How Much is Music Worth?
How much money should a musician make?
There are several factors that should be taken into account, and (in no particular order) here are some of them:
How good is she/he/they? Are they professional or amateur? Do they have a day job or are they full-time? How appealing are they to the listening public (is their music eccentric and off-the-wall, or is it within the boundaries of recognizable genres)? How much is an establishment going to profit by contracting them? There are more things to consider, but we’ll get to them later, so to begin with, how good are they?
The answer to that question is, of course, very subjective. It’s a matter of taste, for one thing, but even when the style doesn’t fit ones taste, it can still be judged on its merit: if the performer has obvious talent and has worked to master their craft then their value should be considered in the price. Are they professional or amateur? If the first, then likely they have put more consistent time in honing their repertoire and learning to perform. Also, they will most likely need to invest more money in their gear, their travel expenses, and the intrinsic costs of doing business, which is as true as it is for anyone else who has a product or service to sell.
Although the art of music implies that the creation of it is not governed by any fixed rule that it has to fit into any norm, the more it fits into recognizable categories, the more demand there will be for it, and demand is a factor in price.
When someone hires a musician or band to play in a venue that operates for profit, they should be expected to share that profit in a fair way. But in this last item there is a tendency for some to take advantage of a fairly universal fact that many artists are hopelessly outclassed when it comes to business negotiations.
Most people who aren’t musicians have an inaccurate notion of how much money musicians earn, and most spend little time considering how a musician’s livelihood compares to that of people in other jobs and professions. But ask yourself this the next time you are in an audience enjoying music. Based on the above criteria, how far below or above the poverty line should these people live? I don’t want to answer that in any specific way, being a biased person in this regard, but I would like to point out that Justin Bieber and the like command a ticket price in the hundreds of dollars, whereas some people think that a bit of loose change is sufficient when the hat is passed around at some smaller venue, even when this same person was greatly impressed with the performance. That being said, I wouldn’t encourage anyone to pay more than they can afford, but I would like to point out that supporting music by contributing money is one of the necessary ingredients in the creation of it.
by Ted Hall
