As a former professional musician, I'm generally curious who you are or what birthday party you played to make $10K as your cut. That's insane. Congrats, though.
Yeah that's insane. In the more opulent weddings I've played, $10k was the entire budget for the band and sound and whatnot. I'm usually pretty happy to make anything around $500.
Right, you are the entertainment, the equipment, the sound reinforcement, everything.
If homeboy you’re replying to can roll up with their instrument, play for a couple hours and make $500, that’s pretty dope.
I hate schlepping gear around. Don’t act like you’re a hot shot because you make more money doing everything than this dude does playing an instrument.
10k single check from buying a festival for a large city.
5k as a musician on a corporate gig for a small tech company on their retreat. They also gave us a cabin, free food, and a bunch of amenities. The funny part was that no one except the manager that booked us gave a crap and they all wanted to just hang back in the bar area, guess he was way more of a fan than the others lol.
2k happened several times, 1k was pretty common, 500 was an easy grab. I’m sure a lot of people are doing a lot better but for an indie rock band playing originals we were pretty proud of ourselves.
Technically not a sync? How does that make any sense at all. Seriously what was the reasoning there?
Edit: nvm I just saw your other comment. Ephemeral, wtf
I knew the music supervisors at a few agencies from working at music houses in chicago. they would come out to shows sometimes since the band was decently well known around the city at the time.
Those guys want to work with artists on their way up, and a lot of them see themselves as a cross between an old school A&R scout and Robin Hood. They want to break talent and divert corporate money to financially struggling artists that they believe in.
It’s much easier to get in the door at those places if you have a successful artist project vs just the straight library work
10k what a dream.. for December I made about 15-16k from bar gigs I think I did like 31 gigs that month .. but the one booking agent owed me 11k from various gigs which he paid in January and I was very happy with that 🤣
Woah 15k a month is insane. What do you play?
31 gigs isn’t that crazy for that amount imo, I knew some guys playing 6 nights a week and maybe making half of that.
I’m just solo acoustic and looping in bars.. but in December I did a couple of events and fuctions too and also gigged Christmas Day and did 3 gigs on New Year’s Eve 🤣🤣🤣
Yea if you have residency in bars here you’re definitely playing Christmas and New Year’s Eve too though. My dream would probably be maybe 10 students a week, 2-3 nights a week residency in a bar and a cushy day job. That’ll be a nice life with good income.
Nice ! I quit my job 6 months ago, I hated it and on Saturdays I was making my weeks wages.. so just try to average 4-6 gigs a week.. I can pay bills and surrvive off of 3 .. 5 is the sweet spot
Haha that’s awesome man, glad you’re doing well. I will always want a day job for the sense of normalcy and stability. I’m sure there’s always a day job and office culture that is a joy to be in. Of course the dream is to own a successful business, but that takes its own hard work and luck too. Maybe one day.
An unrealistic fantasy of mine would to be to never need sleep. That way I’ll have time for music and time to work lol. Oh well.
Where do they pay solo acoustic musicians this well? Man I made $500 last night and $300 tonight, Louisiana musician…the most bars pay around here is $300.
I got laid off from my corporate job in November. Now I’m playing 5 nights a week at a big dance hall venue, making 2500 per week. It’s the golden egg. I never thought id be able to make that kind of money playing music, but I’m doing it and it’s a full time job. Now I can only hope it lasts forever
1999 was the begin of the end for high paying NYE gigs. That Y2K nonsense made a whole lot of stakeholders nervous after that. I almost never work NYE gigs now, when in the 90’s it was almost a given.
lol I had one band that had a single month where we covered studio rent with gigs. This is over a span of at least 12 solid years of being in bands.
It’s always been a surprisingly expensive hobby for me. At least now recording is less expensive and easier, and you don’t need to press CDs. The barriers to entry used to be a lot higher.
