TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

A couple of questions for David, and please feel free to answer in very general terms (I'm not interested in your bank balance).

The insert notes on "Recognised" indicate that you, and by implication an awful lot of folk musicians are not exactly high earners, and given the low price of folk gigs, small audiences and niche market for the CDs, I can well believe this.

So could I ask:

1) How do folk musicians make enough money to survive, and in many cases support a family.

2) How much money does a non-aristocracy folk musician, e.g. Bob Fox, Boden and Spiers, etc make from a typical gig.

I fully expect my keyboard to be soaked with tears after reading your answer  :'(

Many thanks

Keith

One of Jay Turner's jokes is:

Definition of an Optimist: A folk singer with a mortgage.

Nope, you're right, I should leave now.

Cheers

Nick

I think the majority is probably through merchandise and CD sales.....

Hi Keith,

Good question - while I won't be giving away my accounts I can tell you that for the vast majority of folk musicians plying the trade, the normal gig is a folk club.  Folk clubs can have a capacity as low as 50 and with price on the door varying from £2 to £8 - well, you can do the maths!  If an artist comes away with £80 after agents fees and petrol, they might consider themselves lucky.  Obviously there are good days too - arts centres and festivals can give you a lot more.

As for merchandising - you're lucky to sell 8 CDs per folk club gig, again you can do the maths.  Royalties are minimal for non-mainstream folk acts.  It certainly isn't the main part of our income.

That being said.  Money isn't really the point of being a musician.  If you work hard and have reasonable business sense you can just about get by.  But if you love music - it means you can do it all the time!  If I had a proper job :-) I would spend all my money on music in my spare time anyway and probably be a lot less happy.

Obviously there are some exceptions who make a lot of money - but they are exceptions, not the rule.

Cheers

John Spiers

PS - the only solution is for you lot to come to all of our gigs and buy 10 CDs each :-)

You know what you guys could do with John?

A slot at Cropredy 05.

Actually, make that two slots. Bring Benji, Paul S, etc along for the other and play the big band there too.

Cheers

Nick

if youve been reading this board then i guess you know that the consensus of opinion is that bellowhead are one of the most requested acts for next year,assuming it happens

Hi John, and welcome.

I imagine your reply covers about 99.9% of working musicians. As you say, though, if you want to do something enough you get round it. However, hopefully as you get better known you can expect a better deal.

I am afraid that you will find a lot of the board already have one copy of your CDs. Not sure what they would do with the other nine (though C*****mas is coming). There is also a fair few who attend your gigs. What we need is more of them. I know a lot were bitterly disappointed that you did not get to Cropredy this year.

Anyway, as I say, nice to see you in here. If you want to find out how to waste a lifetime please come and join us in the Corporation Arms.

Sandra

There is actually a serious problem with the cost of CD's.
They do cost a lot of money to record. While they sold at £14 each, even a folk artist stood a chance of showing a profit. Now people expect under £10, so that squeezes folk musicians even more.

Yes, quite often, if you go down to Shelter, you’ll find a few musicians (the ones without girlfriends) queueing in the rain.

I was writing a song in my head as I was walking down the street yesterday. I had a couple of lines, I was feeling quite proud of them, quite good, and then I saw a cigarette butt lying in the gutter and the words went. It happens from time to time.

But, so long as you’ve got a pair of half-decent fingerless gloves on your hands to keep you warm and some pain-killing gel for your gums, life isn’t too bad.

 I’ve got to say, when I get some songs together, usually written on the back of fag packets and inland revenue envelopes that once contained letters wishing me luck, I do get to stay in a nice room and a warm studio courtesy of Colin. They’re the good times.

As for CDs, I’m glad that somebody buys them because it means that Colin will get back some of the money he’s shelled out to create them. That’s a good thing too.

Anyway, must go. Expensive today for a 'folk singer'. It always is when it’s raining because I have to buy a newspaper to keep the rain off my head. (Oh, and by the way, let Colin know if you’ve got any spare cardboard boxes could you?)

