Back in March, I wrote a post about my experience with the business of live music in Seattle, outlining the frustrations many musicians deal with when working with local venues, the terms I think are fair when performing, and the clubs I support and avoid based on the relative fairness of their relationship with musicians. My goal was to let the live music audience in on the actual business of live music and urge them to support venues that give musicians a fair shake. My personal list was met with lots of feedback from other players, venue owners and staff, and people who go out to see music, many of whom agreed generally but had different experiences with the venues I listed.
With that in mind, I distributed a survey to Seattle’s working musicians asking them to list the clubs that do the best and worst job of compensating bands fairly and working with them to put on successful shows. The goal was to get beyond anecdotes and personal opinions to really uncover which venues are musician-friendly and which ones aren’t. The survey was shared on social media and emailed between musicians for about 6 weeks, resulting in 128 responses from what I feel is a group of players that represents accurately the average working musician. Here are the results of that survey:
Question: In your experience, which venue or venues do the BEST/WORST job of working with musicians to put on successful shows and compensate musicians fairly? (See the full survey here) Continue reading Seattle’s Musicians Rate Seattle’s Venues
Disclaimer: This is not about guilting musicians for playing at clubs with bad deals or badmouthing venues for setting what are, in my opinion, ridiculous terms. This is about informing the live music audience of the realities behind putting on these shows and what I see as an unsustainable situation, and trying to move past the usual finger-pointing and complaining so we can have a constructive, open discussion about what is fair and why.