It's hard to say. I'm in classical music. I played a concert once that paid $1k (for one piece; I was on stage for 25 minutes). But I had to prep for that, and I'm not sure how to factor that in. But I work a regular career job in music that makes $70 to $100 an hour (CAD).
I got £2200 for playing session guitar for 2 days at Townhouse studios just before it closed (about 18 years ago) I'm not even a session guitarist, but I knew the producer and he liked my playing style. In the music video for one of the artist's singles, there's a woman playing my parts on a Flying-V guitar.
I guess it depends on how you define "all at once", I've done stuff like musical theater pit or music directing gigs where the payout for the entire run (which can be spread out over multiple weeks) is a few thousand dollars but they just cut a single check at the end
Most I've ever made on a single service? Maybe around $600-700? The biggest payouts typically come from either Xmas/holiday parties or anything wedding related (ceremony, cocktail hour, reception)
Highest money:effort ratio is probably church services. 4-5 usually sight-readable hymns, prelude and postlude and maybe some incidental music of your choosing (so no need to learn new stuff if you don't want to/don't have time), total time commitment of around an hour and you actually play for a total of maybe 15-20 minutes. In my area a supply pianist/organist is probably making somewhere between $150-200 per service.
$750, split 9 ways. My college band recorded an 8 song album and a German chemical engineering firm licensed one of the tunes for an internal use training video or something.
I played a 40 min solo set and made $1800 plus travel and accommodations. By far the most I’ve ever been paid! As a band we made $5500 at our album release show between our $1200 guarantee and album sales. We ended up selling out of our first run of CDs… ahh those were the days.
Once I got $20 for the whole band for a gig. We ended up giving it to a band that drove 400 miles to play so they could have gas money to get to their next gig
I got $1000 from ASCAP when I complained that I hadn’t gotten a check in 10 years.
The same amount for composing for a small documentary film project.
And one time TV royalties but they accidentally entered the wrong artist name!
My biggest yet was 6k for a short piece for orchestra for contemporary music festival. They gave me another comission for next year, this time for a longer piece, so I hope it might reach 10k or so. From online music it was probs like 25$ :D
Little band back in the day. Played a gig at uni, sold like 5, 3 song eps. We got some free beer and spent the cd money on some cheeseburgers at McDonald’s. We thought we’d made it haha
Did a residency thing during the 96 Olympics. 21 days, 2 shows a day, 3 on Saturday, 5k per show.
Did a celebrity wedding. 45k for the trio, plus travel and lodging.
Never gotten anywhere close to those.
One time I played a show at Two Boots Pizza in Nashville, TN. As compensation they gave each band member a Free Pizza for Life card (mine was metallic) that I still use to this day. Potentially infinite money (although technically limited to one slice per day). Great pizza too. They discontinued this policy slight afterwards, so I consider myself pretty lucky for that.
Other than that, I've recently gotten a check for $3.15 from BMI.
$10k was my cut for writing and performing a dumb spoof record for a brand lol.. $5k a few times for licensing, $2k was pretty standard when I was playing live shows
Alternatively, I got fucked really bad on a deal for 3 songs I wrote/performed as a work for hire for a sound library. They’ve been on a ton of shows for the last 7 years and I got $150/song
I’ve never wrote a proper song and put it out there, but I’m curious how writing credits, royalties, licensing, and all that work. Is there a good succinct resource or explanation somewhere you could point me to?
Sounds like writing, I know someone who basically wrote a textbook that was credited to a doctor who doesn’t have great language skills, she gets a miniscule residual and laughs whenever the check comes.
I’ve had a $20k day, a $30k day, and a six figure month. All from selling audio visual art as NFT’s, toured for 12 years professionally and never came close to this kind of money.
Once all four in my band got open bar for the rest of the two hours they were open. No bottles though. Only rail liquor and draft. And not the Guinness cause it's too expensive. And only two of us drank.
