Making A Living In Music (2019 Update)

everyone I'm Rigby Otto this is Tim Smith you guys know Rhett today we're gonna talk about specifically how you make a living in the music business now I've talked about this in a number of videos in the past or the course of my channel my situation has changed I went from producing bands working 12 hours 14 hours a day to making videos 12 or 14 hours a day tim has been out touring for how many years to 20 something those of you that don't know Tim he was in it we were in a video together recently but Tim would play bass and jellyfish and you've played with Sheryl Crow for about 14 years and I played with Neil Finn and his brother Tim Finn the Finn brothers and the world party I played with for a time and Noah Gallagher's high flying birds for about five years and pretty good resume and you guys know Rhett because he's been in about a hundred of my videos and has his own channel so let's talk about this to him tell me about how touring has changed and kind of your move from being in a sign band or even getting into a sign band and how what the music business was like back then with jellyfish as to how it changed over the years yeah well back in those days in 92 93 you could still get a record contract and you didn't advance and everybody could make some money off of that and you could live off of it but as you know I think it's the Steve Albini post it basically says you can make more money working at a 7-eleven when you break everything down over the course of a even a fairly well record doing fairly well you know you have to get out on the road and tour and now that people don't seem to buy music the way that it was back then making music by playing live is really the main way that musicians could make a living now and so even big bands I know that when I was playing with null because he owns all of his publishing and his label and all that stuff he's making more money because of that which is a great decision that he made back in the you know ASIS days but not everybody has that cached to broaden themselves out like that but he's done it well enough to to make it very living so nowadays it seems like all even bigger bands that have worked with because they can only really make money from touring everybody's getting all their slices out of that so everybody's got their fingers in that and I think what's happened is that the musicians are are I'm not going to say they're getting slighted it's just part of the economy the economics of what happens but it's just not quite the same without being specific about the different musicians that you've worked with what are the percentage of people that own their own publishing that I've worked with yeah not many okay yeah not many and you get these big you know deals that people a lot of bigger artists make that cover everything for a specific amount of time I think people now want to hold onto their publishing but even that world like where do you make money in publishing now unless it's in doing commercial work or getting your stuff and film scores and stuff like all ready to film and the soundtracks and stuff like that now rep what about you over the last seven eight years with your touring so my two whirring I got into music professionally about seven or eight years ago and so my touring up it's at this point has been mostly with smaller regional and some national acts so all of my touring has been in you know opening direct support for bigger national acts playing rooms from anywhere from 5060 captive three or four hundred cap kind of in the the category bands that are like trying to make it or supporting singer song writers or artists that are trying to make it and for me I think it's you know I don't have the the background that like tim has or that you have so I don't know what it was like to tour through the 90s and early 2000s but you can definitely feel how the industry has changed so echo what Tim was saying that everybody now you make your money on the on merch on ticket sales I'm that kind of thing so and one way it's good because artists I think are pushing to play live more especially smaller artists that are trying to get discovered so as a hired gun musician that's a good thing if you are in a city like Nashville a lot where a lot of artists are kind of coming up and touring out of there it's good because you can you can stay busy the downside is if you're gonna try and make a living strictly as a hired gun musicians like a lot of my friends are you are out on the road non-stop constantly that you come home and you jump on rehearsals for another artist another tour and you rehearse get ready for that and then go out for however long that is so it's you know it's it can be kind of an unhealthy way to make a living in that you're not really home a lot and you know it so it's it's kind of an interesting time I think in my experience I made my living as a music teacher in the 90s when I first moved here when I met Tim Tim and I met and I actually met Tim the second day that I lived in Atlanta which was in November of 1994 I went to see he was in a he was playing in duo at a club here and a friend of mine told me hey you know the bass player from jellyfishes lives here and he's in a band I said oh my god I love jellyfish and so I went down and I met Tim and we hung out and ended up starting to record together the next day you invited me over to ya to work on the was to become the human Jets record and I was teaching guitar lessons in a music store to make a living started band got signed but really never made any money with the band I mean back then when you got