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Being a musician today is a far different prospect than it was ten, twenty or thirty years ago. If you’re in this business, I don’t need to tell you that. Remember the Pistols singing about working all of two weeks for their £75,000 advance from A&M Records in the song “Rock ‘N” Roll Swindle?” That simply doesn’t happen anymore. The record labels have had a disastrous decade; frankly the whole label thing is a rust bucket of an economic model and it doesn’t fly today. Bands have got to take their financial and artistic growth into their own hands, not stand about waiting for a label to swoop in and take them under wing. That seldom happens and when it does, the conditions of the deal often make it a ruinous one for the band. By my count, what’s left of the big labels have destroyed more promising bands in the past few years than they’ve boosted. Fair enough, Dirk, you might say, but how exactly do a bunch of sodding wanna-be rock stars go about making a living on their own? Many of these guys got into the biz with visions of lucre and birds dancing in their heads after all, they’re not exactly fond of the idea of roughing it. First of all, everyone in the band has got to be committed to doing what it takes. That means acting as their own roadies, eating instant ramen noodles and acting as their own promoters. Share a room, buy your own estate car and use that to transport you and your instruments to gigs. Stay away from Uncle Mac! There’s nothing wrong with busking in your free time- it acts as an effective alternative to flyers (just make sure you’re wearing your band t-shirts and have CDs available). Hire a business manager. Once you have a manager in place, expect them to run your band like a business. This person will book your gigs, manage your finances, order promotional material like shirts, pins, hats and CDs and they’ll run the merch table at shows. Once you have positive cash flow, they can arrange to pay band members a modest salary. Above all, they look after the details without interfering in the creative aspect (like a label would); the band plays while the manager keeps them going and together they grow. About The Author: Dirk Hays coordinates the merchandising business for dozens of UK-based bands, including Round The Twisted. Knowing that many of these up and coming musicians will make more money from selling a t-shirt with their logo on it than they’ll ever make flogging CDs, Hays works hard to ensure the merchandise tables are fully stocked at any show and that MySpace pages are also able to sell band memorabilia. When it comes time to design t shirt for a band, Hays tends to opt for online services rather than traditional print shops.
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