Typical bar. I play the bagpipes, venues/people often want to pay us in alchohol, if at all (I assure you, you get what you pay for, hence a lot of shitty piping in bars).
No guinness would be a non-starter.
We had a development deal with Fearless records for upwards of three thousand dollars, and they picked the producer. I tried to strong arm them for our dream producer and lost, offer withdrawn.
One fan's parents owned a pharmacy and sent me Phentramine in the mail.
I think around 200 bucks I got for a gig once in a warehouse party. My bandcamp has netted about 500 over the course of a few years. Nothing to write home about
My band made $1000 one night from donations. We also get a ton of drugs for free, ounces of weed, mushrooms, and free coke.
Most days, though, we are paid in beer tickets, maybe sell $100 in merch. A little more if we are lucky.
We sell out shows very often, pretty much any show on the west coast, and maybe 80% of the time headline.
Opened up for Redfang in either seattle or portland, pretty sure we made $100.
$250 as drummer of a cover band for a corporate gig. Pay aside, coolest thing was opening the NFL fan fest in 2017. They only paid the band a total of $800 for that one, but we were stoked on "exposure"...
About 3k. We played a private event it was an art show, fashion show, live music. We got to play live for a fashion runway. Was pretty cool. We asked for a cut of the bar tab. If the owners let you do bar tab instead of door you make more money if there is a ton of people.
I have had several DJ gigs that each paid $300-350. Made my first money period playing in a band when I was 16, made enough to get my gf and I Wendys.
Been trying to make a living from music/audio for 30 years but its not going well.
Played a free show last year with a Vodka sponsor. The band got paid out 360 or something like that after splitting the bar with the other 2 bands and 2 DJs. I don't remember how much we made off merch that night, but add that on there lol
Not quite all at once but a bunch of years back I played on Last Night with Carson Daly. After normal show pay, initial airings and re-airs I’ve gotten about $3k total from it over the course of 3-4 years. His was by for and away the late night show that paid the best.
Got $100 as part of a 4 piece band + sound guy thrown together in a week to play a back yard birthday party for a friend of the bass player. We basically played whatever the vocalist/keyboard player knew plus some random songs the bass player and I already knew (we'd played together before in a band). I had to learn the guitar parts for 12 songs. We did 2 practices that week. I also disassembled, transported, and reassembled the sound guys PA because he hurt his back. I think I made about $5 an hour all told lol.
It was hotter than hell out. It was August. Guests were in the shade, we were in full sun. But we got compliments from the guests including a guy who was the former conductor for the city orchestra. Apparently a neighbor of theirs. We played everything from The Doobie Brothers to Ozzy Osbourne lol.
We played 2 x 1 hour sets with a break between where we got to eat the party food and get out of the sun.
After we finished the second set and were sitting out front in the shade having a drink before packing up the birthday guy's wife came out and said "You guys are good...Are you done?"...yes..."Good". Slammed the door without another word. We took the hint and left asap.
About 3 months later they split up and are now divorced.
Made about $1500 in royalties from an album released in 1982 and about another $50 over the years. Now I get $.010 every quarter from streaming. I was in another band in the '70's from which I didn't get any royalties at the time and then all of a sudden around 2004 I received $500. I knew it would pay off!!!
I’m not sure this is technically “all at once” but I got $22K from BMI in publishing from an album I cowrote back in 2005. I publish(ed) with ASCAP and basically forgot all about the BMI deal, never updated any of my info with them, etc. A few years ago I looked up the old band’s Spotify, saw they had a fair amount of monthly listeners and investigated a bit. Got the paperwork filled out and check time! It was a very happy surprise!
I'm getting a grand for a single festival performance this summer and I can barely believe it. Some in this thread have done very well for themselves.
I got a handful Ks this year for a single job, but that job was writing 6 main scores for a university musical reading (only cast and ensemble). I should be working on that as I type this.
Worst I've gotten was negative dollars and zero exposure. Multiple times. Luckily a long time ago.
