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Concerns About Income

“Considering it’s the live music capital of the world, I’m shocked the city doesn’t put more capital into live music.” – John Pointer

“Usually a typical gig for me [earns me] a hundred dollars a night as a drummer. You know, I think the most I’ve ever been paid was like $1,200 for a gig as a drummer, but I’ve also played for nothing as well. Average is about a hundred bucks a night. And from what I hear, that rate has been the same since the 70s. Hasn’t really changed.” – Doug Leveton

“It’s hard to get a raise. It’s possible to make bare-bones income that you can sustain with a lot of hustle, and as long as your cost of living doesn’t increase dramatically you can probably keep getting by. But when I think of friends who make half of what I make, they haven’t had a raise in twenty years. Twenty years ago, you might’ve gotten paid between $100 and $300 for [a] recording. Well, twenty years later, you would get between $100 and $300 for that recording.” – Singer-songwriter

“You can’t even sell CDs at a show. Spotify doesn’t pay. Say a musician or a band puts out some new recordings … What do you do with that material? You put it on Spotify and maybe you get people listening. Maybe it builds your fan base, but you don’t get any money from it. You create physical CDs or LPs or something; those don’t really sell. Do you give them out at gigs or have download cards, what do you do with the product because the trends have shifted so much? It’s a very big question mark. There are certain bands making money doing vinyl because they’ve got a niche, whatever it is, rockabilly or something … but you couldn’t do that. You can’t just make a record and put it out there. And also who would distribute it? So, shifting trends in the music technology are a very [big problem], it’s a wild West out there.” – Paul Klemperer

“The city did come out with recommended pay for musicians and [a set fee they] will pay for city-produced events, which is $200 an hour per musician, that is great. I think that is workable, but [it only applies to] the city gigs. And when you try and you take that same rate to a club or to even a private function that has reached out saying they want to hire you, nine times out of ten, that’s out of their budget. They want $100 a musician, you know, for three to four musicians. And then they’re asking, ‘Hey, can you provide your own PA? Can you run your own sound?’ So now you’re asking the musician to not only be a performer, but also a sound engineer, also a stage hand, carrying all that gear, you’re having to spend more time doing such things.” – Doug Leveton

“When I moved to Austin, I used to play a lot and I mean, I’m not scared to throw out some names. I used to play at the Fairmont. I had a residency there. And you know, they take advantage of musicians. Like, I remember I used to play like four or five hours and they were paying me like $50, $60 an hour. And I feel like that’s not fair, you know, for the amount of work. I really think that talent is worth a lot and, and [venues] don’t see it that way. They just see it as like, ‘Oh, it’s just a person. Anyone could do that job.’ No. I spent six years of my life studying. I’m not gonna play for $50 an hour.” – Eliud Garcia

“When I lived here in the 70s, people paid a $5 cover charge. They still think it should be $5. You know, we have people walking up on Africa Night and they say, ‘$12?’ I’m like, ‘we have free parking. There’s three bands playing tonight with probably a total of 20 people. And we’re just asking you to put in $12 toward the musicians, you know?’. We have a fair number of people [reject] any cover charge, they’ll just leave.” – Eileen Bristol, owner of Sahara Lounge.

“Last summer our organization worked with city council to raise the city standard pay rate for musicians to $200 per musician. So for instance if you and your bandmates were to play a city-sponsored performance, every one of you guys is walking away with at least $200 per. So that’s the standard rate that we push for. But we realize most venues, you know, a lot of venues can’t pay that after expenses. And so it just really varies. I think the bare minimum that we would ever ask any musician to consider playing would be probably $50 an hour, which I think is around the standard union rate, but it should be a lot more than that.” – Pat Buchta of Austin Texas Musicians.