Cheers,

David

Hi David and other impoverished folk singers everywhere  :)

I have an idea that just might make a, small but perceivable, difference to your fortune (or lack thereof) I admit it is quite radical, and possibly frightening  :o

(deep breath)    How about gigging in Plymouth?   I realise that not many of you have heard of this place (it comes between Exeter and Cornwall) it being a small hamlet in the wilds of Devon and not a large city at all, at all  :-\
The folk market here is quite untapped..........a virtually folk free zone in fact (did someone offend a folk singer once long ago :()

I'll give you a while to recover from the shock of the suggestion  :o :o (how many years would you like?  :'()

Just a thought, to aid folkies in distress  ;) ;) ;) ;)
Mic- with tongue firmly in cheek ::) ::)

I dunno how you make ends meet as a  singer, folk or otherwise, I guess you need to have other strings to your bow ( oh ha ha! clunk)
Standing outside cake shops, looking really pathetic in the pouring rain with water gently falling off your autoharp onto your bare cold blue feet used to work a treat for me in my youth

I made £1.29p in the last 6 months from Trader Horne sales. Got another £3.22 to go before they send me a cheque!

It's probably a good thing I didn't rely on it

Plynouth used to have really good venues years ago Wasn't Vandike's Club there? Played there several times in several incarnations (in the 70's, mind). I'm surprised theres nothing now

Jude

Oh Yes Jude, Vandykes was certainly here  :)
I remember my friend and I standing across the road listening to the music (ahh happy days  8))
unfortunately, by the time we had enough years on the clock it was gone  :'(  He used to drive around in a purple, flower painted hearst, which, to us, was "outa sight man"  ;D ;D ;D
in Plymouth now though if you don't like garage, hip-hop, or other similar music (?  >:() youy've had it mate  :'(
Hey ho, onward and upward, as I've mentioned (the odd hudred times  :-[) before, I am going to move to somewhere more cultured, come hell or high water  ;) ;) ;) (BD please note)

Mic- moving to cultured pastures new (when I actually have some dosh that is  ::) )

Thanks John, David and Jude for your replies (you are all aristocracy to me)

There are indeed tears in my eyes, especially for David "Aqualung" Hughes   :'( ;D

I hope my occasional purchases make a difference.

Best wishes

Keith

I always make the effort to buy folk CDs directly from the artists whenever possible, either through their website or when I'm at a gig.  It may cost more but as it says on the Spiers/Boden website - "We appreciate that from time to time we may be undercut by the larger online CD shops - however it’s only a couple of quid and you’ll sleep soundly knowing that you’ve kept a couple of poor musicians in beer for another jam session!"

'Nuff said.  ;)
Dunc

Given the cost of booking some artists, I think they limit their income a little. I understand why they'd go for guaranteed amounts rather than a percentage, but to share the risk with the booker might encourage bookings.

For instance, Wendy and I are considering booking Fairport for our 100th birthday party in June 2006, but found out how much they charge and are currently doing many sums to work out if Camberley Arts Center and we can afford it between us.

Still, I respect the desire to have a predictable income - it's a difficult equation.

Do you think they charge too much, Andy?

Not at all. The way the current system works is that the booker shoulders the risks and I guess that's  the way it's always been. All I'm saying is that if the artist(s) take a percentage, then they can in fact do better if the crowd is good. On the other hand a promoter doesn't get wiped out by one ill-attended gig.

Shared risk - shared profit, as they used to say in a merchant bank I worked at.

Surely a touring artist can't be held responsible for poor publicity/presentation at a less than excellent promoter's gig though? Just a thought. The promoter's gotta put some work in...the artist already has after all.

Fair enough. In the world of, shall we say more popular artists, the publicity costs are met by the band(s)/record label(s).

But I wasn't proposing that FC do such a thing. I was just observing that the (entirely fair) cost of booking them may be difficult to recoup at a small(er) venue.

I am not complaining. Just making observations.

