Musician Living Ain't Easy
Paying rent on musicians' wages is getting harder and harder; it was already hard—a silver-lining.
It’s expensive to live anywhere. The average rent of a sub-1000 square foot apartment in Davis, California, is $2,623.00[1]. A minimum wage job in California pays $2,686.67 monthly or $32,240 per year[2].
The average sub-1000 square foot apartment in Austin, Texas, is $1,806[3] per month. A minimum wage job in Texas pays $1,256.67 monthly or $15,080.00 per year[4].
If you are not a math expert, a minimum wage worker in Davis, California, has 63 dollars of disposable income to eat and pay utilities after paying rent. Worse still, workers making minimum wage in Austin, TX can not pay rent. Period.
Very few musicians make a minimum wage from music.
While anecdotal, in my experience, most “good paying” gigs for a musician cutting their teeth trying to start a career pay about $100-300, and you usually do not get more than 4 of these a month. This adds up to $400 to $1200. If you are in a band of 4, you can divide that four ways (i.e., $100 to $300 per person per month) even if you are a band that heads out on tour. Most of the gigs will likely fall on off nights where you are either playing to the bartender and sound person or a few regulars who happen to be there. You may not be making even gas money those nights. I have had those nights. I am sure every musician reading this has had those nights.
Through these numbers, I started to think about how a grant supporting a musician could be an injection that could give them some life security to get to that next stage in their career.
Consider the minimum wage in either California or Texas. If a musician were to receive a $10,000 grant, it would be just under 1/3 of what they could make in an entire year as a minimum wage worker in California and 45% of what they would receive doing the same job in Texas. Relatively, this is a HUGE amount of money. It is a game changer amount of money.
The Davis Independent Music Initiative (“DIMI”), the organization I started to help fund musicians, has given such grants now several times. I believe this program could be replicated by cities around the country.
About two months ago—September of 2023—I received a call from Nat Lefkoff, the most recent DIMI grant recipient (he’s rad; you should check his stuff out). He called me from the road. He was halfway through a four-month house show tour that he had self-booked. He told me that he had already made tens of thousands of dollars—after costs—and still had halfway to go on the tour.
He further told me that he intended to leave Davis before applying for the grant he received from DIMI; he could not afford to live there. However, the $10,000 that DIMI gave him allowed him the financial freedom to find an apartment he could afford and book the tour he was on. He told me that the support he felt from the community and his newfound financial freedom had convinced him to stay in Davis. He had no intention of leaving town and had more confidence in his ability to keep going with his music.
Here is a video shot during the tour he called me from:
Nat’s story gave me goosebumps. It was precisely why I started DIMI. The City of Davis believed in my vision, backing it with annual grants from the Arts and Cultural Affairs Fund. This investment of financial support led to a 3 or 4 x increase in Nat’s income, all because he had a little extra cushion and security to plan. This is life changing. Plus, the city gets to keep an absolute gem locally. Everyone in town will see and hear Nat’s music for years to come.
This story further demonstrates there are alternatives to playing bars and clubs and that house shows are a viable way for musicians to generate revenue.
I intend to write extensively in support of house shows in the future. One app that I am particularly excited about is called SonicMixer.Live. It is like the Airbnb for house shows, and I think it can do for others what House Shows have done for Nat: help artist on their journey to doing their art full time.
Here is a video of me chatting about Sonic Mixer. I will write more about it in future posts.
I would love to amplify the conversation about the topics of this post and that of Sonic Mixer (i.e. house shows); feel free to reach out to me directly or use the comment section. I will happily come play a show in your living room—provided I can also give a lecture on the merits of house shows to your friends! If time, economics, and/or geography prevents me, I will find a rad musician that can—maybe even Nat.
Here are some of Nat’s links. Check his stuff out:
[1] https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/davis/
[2] https://goodcalculators.com/us-minimum-wage-calculator/california/
[3] https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/tx/austin/
[4] https://goodcalculators.com/us-minimum-wage-calculator/texas/
Fighting the good fight!