How to Hire a Musician or Band Without Being a Douche
Interested in having live music in your home, at a special event, or a celebration on your special day? Here is what you need to know.
1) Ask the musician their rates and availability upfront on the first point of contact while providing the gig details of payment amount, time, date, location, event purpose, backline and PA system information. Some people charge differently depending on distance, availability, and amplification issues. Bands with drums, guitar, bass, and vocals will need a PA and multiple power strips. Musicians are often assaulted with an onslaught of gig requests that don’t provide the necessary information for them to agree to the gig, and dislike having to ask strangers what the payment is in general. Understand that the payment covers their time traveling to and from the gig as well, plus rehearsals, the time and space needed to rehearse, and the cost of their backline equipment and transportation.
2) Plan to pay at least $100-200 per performer per hour. Triple that in the event of a wedding. This means you are blocking out their entire day from other income. These rates have been standard in most US towns and cities for the last 40 years, and unfortunately really should have grown with inflation since the 1980s. The best performers and artists are often the ones who don’t teach, so they need to make their money performing. That means if YOU want to see musicians perform, YOU need to pay them.
3) Prepare to pay the musician as soon as they arrive or soon after they finish performing in the method they requested (cash, check, Venmo, etc.). Please do not give them a hard time about the method of payment they require or drag out payment. A lot of gig economy workers and musicians live on cash payments, and some don’t have the ability to deposit a check. You wouldn’t tell your lawyer or your gym that you couldn’t pay them via the method they require. Don’t do that when hiring musicians.
4) Make them feel safe and treat them kindly. Let them have the ability to be alone or warm-up on their instrument in a green room or bathroom before the performance, so they can maximize their performance and prepare to handle the situation.
5) Feed them. Give them drinks. Make sure they have water. Performing music requires tons of focus, preparation, visual and aural functions, memory imaging functions, performance anxiety regulation in new situations, and social anxiety regulation while on the job often in unknown environments with strangers. Having water, food and beverages available allows the performer to maximize their delivery and maintain their mental health at work.
6) Understand that if they can’t drink or celebrate to the end of your big night, it is not personal. Musicians are often paid in ‘drinks’ every night they work and are paid to create happy times. They can’t drink and party every night they go to work.
7) If you have requests, e.g. covers, let them know that it is part of the gig upfront.
8) If you are searching or posting on social media, include in the post what the payment is. Places like ‘Gig Salad’ offer ways to find musicians for hire. Another tip is to search #musician or #livemusic on Instagram, you will find loads of bands already trying to get paid gigs, and dm or email them with all the details listed in 1# upfront, you will likely get a response asap. Bonus points if you say how you found them.
9) If you ARE a musician who wants to hire another musician, or work with a musician you like, or perhaps a musician you just met, please remember to follow rule #1. If you are a cis male musician reaching out to a female musician who you don’t know very well, please be extra clear if you are contacting them to hire them and tell them ALL of the gig details upfront as rule #1. Womxn and queer musicians constantly battle sexual harassment and social fatigue, reasons why there is a terrible gender imbalance in the field, backed by statistics. If a musician gives you their contact info because you told them you had an opportunity for them, then make good on that. Don’t worry - we all have to do this work. We all have to undo the hierarchy everyday.
10) Don’t expect musicians to give you all their attention and energy. They are cultivators of magic powers and need time alone to compose and focus on delivering their best in bursts of energy without a routine regulation of their nervous system given poor conditions of labor and payment.
Seem ‘expensive’ to you to pay someone to play music, because you think it is something that is ‘fun’ and requires no effort? Understand that you are paying a highly skilled and trained person with a legitimate career to work. You are paying them:
To reserve their time, calendar dates, just for you - despite other paying offers they might have after reserving their time for you.
For their reliability and their performance experience to deliver beautiful live music, acquired through decades of training, tens of thousands of hours of dedication and practice, their commitment to being a performer and musician - something which they choose despite a career of instability and vulnerability.
For the investment of training in their instrument, including tuition investment to study or obtain a degree, for the years of payment they invested to teachers to learn the instrument, and for them as human beings to earn a livelihood in an unstable and uncertain environment and culture that does not support these cultural laborers with enough grants or payment for experience and live music.
For the fact that they are a valuable cultural worker who deserves to be paid for their labor, even if you don’t view it as worth ‘your time or money' because they have a career that looks ‘fun’ to you. Please read my other articles channeling scientific research in music psychology showing the dangers of mental health for musicians, including professional musicians as having five times the rates of anxiety and depression as the general population (Gross and Musgraves, 2016).
Being upfront about time, date, location, backline, music requests, event purpose, and pay on the first point of contact is everything to securing a musician to play your event. Thank you for reading and supporting live musicians. Best of luck and joy in experiencing live talent at your special event. Don’t be douchey, just pay musicians!
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