What is the price of bands or musicians? What are you really paying for?

Are you ordering a musician, a band, a DJ, an artist and do you find the price too exaggerated? What do you think you are paying for? These are also things that you might not even think of.

First of all, of course, it’s the artist’s time. However, it cannot be calculated from the beginning of production to its end.
It is also necessary to include the time when the band or musician packs and carries their expensive equipment in cars and sometimes transports hours to the customer. Furthermore, long preparation of cabling, sound and other necessary to start production.
From now on, let’s count, for example, 4 hours of performances, which end, say, at midnight.
For the customer – the customer, this is the end of cooperation. Not far from musicians, of course.

The band Aura packs their equipment for an hour, loads it into a car and again drives, for example, 2 hours to the rehearsal room. We would rather not discuss the risk of falling asleep at this hour after exhausting our strength and our own experience with microsleep …
Maybe I would just mention the moment when the pianist woke me up by sharply straightening the steering wheel on the highway at considerable speed. Was it a coincidence that I drove him for the very first time in my life and wasn’t alone behind the wheel?
Why am I writing this? This is a recurring risk that the artist must take into account. So why undergo it at an inadequate price?

Furthermore, musicians can unload the equipment from cars and carry it to the floor. Only then can they go to bed, where they catch up on their sleep until the afternoon, while the woman with the children is alone again …

Equipment and tools :
There are hundreds of thousands of equipment in the band or DJ. Whether you are a drummer, singer, guitarist or DJ, you have to invest a lot of money in powerful equipment, quality instruments, microphones, lighting and the like. We will not have any illusions that the purchased technology does not age and does not leave.

Preparation hours :
David Fajmon from the band Aura pays for online lessons from the award-winning guitarist with state-of-the-art playing technology, Daryl Kellie , who takes £ 50 for guitar lessons, or CZK 1,400. He is constantly moving his technology further. He applies this experience and techniques when playing live with the band Aura.

Overall, it is important to think that before a musician climbs the stage, he must devote many years to intense and never-ending development. Therefore, the musician’s lesson necessarily includes hundreds of hours of instrument practice in his past. This is different from self-games, as we wrote in the funny article ” Self-games vs. live music ”

Warehouse and testing room :
The Aura band pays CZK 2,000 / month for rehearsal and storage, which is definitely worth taking into account the price.

Shipping costs :
It is necessary to take into account the depreciation of the vehicle and only its very existence. Most musicians buy big cars and vans just because of the music and the band. They can’t logically say about 3 crowns per kilometer, saying that this is what they will pass.

Every car owner knows how much money his operation a year, including insurance, costs on average. These are not negligible amounts.

Marketing and advertising :
Nowadays, when hundreds or thousands of bands pay for their commercials, it’s slow to keep up with them so that you can also show yourself more to new customers. In its 10 years of existence, the band Aura already has regular customers, such as Benteler, Grupo Antolin and others, but of course companies do not want to have the same band every year for 10 years, so musicians have to look for new customers and companies.

Taxes

Office working hours :
Creation of contracts, calculation of demands from the whole country (travel expenses). Answers and communication with customers, solving their specific requirements, questions and passing on the personal experience of artists, for example when organizing a wedding party, where everything has to work, regardless of the weather and other pitfalls.

DO YOU STILL THINK FOR FREE DRINKING, COUPLE AND “EXPERIENCE” ARE A FAIR REWARD? You probably wouldn’t suggest this to your plumber, optician, car mechanic or electrician, would you?

After all we’ve read here today, the worst look a musician can have is just an empty floor.