signed in the 90s bands would get publishing deals I had a publishing deal of 1991 before I even came here with Polygram and then I signed another colleague a publishing deal with EMI in the early 2000 2000 or so I think it was and every band that got signed would get offered publishing deals back in the day and it would be anywhere from 300 $50,000 to $500,000 I'm just standard for those who might not know what is a publishing deal well a publishing deal is at the time it what they were actually Co publishing deals the typical deal would be they would give you an advance based what they thought your value would be and they would take 50% of your publishing royalty for every dollar that comes in 50 cents goes to the songwriter or is split between the songwriters 50% goes to the publishing side now if you do a co publishing deal which pretty much all of them were 25 cents goes to the publisher 25% goes to the publishing company my publishing company was called lonely runner music well it still is so for every the money that came in EMI would get 25 cents and I would get 75 cents if I was the sole songwriter but I was out I was a co-writer yeah so I would get split the writers share 5050 and then split that 25 cents 5050 but and that's also that's sales but also radio play yeah mechanical says yeah it's there are many different ways that you could skin that cat yeah now typically I didn't make any money really through publishing until I started producing and then when I started producing I started having co-writes on records with bands that sold a lot of copies like shine down the first shine that record I had I don't know three or four co-writes on that and that's a little a million and a half two million records something like that back in those days you could make you'd make about if it was an album track about thirty five hundred bucks that would be it that you would make even off a platinum record if you had a single though you can make a lot of money in you know a number one song or top five song I've said this some of the videos I was lucky enough to have a number one country song that brought in a million dollars not to me in radio airplay but it was split between five people back in 2000 of 2013 and then the mechanical royalties that came from the sales brought in another million dollars which I didn't see any of the money from so there was one windfall and that was it but that's pretty much all the money that came in from that yeah and that's because there's no record sales anymore right it's all streaming it's all streaming I mean a little bit of money comes in you make it you know $1,000 $1,500 every you know maybe 4 10 4 times a year every quarter every in the old days you know if you were sting and you wrote message in a bottle you'd be getting you know maybe 150 thousand dollars you know probably more than that couple million dollars a year you're breathing it in you're breathing it out and then you start piling one song on another I mean and you could become a millionaire as a producer and I always talk about this two three points which is what a typical producer would get and if you mix the record for points so if you sold a million records you'd make about $300,000 and and those three points people say well that's not three points that's $30,000 no it's three points because you're making three points of ten dollars so it would be three hundred thousand so eight a triple platinum record would almost make you a millionaire although you would have a producer usually a producer manager that's taking it cut 15% so you did sell four million records to make a million dollars as a producer back in the old days as record sales started die-off big name producers rock producers whatever would start charging a lot more upfront so typically you would get three grand per track and you make your royalties after that after the money was recouped and then once that disappeared then people it starts charging three hundred fifty thousand dollars and then but that now it wasn't even worth it then people just are producing their own records so Tim talking about touring though as far as the what's the longest time period that you were out on tour probably twelve weeks something like that at one high most my Sheryl Crow days she just we would do 11:11 nights in a row she just her voice never needed to rest so we were always out and it was fun it was what I would say what happens now and some of the touring I've done where there Nashville base groups where it's mostly weekend touring so you've got a bus on a Thursday and overnight to play to some town you're gonna play Friday Saturday maybe Sunday or Thursday Friday Saturday and then you're back and you have the first half of your week at home and there are pros and cons to that I for me I would rather be on the road and just get the momentum going because seem like that third show of Iran you're just getting back and grooving and playing with each other then you're back home again yeah that's my own opinion I say it's it's good if you know you want to be home and be with your family and stuff more often and that's a good thing too or like that but I prefer being out where you're literally putting the message in a box and driving the car around the world kind of thing for a whole spend of time and maybe you have some breaks in there but you know the detriment part of that is that you're not going to see your family unless you bring them out so Rhett what's the longest that you were out on the road for weeks because like I said most of the artists that I've played with our longer tours have been as direct support or