“Pay to Play” Words bands never want to hear. It goes against everything Rock N’ Roll stood for. You the artist pays the venue x amount of money in order play at their venue. I don’t know when this business practice started, but it’s still alive and well today at a venue near you. Yeah it sucks, and I feel your pain, but what can we do about it? I guess the first thing we can do is try to understand it. Why do venues do this? Well they do this because they are a business. And they’re in the business of making money. Venues don’t want to take the risk of having a band perform that won’t draw a crowd and cover their costs. That would just be a bad business practice right?
I could understand that. On the flip side, there is a value bands provide. They are performing music. It’s hard to put a price on art, but that has a value also. Since a band provides a service, musicians should treat their bands just like they do, a business. If you did, your band would quickly realize what a bad investment it’d be to pay a venue to play, UNLESS your band had a strong draw and paying to play was a worthwhile investment.
There lies the answer I suppose. Maybe our anger and frustrations are in the wrong place. Maybe our bands aren’t ready to play the venue that requires you to “pay to play”. Perhaps we should refocus our energy into working on our bands, music, performance, and create a stronger following in order to play the good venues that require you to “pay to play”. Or we could simply avoid these venues all together and force them to come crawling back! Or would bands ultimately give in? The question remains, would you pay to play?
Picture Credit Michael W. Bunch