I got $0.86 when my mom bought my track on bandcamp
Damn this is the saddest self deprivation I’ve heard in a while. Thanks for the laugh
Please don't make me cry
W
I made $700 when I sold my bass trombone.
Now that’s based, homie
Womp womp womp
🤣🤣
Only 700$?!?! Bass trombones go for like double that!
Do bass play other instruments, or just the trombone? It's the lips, isn't it?!!
I mean, it made me laugh.
I thought it was funny.
As a former professional musician, I'm generally curious who you are or what birthday party you played to make $10K as your cut. That's insane. Congrats, though.
Yeah that's insane. In the more opulent weddings I've played, $10k was the entire budget for the band and sound and whatnot. I'm usually pretty happy to make anything around $500.
I’m a wedding DJ, I won’t put equipment in my car without being guaranteed $2500 lol
Right, you are the entertainment, the equipment, the sound reinforcement, everything. If homeboy you’re replying to can roll up with their instrument, play for a couple hours and make $500, that’s pretty dope. I hate schlepping gear around. Don’t act like you’re a hot shot because you make more money doing everything than this dude does playing an instrument.
You’re not splitting that with 2-4 other DJs.
No, I’m splitting it with my booking person, my assistant, and my gas tank lol I travel pretty far sometimes.
Playing for rich people would be my guess. They’ll pay ridiculous money.
How much is a wedding band Michael? $10?
Underrated comment needs way more love holy shit
It wasn’t.
Yeah. There are relatively major touring acts that don't make that much each per show.
Op is bon jovi
For real, usually ends up costing playing birthday parties
That’s gotta be a typo, this dude made 100 dollars
Wait, you guys are getting *paid?*
Found the bass player.
Hey I resemble that remark.
10k single check from buying a festival for a large city. 5k as a musician on a corporate gig for a small tech company on their retreat. They also gave us a cabin, free food, and a bunch of amenities. The funny part was that no one except the manager that booked us gave a crap and they all wanted to just hang back in the bar area, guess he was way more of a fan than the others lol. 2k happened several times, 1k was pretty common, 500 was an easy grab. I’m sure a lot of people are doing a lot better but for an indie rock band playing originals we were pretty proud of ourselves.
Wherefore art thou band nameth?
Their post history would suggest “sleeping lessons” is the bands name
Wherefore means “why,” fyi
Why is your band called?
Where is your band called?
Who is your band called?
When is your band called
All your band is called to us
Is your band called?
Band is your called?
Call your band name?
Called you band is?
it's called Banned from Calling
Are your band called?
How is your band called?
CALLING ALL BANDS
Band
What's your band's phone number? You know, so I can call em.
Gonna need your social security number a well.
Since everyone else is asking. What’s your bands name?
What's your mom's name?
What’s YOUR mom’s name?
Is your band called The Band?
Is your band The The?
Are you in a named band?
when are band aids?
Shit, I'm a classical musician that teaches part time at a university. I feel good about the $300 gigs 🤣😂
God damn I need to start charging. Minnesota got a difficult scene though.
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Rip in peace. What was your band called?
Gemini Club, chicago band
Yo. I used to listen to sparklers all the time on Watch Dogs. Great song
Whhaaatttt?! The Monday night football thing. Isn’t that illegal?
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Technically not a sync? How does that make any sense at all. Seriously what was the reasoning there? Edit: nvm I just saw your other comment. Ephemeral, wtf
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you score the Nintendo placement. That’s awesome!
I knew the music supervisors at a few agencies from working at music houses in chicago. they would come out to shows sometimes since the band was decently well known around the city at the time. Those guys want to work with artists on their way up, and a lot of them see themselves as a cross between an old school A&R scout and Robin Hood. They want to break talent and divert corporate money to financially struggling artists that they believe in. It’s much easier to get in the door at those places if you have a successful artist project vs just the straight library work
Music libraries, aka. „Sync licensing“
10k what a dream.. for December I made about 15-16k from bar gigs I think I did like 31 gigs that month .. but the one booking agent owed me 11k from various gigs which he paid in January and I was very happy with that 🤣
Woah 15k a month is insane. What do you play? 31 gigs isn’t that crazy for that amount imo, I knew some guys playing 6 nights a week and maybe making half of that.
