Sa live act na lang ba talaga ang pag-asang kumita? Ano pa ibang strategies?
Thanks!
if you want to make money out of playing live, then you better learn 30-50 popular songs, with a singer who has the ability to not blow out his/her voice.
i am assuming you are in an originals band, just like us... and i don't see anyway an originals band will make money, unless you have a gifted singer who looks right, and can commit (the problem with most good looking and talented singers, is that they can't write songs for sh*t, and they can't commit to anything either, and that is not counting their possible personality defect and issues).
the only way we made money was playing cover songs and looking for a gig... the thing is, our singer cant sing a 3 hour set (i wonder if any singer can do this? theres a reason why show bands have 3-4 singers). so what we did was, convince our friends to book us for parties lol
we were like "cmon! book us! we're good! you wont regret it! well play Karmin and Christina Perri!" and they were like "i dont know... i dont wanna spend." and im like "we have the equipment ready, and you just pay us anything!"
sa sobrang kulit ko, they eventually relented lol
by the end of the night they enjoyed our set of cover songs. and we get paid random amounts lol
our band currently has 6K in the band fund, and that includes the sales from our t-shirts (which we beg and force our friends to buy). our facebook has a measly 392 likes, but we worked hard for it... we went out of our way to get those likes... so it might not be much, but everybody worked hard for it...
so i guess, if you are in it to make money, better go the showband route. but if you are like us, who simply just want to play good gigs, and get a little financial validation for all our hard work ... you can do what i did above.
its not easy though ... you really have to look and beg for gigs. if you just rely on prods and stuff, then dont expect to get financial validation. you have to work your a$$ off and do things you never thought was part of the deal when you want to be in a serious band - a lot of it includes begging.
as for CDs and music ... i really dont think it matters if you are a start up band with less than 1k likes on facebook. perhaps, you could seriously think of selling your music when you reach that many people. hell, i see bands with 1k likes on FB having a hard time selling their music...
dont be discouraged though. it is still fun