“They have bartenders and employees that they have to take care of, and obviously they need to take care of them because they’re full-time employees, but having a guest come onto your stage, somehow that’s like, ‘Oh, you don’t have to take care of them’ because there’s no policy that’s making sure that they are taking care of those musicians: giving them water, making sure that they’re being paid an appropriate wage. Meanwhile, this whole city is running on live music, which is insane that there’s just like so much demand for music and people enjoy playing it, but it’s being exploited, the enjoyment of playing music.” – Bandleader

“Musicians are…almost sort of conditioned to not negotiate for themselves. And, and that’s a lot of what we’re working on is to try to empower musicians to, to fight their own exploitation and empower them to negotiate for themselves, and to also negotiate collectively where we can…They don’t have to do it alone. There’s people that are in the same situation as them that can help them. It’s an issue for all of us.” – Aaron Lack

Concerns About Austin’s Cost of Living

“You know, the city motto is that Austin is the live music capital of the world and we became this very attractive city to all these tech companies and other corporations that have come into town partly because it’s a great place to live because of our art scene. And I am concerned that, with that influx of wealth and business, if it then becomes too expensive for artists to live here then we could lose the thing that drew all those businesses and economic drivers here in the first place. So, I do think we should continue with investment and ways to make it an affordable city for musicians. And I think that’s going to be multifaceted. It’s going to be, like I said, addressing housing issues, health insurance issues, it may even come to, you know, stipends for certain costs of living.” – Daniel Swayze

“[Cost of living concerns, that’s] what holds back a lot of musicians from really being able to tap into their abilities … Alright, you’re not making enough music [to support yourself]. So that means that you have to go and get a full-time job, which then means that you’re not really able to create to your fullest capability.” – Isaac Peña

“We’re losing our [studio] space at the end of this month. That’s another reason it’s so crazy, is our rent has just gotten completely out of control. So we’ve got to pack up and move it, which is… You know, we’ve been there nine years.” – Matt Teodori

“A big [problem] is probably just rising cost of living in Austin. Most of the musician friends I know, very few of them are full-time players because it’s not [feasible]… There’s a way it can work, but it’s very niche … and it means that the bands you’re playing with are all in an upper tier that just pay more, and so you can do that. Or, people are very much full-time teachers, private lesson teachers, or working at a school, or teaching in a public school.
But otherwise, most musicians I know all have either a full-time day job or multiple part­ time jobs to be able to make ends meet and all that stuff.

The number one thing is just cost of living. Rent is expensive. Obviously healthcare is expensive. Groceries are fucking expensive. Or, you know, a buddy’s car recently broke down and he’s having to buy a car and he’s also selling some equipment to help fund the purchase of a new car. That’s just hard. Everything’s expensive.” – Taylor Turner

“The big issue in Austin, and it’s no secret, and it’s been this way for a long time, is affordability, right? So housing insecurity, sometimes food insecurity, bills, those kinds of things really factor in for a lot of our musicians. And as far as, like, retirement and long­ term sustainability, that doesn’t really exist, you know?” – Pat Buchta of Austin Texas Musicians

Musicians’ Experiences With Healthcare Non-Profits

“70% of our musicians have [day] jobs in addition to being musicians because it is very difficult to make it solely on money for gigs or other ways of earning money through music. We know that it’s a big lift. Joining HAAM means that you get on average anywhere between $8,000-10,000 of healthcare costs offset per year. If your average income is around $20,000, that makes a huge difference. There’s no way that you can live in Austin, make $20,000 a year and pay $10,000 out of your pocket for healthcare. There’s just not enough money in that budget to do that.” – Rachel Blair of HAAM

“I don’t know if you’ve talked to Chaka or Qi Dada from DAWA, Riders Against the Storm, but they were back East and they were looking for places to live. And a friend of theirs was in Austin and said, ‘Hey, you can actually get healthcare through this organization if you’re a performer in Austin’. And that was the decision that sparked them coming out here. That was what sparked them coming out here. And so I think that DAWA now exists, putting actual dollars into musicians’ and performers’ pockets, because HAAM was here for them. It gave them at least a foundation to stand on [so] they’re not having to spend bandwidth worrying about medical expenses, doctor visits, you know, the whole health and wellness that HAAM provides.” – Doug Leveton

“I’m a member of HAAM, which I love. HAAM rules and they help pay for our health insurance, which is great.” – Taylor Turner

“SIMS Foundation and HAAM are totally critical to the Austin community staying afloat, being able to perform, and [to] prioritize playing music. If you’re a musician and you don’t have those two resources, it becomes much easier to decide to sell your soul to a job that you don’t really like and not do your music anymore. And then Austin just becomes another place to live that doesn’t have the creative and lively music that the City is profiting off of during SXSW and for all the different events.” – Bandleader