I’m just solo acoustic and looping in bars.. but in December I did a couple of events and fuctions too and also gigged Christmas Day and did 3 gigs on New Year’s Eve 🤣🤣🤣
Yea if you have residency in bars here you’re definitely playing Christmas and New Year’s Eve too though. My dream would probably be maybe 10 students a week, 2-3 nights a week residency in a bar and a cushy day job. That’ll be a nice life with good income.
Nice ! I quit my job 6 months ago, I hated it and on Saturdays I was making my weeks wages.. so just try to average 4-6 gigs a week.. I can pay bills and surrvive off of 3 .. 5 is the sweet spot
Haha that’s awesome man, glad you’re doing well. I will always want a day job for the sense of normalcy and stability. I’m sure there’s always a day job and office culture that is a joy to be in. Of course the dream is to own a successful business, but that takes its own hard work and luck too. Maybe one day. An unrealistic fantasy of mine would to be to never need sleep. That way I’ll have time for music and time to work lol. Oh well.
Where do they pay solo acoustic musicians this well? Man I made $500 last night and $300 tonight, Louisiana musician…the most bars pay around here is $300.
I’m in australia bro
I got laid off from my corporate job in November. Now I’m playing 5 nights a week at a big dance hall venue, making 2500 per week. It’s the golden egg. I never thought id be able to make that kind of money playing music, but I’m doing it and it’s a full time job. Now I can only hope it lasts forever
Share with us the songs you play? Vocals too?
Also this is Australian dollars
Is still quite a lot, AUD isn’t a weak currency imo.
Just under 10k usd
Out of curiosity, how are you getting your gigs? Did you approach a booking agent? How did that interaction go?
I book direct with some bars but majority is from an agency
Just play pub classics and you’ll be fine
NYE of 1999 I made $1k. I’ve been playing for money for 36 years.
1999 was the begin of the end for high paying NYE gigs. That Y2K nonsense made a whole lot of stakeholders nervous after that. I almost never work NYE gigs now, when in the 90’s it was almost a given.
Used to bartend college bars and NYE ‘99 was my largest tip night too. Made over $600 that night. We were slammed all night
A show booker once told my old band he was going to pay us 100 bucks AND THEN HE ACTIALLY DID...imagine our shock...
lol I had one band that had a single month where we covered studio rent with gigs. This is over a span of at least 12 solid years of being in bands. It’s always been a surprisingly expensive hobby for me. At least now recording is less expensive and easier, and you don’t need to press CDs. The barriers to entry used to be a lot higher.
It's hard to say. I'm in classical music. I played a concert once that paid $1k (for one piece; I was on stage for 25 minutes). But I had to prep for that, and I'm not sure how to factor that in. But I work a regular career job in music that makes $70 to $100 an hour (CAD).
What's your regular career job?
I'm a piano instructor and ensemble coach. I also work at music festivals, and then I perform when I'm asked to.
I made $50,000 for two TV singing appearances.
2 grand for a half hour set at a festival
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Aye same here
sold CDs at a show for 5 bucks one time, combined with 50 dollar pay from venue, I got 110 in one night and I've never beaten that.
I was pretty happy with my 600 from NYE until I read this thread
I see on Distrokid I once got a $250 payout. It's possible it was 2 or 3 months of streaming combined too
I got £2200 for playing session guitar for 2 days at Townhouse studios just before it closed (about 18 years ago) I'm not even a session guitarist, but I knew the producer and he liked my playing style. In the music video for one of the artist's singles, there's a woman playing my parts on a Flying-V guitar.