Nowt wrong with complaining.  8)

There is a venue near us (The High Barn) that has put on the lovely Sam Brown three times, at £22 per head. Seems steep, but they sold out every show - (200 people).

On the other hand I've been to a local folk club to watch Mike Silver and been in an assembled throng of about 15. Great night but someone lost out somewhere, sadly. I have to say Mike probably did OK on CD sales. I guess this helps people of his ilk, but I bet it's not as nice as a guarantee! The gig was not well advertised...well not at all really.

It's a tricky one which I'm all too familiar with, having been both booker and bookee in my time.

The mathematics mean that a venue that small (200) wouldn't be economic for FC or the booker.

For the full band, you'd need a 400 seater (full!) to break even on a reasonably priced ticket....

But, I belive FC acoustic can be economic in a 200 seater, if they're booked while on tour & not a one-off gig. Trouble is, they don't tour a lot after the end of May for obvious reasons.

I agree that, as long as any guarantee is reasonable for the size of venue, the artist can quite often come off better on a percentage deal rather than a guarantee, especially if the band are confident of their pulling power, and ability of tthe booker in publicity.

Jonny Jonah Jones was superb at structuring percentage deals as he had worked out that he could make more money out of bookers if they weren't busted by a ridiculously large guarantee that was never going to be made!

There are acts around that will always work on a percentage basis - Mundy-Turner, I believe, and Show of Hands both do, for example.

How much does one pay to NOT get the kookaburra? :)

I think they know that they've done the kookaburra to death.....not heard it in the last couple of gigs that I've witnessed. Otherwise, just a friendly request! ;)

Bit late in the day on this thread, but one potential avenue for income that a lot of folk musicians miss out on is TV broadcast use, especially on things like promos (trailers).

Most TV promo directors (and I am one such) get pretty much total freedom to choose the music they use on their work. The big caveat is that, for commercial TV at least, the tracks need to have been registered through MCPS and PPL - if they're not, we can't use them without approaching the publisher and record company directly and negotiating a special rate, and we almost never do that because it's expensive.

Pretty much 90% of all commercial music (i.e. stuff you can buy in shops, as opposed to production music, which is only available to the TV, radio and film industries) is covered under the blanket agreements that broadcasters have with MCPS and PPL... but a lot of stuff on small labels, or which has been put out privately by artists, isn't. This wipes out a great many folk artists.

FC is a good example of this; all their Island stuff is covered under the MCPS and PPL blankets, so that's fine to use, but virtually everything released on the Woodworm label isn't. And here's where it gets a bit daft : I can't use the original Woodworm releases of, say, Glady's Leap or Expletive Delighted, because when you look them up on the MCPS computer system it reports that they're not part of the blanket... but I *can* use the exact same tracks taken from the Folkprint re-releases, because Folkprint *is* part of the MCPS/PPL blanket.

Whether that means that Folkprint took a cut from the mechanical royalties that ITV paid for my use of Portmeirion and Bankruptured in the last couple of years, I don't know... personally I'd have preferred to have been able to use the Woodworm originals and be sure that all the money was getting back to FC, but since Woodworm wasn't part of the blanket agreement, I couldn't.

So I'd urge any folk musicians to try and ensure that their record label is fully signed up to the MCPS/PPL blanket agreements for TV broadcast use! It won't mean that suddenly everyone will start using their music on promos, but it will at least offer the possibility that their music *might* be used (and hence earn them a bit of money), which has to be better than knowing that their music *can't* be used.

Thankyou Gareth. That's really useful stuff to know. Although I must say trying to find one's way through the MCPS/PPL maze can be a nightmare, but hopefully my publisher and record company have done all that.

The publisher (RealWorld) is extremely good at explaining stuff to me in words of one syllable....or less  ???

Jude

How do they make gigs like the Bluebell railway w/e pay? We paid £16each (I believe) for a day ticket which included unlimited rail travel, the back-ups and FC. I'm sure the marquee couldn't have held more than 250.