Huh. I was just thinking about something similar on the way home from my gig. The event ran from 19:30 to 22:15 (nominally 22:00), and IIRC we're getting something like $80 apiece, which sounds like about $30/hour ... but between getting ready (hey, when non-everyday clothing is explicitly part of the gig, I'm going to count getting-dressed time, whether it's changing into costume on site or digging outgarb at home), travel there (it's a secial trip to a client's location, not a day "in the office"; travel time counts), setup and tuning, playing, packing up again, travel home, and putting my tools away, the portion of my day when I was doing nothing else but work related to this gig was 18:00 to 23:55. Which makes it closer to $13-$14 per hour.
I'm not going to count the "homwork" of arrangng my sheet music into set-list order and copying chords onto index cards for the tunes I didn't already have chord cards for (this gig was mostly not our usual repertoire), though maybe I should. Likewise for solo practice tie ("woodshedding"). Counting time spent specifically on reading and answering email related to this gig might be pushing it. But because this was not our standard repertoire, there's more data ...
It's usually difficult to meaningfully divvy up rehearsal time according to which gig it should count for, but the different music makes it easy to sa which rehearsals were For This Gig. I made it to two rehearsals specifically for tonight, and there was at least one more that I missed. I probably shouldn't count driving to rehearsals, since those count as "in the primary workplace" events even though we usually hold rehearsals in a different band member's house each time (though in terms of how much of My Life I'm spending on this, driving to rehearsals is still time spent, "commuting" isn't usually included in the $/hour math), and I was late to one of 'em, so let's say 3:40 of rehearsal instead of the full four hours. So now we're up to nine and a half hours, at about eight and a half dollars an hour, and only as high as that because I missed rehearsal time that the money would otherwise be divided farther by.
Suddenly, $80 for an evenings playing really doesn't sound like a whole lot of money (and I haven't counted mileage expenses yet). But from the client's point of view, they're only paying for an evening worth of service, with all the rehearsal/prep tie being invisible to them, so $80/musician probably feels like they're paying us handsomely for our music.
This may explain the bumper sticker we've seen that says, "Real musicians have day jobs".
At one point when I was having trouble paying for gasoline (well, more trouble than usual), I added up what it cost me in gasoline alone to get to rehearsals and back, and worked out how any gigs a month we had to average in order for me to break even on fuel costs alone.
How many jewelers and other crafters price their work based on "a reasonable amount" over the cost of their materials, completely forgetting to pay themselves even a low-side-of-reasonable wage for their labour? How many of their customers would flinch if they saw a price tag that really reflected the labour?
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rosecarmine
Furry artists may have it worse than most, but the problem shows up in most of the arts
Date: 2010-01-10 08:52 am (UTC)I'm not going to count the "homwork" of arrangng my sheet music into set-list order and copying chords onto index cards for the tunes I didn't already have chord cards for (this gig was mostly not our usual repertoire), though maybe I should. Likewise for solo practice tie ("woodshedding"). Counting time spent specifically on reading and answering email related to this gig might be pushing it. But because this was not our standard repertoire, there's more data ...
It's usually difficult to meaningfully divvy up rehearsal time according to which gig it should count for, but the different music makes it easy to sa which rehearsals were For This Gig. I made it to two rehearsals specifically for tonight, and there was at least one more that I missed. I probably shouldn't count driving to rehearsals, since those count as "in the primary workplace" events even though we usually hold rehearsals in a different band member's house each time (though in terms of how much of My Life I'm spending on this, driving to rehearsals is still time spent, "commuting" isn't usually included in the $/hour math), and I was late to one of 'em, so let's say 3:40 of rehearsal instead of the full four hours. So now we're up to nine and a half hours, at about eight and a half dollars an hour, and only as high as that because I missed rehearsal time that the money would otherwise be divided farther by.
Suddenly, $80 for an evenings playing really doesn't sound like a whole lot of money (and I haven't counted mileage expenses yet). But from the client's point of view, they're only paying for an evening worth of service, with all the rehearsal/prep tie being invisible to them, so $80/musician probably feels like they're paying us handsomely for our music.
This may explain the bumper sticker we've seen that says, "Real musicians have day jobs".
At one point when I was having trouble paying for gasoline (well, more trouble than usual), I added up what it cost me in gasoline alone to get to rehearsals and back, and worked out how any gigs a month we had to average in order for me to break even on fuel costs alone.
How many jewelers and other crafters price their work based on "a reasonable amount" over the cost of their materials, completely forgetting to pay themselves even a low-side-of-reasonable wage for their labour? How many of their customers would flinch if they saw a price tag that really reflected the labour?