openers for bigger bands for your artists and so will usually jump on a tour with them and follow and then when it's headlining tours nowadays I find that from what I've seen I think it's more sustainable for smaller artists to do more of that weekend kind of go out hit a region come home go out hit a new market become a whole kind of thing and I'm with you I like being out because you're right by that second or third show you really find that rhythm and that grew and then if you have to two weeks out two-and-a-half weeks out by the end of that two week runs depending on what the band is what the gig is you could be playing something on a completely other level than you did when you first you're literally making music yeah and even things you know a lot of bands will play the same set list but others will enjoy working around and changing arrangements and stuff just because you get bored yeah and that's part of the fun right when's the best time to see you two or Tim what's the for me it was always maybe the third or fourth week of being out once you've worked through all the normal stuff and you kind of found the right setlist and you've changed a few things and you see what works best and you're not too burned out that's always the best time to watch musicians is when you're not well sometimes it can be fun when it burned out - I find that everybody that watches this channel sees that I have a lot of equipment here that I've acquired over the last probably 16 to 18 years of being a producer I started buying gear early on because I realized that most of the bands that I worked with if they weren't signed - had crappy gear and if they were assigned they had crappy here it's pretty amazing because they'd be out with their stuff they're come in their guitars would be covered in sweat and their pickups didn't work right and our drummers drums sounded terrible they didn't know to tune them so I started behind things and I spent my money on gear all the money that I made I spend I'm here because your success as a producer was dependent on having good sounds and and and and I always told people before you spend money on mic pries or microphones or anything buy great instruments and buy you know great amplifiers and great instruments because even through cheap mic priests or inexpensive Mike Frese and microphones they'll still sound good yeah well especially nowadays - with the barrier to entry as far as recording equipment interfaces and microphones now I mean if you have a 57 and you know maybe it for 500 our focus right interface you've got a pretty decent a decent enough signal chain that a couple of plugins you can throw it on and make it sound great if the source was great one of my first recording experiences here or my first was working with Tim with uma Jets on that record and Roger worked on the record Roger and jellyfish Roger Roger Manning and Shalom Haverly yep and Joe here's noticed we had it what a 180 that machine in the Mackie yeah soul and I think we had a 414 and yeah maybe a 57 that was about it but that was really the that's how I first saw people producing their own music before computers or anything that was the first experience I ever had with I mean I had a four track to set and things like that but as far as actually making a record that way yeah that was my first experience really seeing that yeah if you think about that in comparison to nowadays all the stuff that is all the the gear for that that is developed because of home recording well I mean that's you know I have this theory about the ease at which things become so available how does that serve the struggle of an artist to be creative when you have every option in the world that your finger to and every plug in and all that stuff it's awesome but I I and I'm you were talking about guitars and having good guitars and stuff while I agree with you on most levels for me I would rather find a way to make a really crappy sounding old K bass or guitar do something unique and interesting on its own especially for bass when I play the bass a lot I always thought the tone of a weird 60s bass was more interesting than a super-high-end you know I call them furniture bases though that's the best thing I've heard to describe that furniture base yeah that's spot there and they're amazing works of art and all that stuff but for me and unless you're playing jazz I find them stunting yeah you know because I always feel like you get the best out of by getting them to struggle with whatever they're dealing with if it's your own voice and I think Jonathan always said his favorite thing or not John the Bannen said about John Lennon he enjoys hearing him sing twist and shout because he's not quite it in the notes all the time and there's a struggle to that and I think the struggle part is what a lot of people today don't have to deal with here because they can just get these amazing things up immediately yeah okay well what are you going to say with that you know and so still it's all about being moved emotionally by whatever you're creating and hopefully people are finding and they are finding unique ways to use these tools and do something different you can reminded me today that he said you remember what your first guitar was when you moved here and I had a Mexican strap that was all I could afford and Anna Peavy classic 50 that was my rig when I moved to Atlanta that's that's I had because not a bad rig you can do a lot with that yeah but I think I had changed up the pickups or something in the Mexican strat but I remember starting a session I came in the drummer started playing and said oh man that