Music and money: an impossible mix
 |
|
Innovative approach … Kate Miller-Heidke crowdsourced funds for her latest album. Picture: Ric Frearson
Source: Supplied
AN Australian band would have to turn over $ 1 million to earn the average wage, according to a candid new documentary The Truth About Money In Music.
Most struggle to juggle a day job with their dream in the wake of declining income from sales of recorded music and would consider working with “brands” to help fund their creative endeavours.
The documentary by respected video director Dan Graetz found most young musicians get a brutal reality check about the lack of fortune offered by a music career.
It debuts today as another aspiring artist, The Voice winner Anja Nissen, begins to experience the reality of life as a musician after the cameras have stopped rolling.
Violent Soho guitarist James Tidswell reveals in the doco that he applied for a job at a fast food outlet on the same day the band scored an ARIA award nomination.
The Brisbane rockers, whose Hungry Ghost album debuted at No. 6 last year, have just completed a sold-out tour of Australia, which should help boost their coffers.
Australian indie rock band Violent Soho … guitarist James Tidswell (second from left) has revealed they need day jobs to keep playing in a band.
Source: Supplied
“We’ve signed record deals, been at 21 on the US charts, nominated for an ARIA, played Lollapalooza and these sorts of things and came home and had to move in with my sister-in-law and I applied for a job at McDonalds, the same day were nominated for an ARIA,” Tidswell said.
“And all my friends and family were saying ‘So when are you going to make it?’
“I always found it such a weird question because we made it the day we got the show at Ric’s in 2007.
“Everything else is cream for us. I am going to work at 6am tomorrow and playing a gig at 11.30pm for $ 100. But we’re stoked.”
The members of Hey Geronimo said their goal is to “break even”.
“The simple maths are if you have an (average) $ 50,000 a year job, for four or five members of the band to earn that, with all the commissions and expenses, your band would have to turn over $ 1 million a year,” singer and guitarist Pete Kilroy said.
“We just want to play awesome shows to a lot of people and not have to pay for it.”
Brisbane band Hey Geronimo … they just want to be able to play gigs without having to pay.
Source: Supplied
Indie outfit Millions claim 80 per cent of any music-generated income comes from shows.
“We don’t see a dollar from CD sales,” bassist Campbell Smith said.
Graetz, who has shot videos for Violent Soho, Ball Park Music and many other indie acts, was approached to make a film for a new initiative called Future Legends, designed to spotlight emerging talent in Australia.
With funding from Jack Daniels, he decided to also explore the new attitudes to bands working with brands to further their careers, a corporate collaboration once regarded by disgusted musicians as “selling out”.
The filmmaker found most artists have changed their tune about taking money from brands and will partner with companies as long as they do not get involved in the creative process.
Tidswell said there “wasn’t much difference between taking money from some brand or from some record label.”
“In some ways it’s better to take the money from the brand because you don’t have to pay it back,” the guitarist said.
Kate Miller-Heidke, who crowd-funded her latest hit record O Vertigo! said brands often funded collaborations between artists that would never happen without their cash.
“In a lot of ways it can be a win-win situation. Everyone has their limits and it has to make sense,” she said.
Rising rapper Remi said brands funding bands was a “means to an end”.
“I’m not going to feel like a sellout until I am not driving my mum’s Yaris,” he said.
Graetz was inspired to get his music mates telling the truth about their finances after having to film so many videos on ridiculously minuscule budgets.
“In creating music videos over the past four years, my team and I have made fireworks, gutted cars, cloned humans and more — usually on a shoestring — to help new talent stand out against cute kittens, dancing babies and big budgets,” he said.
“There’s nothing lucrative about it but it’s fun and it forces you to be creative in every sense of the word.”
Jack Daniels is expected to fund up to 18 projects this year from recording to staging events as part of the Future Legends initiative.
