Musician Issues

To Fee Or Not To Fee

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While it might seem like today’s title is setting up a conversation about ticket fees, it’s actually about audition application fees. On 8/8/2022 I posted a short quiz asking readers to select which scenario they thought was most common when musicians audition for an opening. The multiple-choice selections provided each combination of scenarios involving exclusive fees and deposits. In this context: An application fee is a nonrefundable and charged to all who …

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#TBT Rethinking The Audition Process

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Monday’s quiz about audition fees has generated a large number of responses. I’m leaving it open until we circle back to the topic next week but in the meantime, here’s what readers think (so far) about which scenarios are most common for musicians auditioning for an opening: For more on this topic, here’s an article from 2016 with suggestions on how to improve the audition process. The post goes into details …

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The Cost Of Excessive Workloads

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In March, 2021 the field was starting to emerge from the pandemic to live performing and I launched a poll asking musicians about their concerns over physical, emotional, and psychological risks related to returning to work. At the time, musicians were concerned about both at nearly equal rates. While the exercise was somewhat academic then, we have nearly a year of quantitative data pointing to the conclusion that these were more …

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#TBT Can You Afford To Take That Gig

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In what feels like lifetimes ago, I launched the Gig After Gas Online Calculator in 2008 (shout out to Jason Heath for his help then). The tool was a response to rising costs of gas prices following the housing meltdown. In hindsight it was super simple but at the time, required a good bit of code to work reliably. A musician could enter their per-service pay, gas mileage, price per gallon, …

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