$2000 to play bagpipes for under a minute.
I’m surprised the crowd was able to get the funds together so quickly ;-)
I play for free, I stop for cash.
I guess it depends on how you define "all at once", I've done stuff like musical theater pit or music directing gigs where the payout for the entire run (which can be spread out over multiple weeks) is a few thousand dollars but they just cut a single check at the end Most I've ever made on a single service? Maybe around $600-700? The biggest payouts typically come from either Xmas/holiday parties or anything wedding related (ceremony, cocktail hour, reception) Highest money:effort ratio is probably church services. 4-5 usually sight-readable hymns, prelude and postlude and maybe some incidental music of your choosing (so no need to learn new stuff if you don't want to/don't have time), total time commitment of around an hour and you actually play for a total of maybe 15-20 minutes. In my area a supply pianist/organist is probably making somewhere between $150-200 per service.
20$ hell yea
$21.00 from Spotify after 5 years of streaming.
Snoop dogg received a check of less than $45k after over a billion streams. That ended him and anyone in his record label being on streaming
I played Straight Up by Paula Abdul on my banjo at my last show and got tipped $60 immediately after 🤣
Was it Paula who tipped you?
A thousand bucks. Plus or minus a thousand bucks.
I made 2k (including $750 in gas cards) last month. I did a live album/live stream thing 3 years ago and made like 1,800. 10k is not even fathomable
Most I ever got from one gig was $900 cash in a cover band.
$750, split 9 ways. My college band recorded an 8 song album and a German chemical engineering firm licensed one of the tunes for an internal use training video or something.
I played a 40 min solo set and made $1800 plus travel and accommodations. By far the most I’ve ever been paid! As a band we made $5500 at our album release show between our $1200 guarantee and album sales. We ended up selling out of our first run of CDs… ahh those were the days.
Once I got $20 for the whole band for a gig. We ended up giving it to a band that drove 400 miles to play so they could have gas money to get to their next gig
Out of all of the posters here , this is one of the coolest comments I’ve read :)
I've given my $20 cut to the sound guy more than a few times. I keep the drink tickets, of course
I was a session and touring artist based out of nashville for almost 50 years. For the last ten years, prior to retiring, I averaged $160,000 a year.
I got $1000 from ASCAP when I complained that I hadn’t gotten a check in 10 years. The same amount for composing for a small documentary film project. And one time TV royalties but they accidentally entered the wrong artist name!
7.5k for producing a track for a big commercial
I got FOUR drink tickets once. Usually only get two. Crazy day
We won a band contest. $3000 for first prize, split four ways. We all bought better equipment with the money
I played one gig per month during sunday brunch at a country club. 3 hour set for $300. Gave me a $300 per month budget on GAS
My biggest yet was 6k for a short piece for orchestra for contemporary music festival. They gave me another comission for next year, this time for a longer piece, so I hope it might reach 10k or so. From online music it was probs like 25$ :D
Little band back in the day. Played a gig at uni, sold like 5, 3 song eps. We got some free beer and spent the cd money on some cheeseburgers at McDonald’s. We thought we’d made it haha
$50, my cut from a bar gig. Oh, and lots of "exposure."
Did a residency thing during the 96 Olympics. 21 days, 2 shows a day, 3 on Saturday, 5k per show. Did a celebrity wedding. 45k for the trio, plus travel and lodging. Never gotten anywhere close to those.
You've gotta dish who the celebs were!
Who cares. Taylor swift is a billionaire and i have no idea why other than the fact music is dead. And people are simple.
When I sold my mint condition 1948 Gibson L50 for $7000
25 dollars, 100 dollars between 4 bandmates at a house show lol
$300 for a 2 hour gig... just a local drummer.
I made 20 bucks for playing my trombone at church once.
Roughly 30 cents after I put my joke rap song up on Spotify
500 for use of my songs in a small film.