“[Musicians] are taking care of themselves. You know, they get a bad rap oftentimes about drinking too much or doing too many drugs or whatever. But what I see is 3,000 people a year, we ask them to do some hard things. You know, they sign up for the ACA, they fill out our survey, they go do preventative screenings. None of that stuff is fun. Who wants to get a colonoscopy on a Tuesday? That’s not a fun thing to do, right? But we have these incredible people who are invested in their careers and themselves, in their health.” – Rachel Blair of HAAM

Musicians’ Experiences with City Grant Programs

“Musicians are not grant writers, and the amount of time it takes to fill out a grant is challenging. [I’ve] done one, I was working on a documentary for a blind musician in town. And it took me a month to knock it out, I was spending a lot of time trying to fulfill all the requirements, and I ended up not getting it. So then it just feels like wasted time. I know that that’s what a lot of musicians are feeling. They do figure out how to write a grant, they do get the application in on time. But [often] they don’t receive the funds and now it’s like, ‘well, that was wasted time when I maybe could have been working another job or doing something to continue moving my career forward’. The time commitments, I think, are the biggest [barrier to grant] accessibility.” – Doug Leveton

“The people developing the grants, the people that work right next to me, they have no idea how hard it is to be a musician and to keep the dream alive. […] I applaud the City of Austin for the [grant-in-aid] initiative. It works. But it needs to be administered with better technology that is user-friendly and with a more robust system of community guides. And the community guides need to understand the [options].” – Frederico7

“I was talking to a musician last week who received the $10,000 grant, you know, the Live Music Fund grant. And I asked him about it, ’cause he’s wrapping up recording his debut album and all this stuff. And he said, ‘honestly, I wish I could do it all over again.’ He’s not happy with the results.[…] With these big grants that go out from the [Economic Development Department], there’s not really any kind of support on the back end in terms of how to spend the money. You know, if you get a $10,000 grant in your lap and you’re a brand-new musician, what are the next steps [to take] if you’ve never done it? You don’t really know, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes along the way. And I think that that is an educational component that we want to address with the city.” – Pat Buchta of Austin Texas Musicians

“More systemic support [is needed] … I sometimes wonder if the approach of rewarding individual artists is a little bit short-sighted in comparison to even half of that money being spent in some less direct ways but that would end up benefiting the whole ecosystem.” – Singer-songwriter

“I used to be more in tune with what the Texas Music Office did and I’ve used its directory in the past, years ago. I would call up the old director there and just say like, ‘hey, I have some ideas’ and you could almost call for business advice or managerial advice because they were just so connected to so many people. They would say like, ‘you should talk to so and so’… They’d kind of help you expand your network.” – Singer-songwriter

“The Texas Music Office is great. They’re really knowledgeable and they’ve got a great set of folks who work there who understand…The Texas Music Office does a lot of really wonderful work and they’re instrumental in making sure that the efforts move beyond Austin.” – Bandleader

Concerns About Housing

“I consider myself pretty lucky and fortunate to be honest. I’m a pianist, which is pretty highly employable. Everybody wants their kid to play piano and wants a pianist at their wedding or church event or whatever. And so I think of myself compared to a lot of very talented, skilled colleagues that I know as doing very well. And yet I know that I’m still not only below the median income for the City, but I’m far below being able to afford the median house, you know? So it’s an odd place for me because I feel thankful in light of other people in my career, but even so it’s still kind of barely middle class in some ways, that says something.” – Daniel Swayze

“The only reason we were able to buy a house [is because] the guy said they wanted to sell it to a couple, a young couple that would be able to live in it and not just use it as an investment. And to us, that was worth so much. We still feel super thankful to them. Because if not[…] we would have definitely moved. We had talked about maybe moving to San Antonio; it’s already getting expensive there, but at the time it was still pretty affordable. [But] we fell into this luck with this house and, and we’re like, this is perfect, ’cause we love Austin. we love the city. There are so many things, a lot of opportunities for work. And it all kind of was just like a big blessing, honestly.” – Eliud Garcia

