Monday 12 July 2010

Should musicians play for free?





















Today Matt Stevens posted a tweet that simply said "Do you think its bad advice to tell new bands to play for free?" Immediately this sparked a lot of discussions between Matt, Darren Goldsmith and myself (amongst others).

I know when I first started playing in a band at university that we tried our best to create a fanbase so that we would have people to play too. At first this begun to prove difficult - we had a lot of friends who wanted to hear our music which was awesome, but we also wanted to reach wider audiences.

I arranged for us to play at an open mic night in Leeds called Lyrically Justified run by Harry Lotta. It was our first ever performance and, of course, we were playing for free. We only had a few songs but got some friends down to listen so that they could hear how hard we'd been working on those tracks. By the time we had finished our set we had not only our friends dancing and shouting but pretty much everyone else in the pub too. That was a great feeling, to know that people who had never heard us before heard something in the music we were making, turned their heads away from their conversations and drinks and listened for those twenty minutes or so of us playing.

However, this then posed a problem. I remember our guitarist Matt saying one day in rehearsals that we should be getting paid gigs. At this time we had played about five or six free gigs in our local area which had all gone very well. The problem I felt lied in the fact that we had no CD or recordings and no website to launch anything from. After trying to explain this to a guitarist he still thought we should be getting paid and began to argue when I told him that we needed to get in a studio and record something.

When I tried my very best to get one of these "paid gigs" I came across the same problem. No one had heard us and therefore no one was willing to risk us not pulling in enough people for the evening - despite the fact that we perhaps could have brought about thirty or so people to come and watch. After getting no paid gigs (with many arguments about it) and various musical differences we decided to do our own things and shelve that band until we come back to it.

So this proves a problem. Free gigs are great to build a fan base which, if you work hard enough, can be an a rewarding way of bring people together to enjoy your music. This in itself poses a problem. At what point would you then switch from free gigs to paid ones? What if the audience that you have worked so hard to build are not willing to then make a change in supporting you by paying to come and see you live?

Interesting Concepts/Food For Thought

One problem with how other people see independent musicians is that some of them think we should work for free - which I know a lot of us disagree with.

So when Darren, Matt and myself were talking about this this morning Darren posed an interesting question - why should we even charge for people to come and watch us?

This then posed a series of interesting questions and concepts. Within bandcamp an artist can charge their audience a fixed price, pay what you like or free download options. A lot of us use this "pay what you like" option as it attracts new listeners to come and listen without feeling obliged to pay straight away - if they like the music the listener can come back and maybe pay later or decide on a price that they feel reflects the work of the musician.

Personally I think this is one of the most important tools at our disposal. This can bring people back who have heard our music and shows that we don't expect them to pay a fixed amount that we think they should pay - they can decide for themselves.

Darren then also proposed an interesting concept - if people can pay what they like on bandcamp then why can't they do this at a live gig? This would attract people to come and watch as they know they wouldn't necessarily have to pay to get in, the venue would be able to attract income through a bar etc and at the end of the gig if they feel it deserved something the audience could make a "donation". This would make a good experiment with a few local bands who could bring a crowd with them for support and each band could sell merchandise. This would require each band to be on board with the idea and a venue to also allow you to do something like this - but the possibility is there. I know Matt and myself were very keen to try this.

Another interesting concept is that of house gigs. I first heard of house gigs from my university lecturer when he was telling us of the social networkings of Steve Lawson and how Steve goes about his music making. At first I was very sceptical but after hearing Steve's awesome music I was very keen to go along and see what it was all about for myself. Everyone at the gig didn't really know one another but there was a brilliant feeling of everyone coming together and enjoying the intimacy of Steve's music. Just before Steve started playing we all made a donation towards Steve's expenses and then relaxed for the evening watching Steve and Lobelia play. Steve then sold some merchandise too - of which I got an awesome deal on two of his CDs (I'm old fashioned like that).

I know that all of us who were discussing these ideas had a lot of excitement at the different concepts that were floating about. This may have posed more questions than answers but it's always good to keep asking questions and thinking of new ways to promote and engage our music with others.

If anyone has some ideas on this matter it would be good to discuss them further below :)

Monday 5 July 2010

BP Oil Spill


Everyone is aware of the BP Oil Spill that happened on the American/Mexican Gulf Coast over the past few moths and the impact that it has had across most of the globe.

I couldn't believe what happened and was appalled by the fact BP didn't have a contingency plan for something like this if it went wrong - which clearly, it did. I am always trying my best to make sure I do my bit for the environment as much as possible and was shocked just as much as everyone else.

Although this has been one of the worst environmental disasters that mankind has seen it is also important to remember that 11 people lost their lives on 20th April. This has been on my mind for some time and I am currently writing a song on this matter.

Sawsound

As well as my own music I am in a number of bands around Leeds. I like to play as much as possible and get a different feel for different types of playing so in January I joined Simon and Johnny Whitton and their band Sawsound.

We recently recorded a promotion CD and here are the final mixes :)


Sawsound by ColouredLines


New to Blogging

Well I've been looking at ways to design my own website but frankly I'm awful at that kind of thing so I've decided to get a blog spot instead - well for the meantime until I can get something more permanent.

May take me a while to get the hang of it so bear with me :)

Adam