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Looper's Delight
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Some figures: As a full time tour musician I typically did 140 USD per gig right into my pocket. Hotel and traveling expenses already taken care of by the central booking agency. One full month of touring dough added up reasonably. A one week album studio session typically payed 1300 USD (before taxes). At a particular session the record label was almost bankrupt and asked if we hired studio musicians would accept to work on a cut of eventual future record sale royalties (the artist was positive sharing his cut - the record label did not offer to share THEIR cut ;-). I accepted and was not payed the 1300 in hand. Luckily the artist had a hit with one track from the album which led to USD 8350 royalty pouring down my mail box three months later. But that was just the first royalty period, when the hit was forgotten sales went down and I received almost nothing. These good figures were just lucky and not at all like the norm. Some artistes never have a hit and definitely not instrumental acts as typically represented on this list. To make money you also have to work within the business, so professional publishers go out to negotiate your deals with representatives from other territories where releases are planned. But there is also a lot of trouble coming with such a "pro" set-up. Personally I did not want to stay in that situation, so I quit the pro level and started doing other things to financially back up my musical activities. The good side is that if you go amateur you can do all the fun and inspiring things... but rarely make any money ;-) Some people manage to hang on at a mid level as indie artists, working with indie labels and since a bunch of middle-men is cut out there seems to be possible to make more money in that set-up. Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.boysen.se (Swedish) www.looproom.com (international) http://tinyurl.com/fauvm (podcast)