If you want to get make money/make more money from playing live (delete depending on where you are in your music ‘career’!) you need to gig smart and avoid playing too many free gigs.  You might think that you need to gig as often as possible and a lot of bands and artists (especially younger ones) are tempted to take every single gig offer that comes their way.  I know I know, there’s the 10,000 hours rule but playing each and every week for free in your local area will devalue your live ‘product’ if you do it over a long period of time.  It also sends signals to your audience that your live experience has little or no value.  This will eventually give you problems when you try and charge money for your live shows.

Playing free gigs is not a problem. But playing too many in your local area can devalue your live music.

Here’s an example. I know of one local band who hired a local music venue exactly two years ago and charged a modest ticket price for an event to promote their first single.  Great stuff.   However, for the past two years they’ve been playing free hometown gigs once or twice a week each and every week.  This has ultimately devalued their ‘live’ product; their local gigs now have no value and are now literally worth nothing.

So, you need to gig ‘smart’.  Do enough free gigs to build up a following.  Create a remarkable live experience that people will want to pay money for and then you can monetise playing live.

Don’t play for free forever.

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