at Mcdonads at the age of 16 and I can tell you for a fact, I never worked as hard flipping burgers and cleaning the grill as I do in music.  However, I love music, writing, playing performing and the EGP philosphy will not change in our camp.  We prefer to focus on the music and that is where we are putting our time and effort.   We hope you will follow our progress on our blog..Thats my 2 cents. 

- Jimmy