The Value of Free in Music

What's up gigging pros. It's Jared. And today I wanted to talk about the concept of free things, and why musicians valuing free things might actually be harming their music careers, and live music in general. But before we dive into that, I want to let you know about my free thing. It is the Gigging Secrets book, I am giving you all of my secrets. 23 of them to be exact with some more gold nuggets hidden inside, giving that to you for free. You just pay shipping. It's at the Gigging Secrets, book notes, GiggingSecrets.com. And it's free, but you're gonna pay for the shipping. So well, why am I talking about why free is harmful, and then offering a free book. The reason is, because there is strategy behind my free thing. I know that what I'm giving to you for free is so valuable, that you're going to want to continue to dive into my other things. And I do offer some paid things. After you purchase the first thing, including like a course. And then my BookLive Pro oftware, which is amazing. It's ll paid stuff. But I want to ntice you into my world a ittle bit, by sharing you with ou the secrets that I've used o book on my gigs. Now, I guess he reason why I'm bringing this p on today's podcast, is ecause even though I'm giving way a free book, and I'm harging a little bit of hipping, I'm charging 995 hipping. And that actually has gotten a little bit of resistance. questions Why? I thought you said it was free. Why do I have to pay money? And in fact, there was a forum post, in one of the Facebook groups for musicians, someone posted asking a question about advice on how to essentially build up their career as gigging musicians. And they responded, using some of the content from my book, just as a little like, here's the overarching strategy behind it, and why you need to be treating your career more like a business. And if I were to, you know, tell them everything, I would literally be copy pasting the entire book into that Facebook post. So instead of doing that, I just gave them the overall strategy, which is pretty simple, you know, first, you got to position yourself for high paying gigs, stop trying to be everything to everyone, then you have to learn how to sell gigs, meaning as a sales person without the greasiness attached to it, just learn how to serve people with your music. And then the last step is you need to learn how to market your services, so that you have opportunities to sell to people. And most musicians, you know, they don't really know those steps. And it's complicated to explain. There's a lot of tactics behind it, the how tos. And that's all in the book. But I couldn't give the whole strategy. Like I said, it would be an entire wall of text. And so I gave a hint at it. And then I said, Well, if you want to dive into it, here's my free book, you just pay shipping. And I got a snarky response, saying, like, I was looking for free things I didn't want to pay. And to me, it's like, why do we as musicians value free so much? Obviously, I understand like musicians, we are not the most financially accomplished in the world, we're not making millions of dollars, like corporate CEOs and that kind of thing. But on the flip side, if we don't value things, and we don't pay money for certain things, what does that mean? We do value like, if we don't value valuable services with and spend money on them? How could we possibly expect people to spend money on us. In fact, I would venture to say that that person who is posting on Facebook, saying I wanted free things only. I would venture to say that when they want to book gigs, and they since they haven't paid for a strategy or they don't value it, then the gigs that they do book, if they book any at all, are probably going to be unpaid or paid very little, because they're not valuing their time to get a strategy that would shortcut their success. So if they're not valuing their time, that way, they're probably not valuing their, their worth as a musician and as a performer. And so if you don't value yourself and your own time, and pay money to shortcut your success and save time, then that means you're not going to charge for for your services. You're not going to charge what you're worth. And it's also going to come across in the way that you talk about yourself, the gigs that you accept, and the way that you I don't know, display your, your stuff online, on your website and your social media profiles. And I know music is one of those weird things where we love what we do so much, which means it's very easy for us to be manipulated into devaluing our time. It's like this constant uphill battle that we're always fighting, trying to shove off those who say, play for exposure. Or, you know, if even if you think about, you know, when bands are looking for substitute players, or if musical theater directors are asking for players for their pit, how often have you received a message from those people asking you to play with the date, the time and the venue, but leaving off the most important thing you need to know to make a decision, which is the pay. So even musicians don't value each other's time, enough to the point where they will be honest and upfront about how much you're getting paid. And to me, that's just crazy. Like, I've been on the receiving end, even just yesterday, I received an email from the personnel manager of a regional Symphony Orchestra here in Wisconsin, not going to say exactly which, but they're looking for a viola sub to fill in at their end of month concert. And it had the same thing, the date, the time, the venue, and it had the repertoire. It did not have the pay is is this a free thing? What am I like, Am I getting paid, I literally don't have enough information to make that decision. And it was really frustrating because I know this person Personally, I played with them in multiple orchestras. And I guess they don't value my time enough to tell me the pay. And I didn't respond. I have plenty of gigs. I actually have several gigs booked that weekend. Anyway, so I don't need to respond. I'm not trying to be an orchestral player. So I guess this has been a rant. And I apologize if you don't like rants, but I'm not sorry. Because this is an important conversation that we all need to have. Because if we're not willing to invest in ourselves, and if we're not willing to truly value, the services that we as musicians provide, then music is going to die. because nobody's going to invest money in it. It's gonna just go back to being a hobby for many people. bars and clubs and even regional symphonies, will continue to ask their musicians to play for exposure, and a couple of beers. And unfortunately, that's where the ability to master your craft disappears. Because if we're not getting paid what we're worth, we have to go get jobs doing other things. And we can't focus our time and effort on being better musicians. And so that's part of why I'm so passionate about Gigging secrets and teaching you the gigging pros out there who are listening to this and are passionate about making a living through performing. I'm so passionate about figuring out the strategy behind that which I've done, you know, with Dream City Strings, we do make a living, performing, and also sharing the tactics the step by steps of how to do this, and I tried to do that in the podcast. But of course, each episode has to be limited to a certain time length, which I'm approaching. So I can't share all of the strategies which is why if you want to save yourself some time, then just get the free book, pay a little bit in shipping, invest in yourself and go to GiggingSecrets.com. So that's my rant. And I guess sales pitch. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being a gigging Pro, and valuing your time as a musician, valuing the time and efforts of other musicians who I hope you employ lots of musicians. The whole goal of this is so that you can become band leaders, and book gigs and pass paid gigs, to musicians, not just benefiting yourself, being able to play and make money, but also benefiting other players in your group, and paying them fairly using the gig payout schedule from one of our early episodes, so that they get paid what they're worth, but also there's money left over so that you can invest more in marketing and getting bored gigs. It's kind of how this game is played. So thanks for valuing music and valuing yourself. Get your free copy of Gigging Secrets at GiggingSecrets.com And remember you are just one gig away.