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Hello all, i post rarely, cause i am normally not into tech discussion. Nevertheless, payment for musicians seems to be an international issue, and as TH has pointed out: The "market" is so flooded, that it is rather hard to get paid or get reasonably paid, or comparable to other professions invoking a similar amount of engagement. Per Boysen has pointed out a more luxurious situation, Berlin then, where i live, is somewhere in no-pay or not-much-pay-land - unless you pay the Jazz Festival, which still pays much minor to locals compared to what they pay to an average US-Jazzer playing here. So us Berliners like to go elsewhere, Scandinavia, Asia, Austria, Switzerland, France etc. always pay much better than here, UK are a mess, but fun, too. It's the transparent tattoo on your forehead saying "Berliner". Ridiculous, but exploitable. More overview: I would suggest to make an anonymous collection of international musicians wages to get an overview, this is something for a social scientist maybe (anyone here?) - personally i could supply the web platform and some of teh necessary programming skills. Unions: Is there a union for musicians, where you live? In the former GDR, the socialist part of divided Germany there existed such a thing, and everyone i meet, who happened to work under such conditions is still missing the good old times. Guaranteed wages, guaranteed amoung of monthly jobs. But themusic was mainly crap. And i grew up in the West instead... Government funds: Germany sports a so-called "Artist health insurance". Very helpful in some cases, but i never get sick and they don't pay for new teeth ,-( France has this great system of an unemployment insurance for musicians, given that you are a French resident (married i guess), and play at least 45 contracted shows per year. Some friends of mine live nicely on the base of that. How is it in your country? Canada's got loads grants and scholarships for Canadians working abroad i hear... Do these funding ideas apply to you, when you DON'T have an academic degree in music or went to some acclaimed music school otherwise? Here it only very rarely does. As someone, who devotes his life to music (and family / no (inner) choice otherwise) you stay with your passion or give it up at some point. It's just a question of how much trouble you can or want to bare. You might end up getting invited for dinner by your 9-to-5 friends regularly. They don't honor their passion as much as you do, but they happen to have a steady good income. That can be embarrassing, but nevertheless YOU are the doctor, who heals their souls. That service, if it works out nicely for the erm "client", deserves good payment of any imaginable kind. That's not like going to Berkeley music school on family funding and joining the David Letterman show band right after. The equivalent of such a thing in Germany is just to das to mention and i do sometimes work for such a thing as a teacher. My job is funny & absurd: I supply one-on-one inspirational teaching to 20-25 year old music students, who are technically superb, but don't know why they didn't get into the plumbing business. You know, the identical clones of rock stars, who are bored of their own profession (Nah, they are really people usually). Passion and profession: To me it was always both, doing music professionally to a certain extent since 1986, learned from the age of six, refusing piano teachers to make me rehearse bloody Bach again, instead insisting on = passion, when profession = in most cases. This attitude (hello attitude thread) clearly pays out, as well as it does not. It fully pays out on the respect side, once someone has told you somethign equally to "your music saved my life", which happened to me before. You wake up, the sould floats, it's springtime, the fluids are rising, there's a whistling melody and a rumbling beat: someone looks at you like "yeah, man, that's wonderful." This clearly "pays out." On the professional side the this attitude pays out on rare occasions, special festival invitations, because you insist to stick to your passion, specialties, weirdnesses and get invited to perform exactly that. This can be very well paid. All the rest is daily business. People asking for free mp3, club promoters asking for free shows, you pay your drinks yourself. That's part of the "deal". I learned to insinst on payment and rather not play my hometown for a year, at least in ambivalent locations, if payment is missing or too low. Asking prices and higher prices is clearly a strategy to raise the respect level towards you in the long run, if you can survive the intermediate 25 years of suffering after you finished school. So finally... uhm, TH has reminded us, that music is available for free everywhere today. This simply states, that if one delivers a service, that recorded music can easily replace, then one can't expect payment. History repeats itself here: Did you ever read about the massive loss of work for musicians, when sound in films was invented in the 1930's? Oh my, what a catastrophe - comparable to ipods, almost. I strongly believe, that passion will always pay out in the long run. Passion is what makes the difference in your audience's ears. If you sound like the hifi in the bar, then no one today will give a damn. Even if passion does not lead to a material pay out it is still guaranteed to keep you sane. So that's the difference YOU can make towards the quality of your art (not your technical skills). The passionate plumber is the better plumber. Of course it is not easy to stay this course, but i do believe it is worth it. I appreciate you read this. Maybe i fail for you life-wise with this attitude, music is such a personal and taste-bound issue, but: Come join me at Donaufestival.at on May 2nd, midnight at Halle 2. I'll be playing a Repeater and still a Lexicon Jamman as a guest for Vedette's world live premiere (myspace.com/vedettemusic). = end of ad = Salud from Berlin, jrp On 16.04.2008, at 10:16, Loopers-Delight-d-request@loopers- delight.com wrote: > Why SHOULDN'T musicians be paid? with love from New Weird Berlin ,-) --- jayrope http://kliklak.net http://aircushionfinish.kliklak.net http://touchdonttouch.com http://jayropinsky.kliklak.net == wuh oh! == http://txp.kliklak.net/kliklak/kliklakofonie