Career Advancement

“You need people that look like you at the very top. Not for some type of a percentage of equity number. No, it’s for some actual physical interaction. When they come to your gig and they feel the bass playing through your bones, when they come to your gig and they see Zoumountchi or Atash or Letti Garza or like many other bands, hundreds of them. Then you are like, wow, I feel it! Why is it that this band doesn’t have a good record? Oh, Zoumountchi’s been playing every Saturday at the Sahara Lounge for eight years. They don’t have a record. What, why, why?” – Frederico7

“I feel like there’s an upper limit on what a band is able to achieve in this town. Just inherent with how saturated the community is with awesome, talented musicians and incredible performers. I feel like once every 5 to 10 years, there’s a band or a soloist or a performer or something that finally hits the very top of not only the local scene, but also hits the top of what’s being played nationally and interested in nationally and internationally and then gets to leave Austin and go perform at other places. And so you know, Gary Clark Jr. is awesome. And at some point, everybody around the whole world was like, ‘Oh, cool. Gary Clark Jr. is dope, number one.’ Now another five or ten years down the line, it’s the Black Pumas, that’s the latest one for me. They’re awesome. And I love all those people in that band and their songs are so incredible. And they deserve all of it. They’re the latest band that’s been able to blow up outside of Austin and like go be other places, and grow their audience, which is awesome. But that happens very rarely with most performers in Austin, just because there’s thousands of projects and there’s thousands of performers and we’re all great and we all love doing what we’re doing and we’re all trying to get to that next level and it’s …it’s almost impossible to do it just because it’s so saturated.

So I would I would say I’m dissatisfied in [that] I’ve been at the same ‘level’, big air quotes, as a performing musician for a long time and I don’t really see [moving] past that level by continuing to do what I was already doing which is hustling a lot. I can see moving past it by playing in bigger projects that are already more established. I can see moving past it in pivoting to more teaching or more session playing, which I’ve been doing. And I can see moving past it by potentially moving to another city where there’s more opportunities or at least more publicly recognized opportunities. And another way is just having a main source of income so that the number of gigs I play doesn’t have to drag me down as much, so that I can prioritize what I’m playing and who I’m playing with.” – Taylor Turner

“I think Austin is a critical part of me getting the work, even when it’s not Austin based work. Something like South by Southwest is really helpful for getting that kind of work… I find that  I get work out of South by regularly making connections. And if that didn’t happen every year, I would have had a much harder time building a career.” – Composer

Parking

“I DJ on Rainey street on Saturday nights. It’s $35 to park my car! But like, I’ve talked to people, ‘Hey, I work down here. Is there a way that I can get out of paying this?’ Because that’s 10% of what I’m getting paid. And it’s like, ‘Sorry, we can’t help you.’ Well I guess I’ll Uber. So Uber back and forth is $30 or $40. You know, I don’t think people understand when we quote them rates how much money we’re spending just to live downtown. It is expensive, bro. I think there should be a cap on parking. There should be a cap on if you get your car towed. It’s like $400 now, because they know you have to get your car back. I think those are [predatory] industries and they should be controlled.” – Just Jim

“Sometimes it’s really complicated to play gigs downtown … it’s hard to find the parking and then you have to park far from the venue and walk with all your stuff to the venue. And security is definitely getting worse in Austin, so now it’s more complicated to just walk around with equipment.” – Bandleader

“I know a lot of homies that have had car problems and…l feel like there should be something set up for artists where you can get picked up by an Uber…Something just for us where we can have access for that. That would take a big load off for people. Especially if artists are not in that space to buy a car right now or can’t afford to really Uber back and forth, depending on where they live.” – Rapper

Suggestions to Increase Musician Income

“Parking vouchers, food vouchers would be huge. And then just a standardized income as a musician, because of the Live Music Capital moniker. If they got rid of that, I wouldn’t be fighting, but because they’ve used and abused that moniker and never had the plan to support the community that creates it — and that’s not just the musicians, but industry workers — they really did a disservice to the community. It’s getting to a point where they might need to rebrand, because it is no longer true. We are losing venues, we are losing the musicians. It’s just a different landscape than when they decided that was going to be the name, and I think it was like the 90s, when the visitor bureau, Visit Austin, decided that was the branding that they were going to roll with. […]

