Wow! It's been a long time since I put anything on here. I often doubt that I have anything to say that people will want to read, but recently I've had a couple of conversations with other musicians about pricing. More specifically about the difficulty of answering the question "how much does your band cost?"
I find it almost impossible to answer this question on the spot because of all the variables involved: What is the event? What type of music? How many musicians? How big is the venue? What time of day? How long do you want us to play? How far do we need to travel?..... Given that we can play as a duo up to a six piece band, the answer to these questions could produce a price anywhere from £400 to £2,000 plus. But of course a client can't really use that information usefully. So, I always try to avoid giving prices until I've had a chance to chat to the client about what they want. that way we can avoid all the possible confusion, false expectations and potential disappointment when the actual price turns out to be more than they had expected.
Of course, that doesn't take into account the potential clients who have a somewhat optimistic view of what live music should cost. When I do get the information and give a price to a client there are several possible responses: Sometimes there is a prompt "Great" or "OK", sometimes the client explains that the figure I've given is outside their budget, in which case we can work together to try to come up with something on a slightly smaller scale which will work for them. But, the sound that always makes my heart sink is the long silence that tells me that we are far, far away from the price range the client had in mind. It amazes me that some clients will happily spend thousands on the wedding, but think that five or six experienced professional musicians with a sound engineer and PA will be able to play at their wedding for a few hundred pounds. Often the long silence is followed by noises of disbelief. At this point I often want to suggest a solution which I heard from a musician based in New York, but it applies in the UK too. He responded to a client who wanted his band to play for a very small fee by suggesting that they should call six plumbers and find out what it would cost for them to come out for 5 hours on a Saturday evening, then the band would play for half that figure. I suspect that puts it into perspective a little.
Fortunately, the long silence is a rare occurrence and most clients find we can reach a price which works for their budget. Once all this is done then the fun part can begin: Music and dancing!