snare sense world and here recording if you have a bad snare sound that's pretty much sunk and there's it wasn't yeah it wasn't a good bad snare song cuz there's some bad snare sounds that are great snare drums yeah but there's just a terrible snare sense here I played a Hoffner base on the jellyfish record that was an amazing instrument on the spilt milk record the second record by jellyfish but the intonation about past the seventh or eighth fret you just have to stop and retune it and just play that passage and everything stopped and lute ended up just was there just were not really well made based right and have the ability to do the things that a lot of people want to do and even some of McCartney stuff you can hear them going sharp yeah and there is a little bit of a character to that but there's so that's the fine line where you have to be careful Sam I have a question for you what would you say to younger musicians who are you know maybe in their late teens early 20s who are wanting to get into being a maybe a hired gun musician or a full-time player someone who's been around in this game for a while what do you think somebody who's coming into this nowadays needs to know he's to understand needs to be prepared for um there's no jobs left that's all I can snap don't even try now I think that look everybody has nowadays the ability to go like we're saved get really good beer you can watch their videos about what's good - how to plug things in and do all that stuff and that's all great and helpful I think the things that are most important about getting into this is about 85% of being on the road or being in getting a gig is just how you are around other people at how you can hang with other people because you really are each other's back pockets all the time and Jeremy Stacey is a dear friend of mine he was a drummer who played being in Cheryl's ban and in Noel's ban and he now plays it in King Crimson he's like a brother to me but there were there are moments where I couldn't stand him and want to add and they got a little really good punch and once in that phase in Austin Texas but you know you develop these these relationships with people that you have to be prepared to you know touring is you kind of have to be willing to put up with whatever you you couldn't even think of some of the things you're gonna have to deal with and that mindset it's sort of like being a gypsy I guess but just be prepared for that you know it's not there's no road map to it even on the high end level of things when you're moving and traveling stuff changes all the time and be ready for that be ready to take on weird circumstances and adapt to them pretty quickly because people will just leave you behind if you're not or they'll get somebody else it's very easy to do that Oh totally so there's always somebody ready to take your gig you're not a good Aang right absolutely yeah I've seen really amazing players lose gigs because of that just because of their personality or whatever and they even knew it that you know every great player that I played with has our own ups and downs and stuff I always think being a side man or whatever it's like being a chameleon and you figure out what's the weak thing in the band or in the dynamic of the emotions of everybody in the band it's not just about how you play you can change the way you play in any in a different group if it's more of a jamming group and it's getting to jamming you need to realize that it's time to lock into a rhythm section playing situation if it's just everybody's noodling all the time it's always being aware of what's happening because that's what music is it's reacting to what you're hearing it being on the road is the same way you're reacting where you're going what you do let me ask you this you're a great singer how important is it as a sideman to be to be able to sing I've been really lucky because I have to play and sing with some really good singers didn't have that ability would that have hindered your ability yeah in case yeah and there are some great musicians that I've put up for gigs but they didn't get them because they couldn't send yeah and I actually don't think singing is as difficult to do now I say that because I can sing but I think I think people out there that aren't sure they can sing just just go for it you know I think there's plenty of things you can do if you've got an ear to hear things and tone and pitch that singing you should be you've never heard read sing it's what you say that like I'm in that place right now where it's like okay I think I can do it and I know that I need to do it so I've been like practicing on my own and reaching out to some really talented vocalist friends of mine and saying like okay what do I need to work on but the challenge that I have is because most of the gigs I play I'm the lead guitarist some playing parts either on my record or parts that I've written and stuff and so most of my brain power is dedicated to playing the parts correctly getting of tones nailed and so trying to throw in singing some harmony stuff on top of that is a little challenging it's a little bit of this yeah but it's it's when you it's like anything it's just you gotta practice yeah do it I know that a jellyfish is for singers singing four part harmonies and we had to practice and rehearse every day to keep that going and our sound engineer Sheila was almost a fifth member of the band because that was a singer and he could hear things like Tim your R is not as hard as everybody else's and you need to make that syllable how long was it was a pretty particular guy a little bit