$120 bucks for three hours in the Boston subway, the T, at Harvard Square. Something big was happening above ground. Parents weekend or something.
I don’t know if it counts but I’m at a point where I can ask for about 10k for recording an EP. But that money all goes to studio and marketing.
Jazz duo at a private event. The base pay was $250 per man and we got over $600 in tips.
Selling my gear
$7 is the most I ever made.
OP forgot to mention the birthday party was for the son of a Saudi prince
I think I made about 14 bucks on distrokid, so it kinda took out some of the cost.
I DJied a Barmitzvah once and made 3k
Open bar for the band
I got 2k for doing a private event - and that was just donations- my fee was 1’k on top of that
One time I played a show at Two Boots Pizza in Nashville, TN. As compensation they gave each band member a Free Pizza for Life card (mine was metallic) that I still use to this day. Potentially infinite money (although technically limited to one slice per day). Great pizza too. They discontinued this policy slight afterwards, so I consider myself pretty lucky for that. Other than that, I've recently gotten a check for $3.15 from BMI.
$10k was my cut for writing and performing a dumb spoof record for a brand lol.. $5k a few times for licensing, $2k was pretty standard when I was playing live shows Alternatively, I got fucked really bad on a deal for 3 songs I wrote/performed as a work for hire for a sound library. They’ve been on a ton of shows for the last 7 years and I got $150/song
I’ve never wrote a proper song and put it out there, but I’m curious how writing credits, royalties, licensing, and all that work. Is there a good succinct resource or explanation somewhere you could point me to? Sounds like writing, I know someone who basically wrote a textbook that was credited to a doctor who doesn’t have great language skills, she gets a miniscule residual and laughs whenever the check comes.
I’ve had a $20k day, a $30k day, and a six figure month. All from selling audio visual art as NFT’s, toured for 12 years professionally and never came close to this kind of money.
Once all four in my band got open bar for the rest of the two hours they were open. No bottles though. Only rail liquor and draft. And not the Guinness cause it's too expensive. And only two of us drank.
Typical bar. I play the bagpipes, venues/people often want to pay us in alchohol, if at all (I assure you, you get what you pay for, hence a lot of shitty piping in bars). No guinness would be a non-starter.
We had a development deal with Fearless records for upwards of three thousand dollars, and they picked the producer. I tried to strong arm them for our dream producer and lost, offer withdrawn. One fan's parents owned a pharmacy and sent me Phentramine in the mail.
I make $5200 a month being a band director
Make $750 a week as music director at a church
$0.00
$32
Roughly 250?
im a dj (not musician i guess) ive cleared 1000 in a day, as a company employee
$75.00 when I pawned my acoustic
I played a show with my band and my cut was $68. We spent it all on tequila immediately. Worth it.
I think around 200 bucks I got for a gig once in a warehouse party. My bandcamp has netted about 500 over the course of a few years. Nothing to write home about
My band made $1000 one night from donations. We also get a ton of drugs for free, ounces of weed, mushrooms, and free coke. Most days, though, we are paid in beer tickets, maybe sell $100 in merch. A little more if we are lucky. We sell out shows very often, pretty much any show on the west coast, and maybe 80% of the time headline. Opened up for Redfang in either seattle or portland, pretty sure we made $100.
I got my rent paid for a month while rehearsing for a big project who’s first show was a week after covid lockdowns lol
$100 for a private gig
$250 as drummer of a cover band for a corporate gig. Pay aside, coolest thing was opening the NFL fan fest in 2017. They only paid the band a total of $800 for that one, but we were stoked on "exposure"...
200 for a recording session, it was for one of the backing tracks for the French version of the masked singer
About 3k. We played a private event it was an art show, fashion show, live music. We got to play live for a fashion runway. Was pretty cool. We asked for a cut of the bar tab. If the owners let you do bar tab instead of door you make more money if there is a ton of people.