I want to reiterate that it’s not just the musicians [who need help], but it’s also the industry itself. And there’s a lot more people than just the musicians, but usually the musicians are the ones being focused on. [That’s] great as a musician, but as a stage manager, stagehand, sound engineer, someone who has friends that do those gigs that are not musicians, they are just as important to that overall economy. And they’re not being considered in all of this. So we need to look at the big picture of what music is, what culture is, what Austin’s brand is, and support [everyone] financially, put money in pockets. It’s not[going to happen] through a grant. Because not everyone’s a grant writer, has the time and know-how to be able to do all that. If there’s an application you fill out and then it’s checked by someone that you are an artist, musician, industry worker, you’re contributing to the culture, then you are guaranteed X amount of dollars a month, that would be incredible, you know? And as a city that make a huge statement and something that could be modeled in other cities.

It’s a little too late at this point, but something needs to change. And it needs to affect the bottom line of our musicians and industry workers. That’s what the biggest issue is, is money. And if you’re not able to directly put money into musicians’ pockets, to me, you’re not thinking of the right plan. It needs to be just like the emergency fund that we had rollout during COVID. That was directly putting money into people’s pockets. It was a simple application and it helped so many people out. So it can be done. The money is there. It’s just, can we get City Council to commit and then, you know, voters to sign off on it?” – Doug Leveton

“You know, if there was just universal support, financial support from the City for musicians, a $500 stipend a month or something like that, different [criteria that] would qualify you for that stipend. Say, if you’re a HAAM member, the background check’s already there. HAAM already has assured that anyone that’s a HAAM member is a working musician, DJ, or music teacher. You know, so there’s already these institutions in place that can confirm musicianship, [maybe participation in] unions another one. So the idea of universal income especially for musicians would be incredible.” – Doug Leveton

“I was on a SXSW panel with someone who was from Ireland and they were doing the regular assistance for musicians. I think it had just recently passed right when that panel was going on and he was really excited about what that would mean for the longevity of music musicians careers.” – Rachel Blair, HAAM

“HAAM is available for pre-qualifying people for other programs. We spend a ton of time and energy and money on our eligibility process, and it’s a very, very well oiled machine … So, anything that the City would like us to partner on with them, we are all ears and would love to do that.” – Rachel Blair

Alcohol-Free Performance Venues

“I would love to not play music at bars exclusively in places where they sell alcohol … that’s part of why I’m also taking a step back.” – Alex Mendoza

“It’d just be great to have incentives for having quality music in different parts of the City. I mean, places that aren’t necessarily bars. One of the things that a lot of musicians complain about is that as a musician, our job is basically to sell alcohol, you know? Because that’s the bottom line. If they don’t have enough drink sales they’re not going to be able to keep the doors open. It would be great if there’s something we could do to change that equation, to make it more about the culture of listening to music and, you know, pride in music and pride in what the city has to offer in those terms.” – Roberto Riggio

“A big part of what we need to do is start re-signifying our role as musicians for the community … we’re always thinking about playing for adult late-night venues. So many people around the community need live music: senior citizens, patients in medical facilities … and they have no chance to enjoy it. My dream is that every Friday, every school in this country has a musician playing for the kids.” – Bandleader

“I almost wonder what it would be like if the City said, ‘okay, we’re going to create our own venue. And somebody who works for the City is going to program the venue and [it] doesn’t need to make a profit … We just want to have our own representation that’s not profit­ driven.’ You know, it’s a little commie, but if any place can pull it off, I feel like Austin might be able to … the great thing would be is that it’s not for profit … [We would] pay musicians regardless of how many people come and the public will just know that this is a place to come and hear great music, you know, whenever we’re able to [come].” – Isaac Peña

A Centralized Musicians’ Website

“So, yeah, if there was something like that, that the city was connected to, where as an Austin musician you get to have an account on this [site], we’ll call it ‘bandy camp.’ And then you load all your stuff on there. And then maybe it would just facilitate people knowing about you. ‘Oh,you know, the City of Austin really supports their musicians.’ And they link you to this site where all the musicians are listed by style.” – Paul Klemperer