great I mean incredibly good sound yeah yeah and it's you know it's just one of those things where it seems like it's a drag if you don't feel like you're you're good at it you just have to kind of keep pushing through that you know and even even for ways that you like when I was playing with Sheryl Crow I used to sing higher harmonies in her that she had recorded on the record but I had to recreate these super high harmonies I was able to do that but part of it was I had to just let go of my ego and say this is I know I'm singing a duet with a girl it's about girls I'm like I'm a girl but it's you're just it's a character you know that you're putting on and you're just trying to bring the part of the song over and I had to change the way that I sang so let's talk about some other ways to make living for example YouTube or you do gear demos things like that yeah the YouTube thing for me is I guess relatively new been doing it for about a year and it was after watching you grow in this thing over the last few years and you know I think from my perspective as someone who's been doing this now kind of getting in close to you know ten years the first ten years of their career I learned pretty quickly that in today's market you have to be able to do more than just play your instrument well you have to know how to record you have to know how to write you have to know how to engineer you have to know how to market yourself you have to know you have to understand social media and all these things you know a lot of my friends who are have become really successful either hired gun players or artists themselves they all kind of have a combination of those things it's not just oh yeah such and such as an amazing guitar player and he just automatically got picked up for this gigs like no he's got an amazing guitar player who understands Instagram and has got a seventy thousand follower Instagram account or whatever they got him notice or whatever you know our friends of mine that do session work a lot now that got into it not because they got into a big studio they were recording themselves and mixing themselves so the stuff that they're recording and mixing sounded amazing and copy attention of whoever well this is interesting because when I started my channel two years ago I was 54 years old I always said in order to make a living as a producer one of the advantages I had was that I could play all the different instruments I could write and a lot of it times I'd have to play other people's parts for I was the bass player couldn't play if the guitar player didn't play and I could come up with parts well I could also engineer and mix the records too so in addition if I had a singer/songwriter come in I can create the entire band and I could you know engineer mix the records would be a one-stop shop and help co-write the songs if I had to but then the social media and crack the wedding venue with but the thing that that people I think don't realize I think people that are my age that are musicians that the social media part of it I didn't know anything about social media I started this YouTube channel because you recommended it I was on Facebook just posting stuff I had some you know big video Dylan had some huge videos on Facebook but I you know I would get on there and talk and do things but I didn't understand I didn't have an Instagram thing I didn't know anything about YouTube I watched YouTube videos if I don't want to learn something I go to him to you know I want to run a camera or whatever yeah I never I never even considered it till you came in and said you should start a YouTube channel yeah and that's you know a lot of people kind of you know the Internet has done I guess a lot of bad things for music industry but I also think it's done a lot of really great things music industry YouTube being one of them one of the artists that I've played for for five years to actually been here through you as Noah Guthrie has a career because he had a viral video on YouTube when he was like 17 yeah it started his career and now because of the internet he and I can sit and write a song together record it shoot a video of it post it and then in a matter of hours have somebody in the Netherlands or South America washing it and you know it has to continue with him as an example he has a pretty substantial following in Europe he tours Europe quite a bit strictly because of Spotify strictly because of YouTube because of his Instagram following I mean so if you know what you're doing as an artist nowadays or as a musician you can use the Internet and you should be using the Internet to your advantage and it's not and anybody I mean I'm older than everyone here and I was able to do it at 54 so if I could do it it's not you know my god don't be intimidated by social media I was rescued from producing things that I never wanted to do any more I'm honest about that I was working on projects that I hated and I would say to my wife I can't be doing this when I'm 60 years old producing things that I hate I don't want to be part of the problem anymore I want to teach people things and and through the generous you know people just buying my book and and you know buying my mugs on my my store actually so so because of that I was able to stop becoming what I call part of the problem by producing horrible things that are all auto-tuned because everybody wanted their voices auto-tuned and and I didn't want to do that I didn't want to quantize people's drum parts and do stuff like that I hated that that's not music to me you can be any age and do this I don't think people should feel intimidated