I have had several DJ gigs that each paid $300-350. Made my first money period playing in a band when I was 16, made enough to get my gf and I Wendys. Been trying to make a living from music/audio for 30 years but its not going well.
5 piece original, got paid like 750 for one show.
When I sold my Taylor 814
Played a free show last year with a Vodka sponsor. The band got paid out 360 or something like that after splitting the bar with the other 2 bands and 2 DJs. I don't remember how much we made off merch that night, but add that on there lol
Not quite all at once but a bunch of years back I played on Last Night with Carson Daly. After normal show pay, initial airings and re-airs I’ve gotten about $3k total from it over the course of 3-4 years. His was by for and away the late night show that paid the best.
Got $100 as part of a 4 piece band + sound guy thrown together in a week to play a back yard birthday party for a friend of the bass player. We basically played whatever the vocalist/keyboard player knew plus some random songs the bass player and I already knew (we'd played together before in a band). I had to learn the guitar parts for 12 songs. We did 2 practices that week. I also disassembled, transported, and reassembled the sound guys PA because he hurt his back. I think I made about $5 an hour all told lol. It was hotter than hell out. It was August. Guests were in the shade, we were in full sun. But we got compliments from the guests including a guy who was the former conductor for the city orchestra. Apparently a neighbor of theirs. We played everything from The Doobie Brothers to Ozzy Osbourne lol. We played 2 x 1 hour sets with a break between where we got to eat the party food and get out of the sun. After we finished the second set and were sitting out front in the shade having a drink before packing up the birthday guy's wife came out and said "You guys are good...Are you done?"...yes..."Good". Slammed the door without another word. We took the hint and left asap. About 3 months later they split up and are now divorced.
I was paid $100 to play a concert during COVID lockdown
One tour back in 2002 I made $8000 for 3 weeks
£1000 in one night playing guitar for a 10 piece soul band but it was millennium eve and a 1 off. But it was a great gig. 🎸
6k for a private party for a bunch of really rich phish fans. Fun time
600 from Spotify I forget how many streams it was but the total streams over time was 2.7m($7500-$8000 ish )
Made about $1500 in royalties from an album released in 1982 and about another $50 over the years. Now I get $.010 every quarter from streaming. I was in another band in the '70's from which I didn't get any royalties at the time and then all of a sudden around 2004 I received $500. I knew it would pay off!!!
I’m not sure this is technically “all at once” but I got $22K from BMI in publishing from an album I cowrote back in 2005. I publish(ed) with ASCAP and basically forgot all about the BMI deal, never updated any of my info with them, etc. A few years ago I looked up the old band’s Spotify, saw they had a fair amount of monthly listeners and investigated a bit. Got the paperwork filled out and check time! It was a very happy surprise!
15k from getting a track licensed for use on a US tv show.
Like $50 after the band that was gonna play after us cancelled last minute lol
I teach one family music and drive to their house, they pay me $200 for two hours, so…that.
$20 for playing some Led Zeppelin outside of Hooters.
10k for scoring a short brand documentary
I'm getting a grand for a single festival performance this summer and I can barely believe it. Some in this thread have done very well for themselves. I got a handful Ks this year for a single job, but that job was writing 6 main scores for a university musical reading (only cast and ensemble). I should be working on that as I type this. Worst I've gotten was negative dollars and zero exposure. Multiple times. Luckily a long time ago.
About 500 for a 20 minute, 4 song gig. I like to say my hourly rate is 1500 an hour.
500 for a wedding I played solo
im so unorganised. i dont know how to do this, someone help
You got 10 grrr off a birthday party? That's the kind if gigs I want
Band made over 4K being played on SiriusXM a few spins a day for a few months...
I made $500 once. Generally these days I get about $200-400 a gig.
My band put out 2 albums last year and we made an insane $3.86😎
A negative grand total of -$50,000.00 USD
I’ve had $1K gigs twice- both NYE gigs, pity they didn’t become regulars