by that no matter how old they are so should we think of me think I mean I don't think kids today are intimidated by socially no kids I'm talking all older music I was telling Rick earlier today I follow a couple of musicians that I've always liked Andy Partridge from FCC and Robyn Hitchcock on Twitter and both of them I really love following for different reasons Robyn Hitchcock is this surreal kind of poet guide she just writes these ridiculous tweets that are awesome so that's one way and then Andy Partridge has most recently been sort of transcribing some of his more famous guitar parts for people live to pick out which is great because he's always sort of been a loofa kind of guy so they're both using that to be relatively in the in the mainstream for how would they want to be and they're connecting with fans I know that one of the big things that's happening with touring now is fan experiences or you know you come to the soundcheck and you sit there and watch us play or you come we everybody meets beforehand or they yeah and now there's companies that are you know having these lavish meals and all this other crap that we would see and it's just I mean I understand what it is as an experience and even in like the PledgeMusic model of putting out records I'm in the middle of doing a record with Roger Manning and Eric Dover from my jellyfish days that we were approached by PledgeMusic cuz Rogers put out things on his own but most of what he's had to do with that project have been things that people have bought like oh go write a song with Roger oh he'll do a piano score a vocal arrangement or whatever so these other things that you have talent add you can exploit in these different ways and and that's kind of hopeful you know and that artists I couldn't say how did any partners play earn enough for us on guitar and there he's doing that you know he should probably have a channel to do that because it's a pretty engaging dude but I'm glad that you're embracing the technology but you're also a teacher you have something to say that people want to hear I think what part of what I see in social media are artists that are just pointing a camera at themselves but hey this is where I am today and it's all it's all about them in a way that I just don't find engaging you've got to have something that's interesting and unique and different for people to want to continue to watch you the idea that people are going to sit and live their life watching you live your life it's kind of like well I also think too that this is the answer to what we've seen in the last few years if you just look at the guitar industry how there's been this kind of everybody's freaking out what guitar sales are down guitar is finally dying the younger generations are not picking up instruments anymore I don't necessarily see that because of Instagram you have these young people on Instagram who are coming up just some smoking players they're 16 17 years old and even younger in some cases that now have a platform an outlet to then inspire other people you know if when I was learning guitar 12 13 years old I had Instagram and YouTube I think I would be in much more I don't think I'd be a better musician I think I would have a more developed year than I do now just by being able to see and hear and be exposed to so much different stuff in an instant so you know I think that you have a better ear when you had actually dropped the needle on them yeah and I was kind of maybe disagree with you from my own experience because when I was you're at that age at ten eleven and I've said this to you before it's like you had to go out of your way to find a record store or a shop you could get a magazine that would have a band that somebody was talking about you're always gonna be pricking your ears up for things that are gonna move you I don't think that goes away to any age in fact I think the opposite has happened now that there's so much available to everybody that it's just a saturation point of how can you even pick out anything of value it has to be so ridiculously different for anybody to go well hang on the bass player the rhythm section was actually pretty badass I just I guess my point is is that we have so much available to and there was something about taking the record out of the record sleep it has smell to it you put it on you had to take care of it differently it wasn't just track seven on my desk no what have you left your record in the car on a hot day it was done yeah and they were connecting to it was sort acidly where they're actively actively yeah and you were connected to that and and it meant more to me because you could see it it's a size that artwork could have a an impact visually this those days so I like to thank these guys for being my guest today Tim you can follow Tim on where can you follow you tell how doesn't look I'm on Facebook YouTube Instagram I'm around Rhett you guys know is I'll put their things in the description and thanks everybody for watching

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 65,616

Keywords: rick beato, music business, music marketing, how to make money with music, music publishing, how to make money in music, youtube creators music, music business 2018, music business 101, discussion, podcast, music discussion, music marketing and promotion, being a touring musician, session bass player, session guitar player, royalties music, Music publishing, being a youtube creator, how to get 1000 subscribers on youtube, royalties music industry

Id: K6c0Iy6Q65E

Length: 35min 55sec (2155 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 22 2018