Closer Collaborations with Non-Profits

“I think that [the City should look] at who the players are in town who are doing a good job of serving musicians. Can we bolster them? Non-profits spend so much of their time and energy trying to survive, raising funds to meet payroll, to pay the utilities, to pay for the buildings, to pay staff. If there were regular, sustainable funding sources from the City to support premium [medical] assistance or dental programs, or [health] navigators, or whomever, that would free us up to invest our other philanthropic dollars in other places that are maybe harder to fundraise for, or increase our impact for musicians, or expand our criteria to serving music industry folks at large. So, sound engineers and the list goes on and on. There’s a way that we can do what we do [better]. HAAM is effective. We’re efficient, we’re good at what we do. And we can scale up and we can help a lot more people than we’re helping right now, and we’re available and we’re interested in doing so. That would be a very simple request, just for sustainable funding that we can count on over time so that we can do what we do.” – Rachel Blair of HAAM

“If there’s some way the City of Austin could encourage everybody to prioritize local musicians for entertainment purposes, I think that would be very helpful.” – Taylor Turner

Collaborations with the Film Industry

“One of the things that the State of Texas did that was a bad move was they used to have these incentives for the film industry to do stuff in Texas. And they got rid of that for some reason. I don’t know why, but they got rid of that, so now it has kind of dried up. But I think that we, if we could get our s**t together, Austin could become a good hub for film scoring stuff, you know, but we have to have the right studios. We have to have session musicians, ’cause it’s really expensive to record film session stuff in LA, which is where orchestral film scoring and stuff is. What Austin could do is have its own brand of that, a little distinct, not trying to follow that Hollywood sound but having its own idiosyncratic sound.” – Roberto Riggio

General Suggestions for the City of Austin

“The main thing is to not get so caught up in finding the one right thing. Let’s pilot ideas. Do parking vouchers [for music workers]. Okay, great. Do [musician] tip lines on bills at venues or restaurants. Let’s fund premium [health] assistance. Let’s fund Foundation Communities. Let’s test these things out and see what works. Let’s provide direct assistance to musicians and see how that helps. There’s all sorts of different things that we can do and let’s not let perfect get in the way of good enough.” – Rachel Blair of HAAM

“If we want Austin to be the live music capital of the world, what do we want tourists seeing? Do we want them seeing this race to the bottom where they can show up anywhere they find music, but [perhaps it’s no] good? Or do we want to represent [ourselves] in a way that’s more on brand, you know, trying to say that we care about music.” – Roberto Riggio

Climate Change

“There’s no place for people to go late night anymore [in the summer]. One of the things that’s really changed, that is missing … is that nightlife has been impacted… You’ve got to go out at night to socialize, otherwise you’re just living in your house, like, in a cave for three months. Or you’re … flying out and going somewhere else for a while, if you’re lucky … But it’s been really painful this last few years without there being a strong [summer] nightlife. Like there used to be 24-hour restaurants all over town. And I don’t understand how we have more people here than ever before, but somehow we’re not able to support 24-hour businesses in the city? I can’t figure that out. Why is it like this now?” – Music Event Organizer

Touring

“Budget. That’s the biggest thing. Right now I’m [collaborating with] a non-profit with my homies out in France. And they were just telling us the other day that the funding fell through for them to get our plane tickets to Germany. So we have to figure out how we’re gonna get to Germany with this tour booked. So, just things like that, when you don’t have the budget and then [there’s a financial crisis] really close in time – next month. So you’re like, ‘How am I going to make this happen?”‘ – Rapper

New Models of Collaboration with Music Venues

“You can give an artist a $25,000 grant and it’ll be gone in the blink of an eye … But if you had venues that [had financial guarantees from the City, they] could pay $1,000 a night, just to go in and play. Or $2,000 [a night], that starts changing the equation because now it’s not just a gift from on high. Now it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re going in and we’re actually earning this money. And we can [do it] every day.’ Maybe it’s three months at a time that you’re actually doing that gig and so if you have 16 weeks at a $1,000 guarantee, you’ve got $16,000 out of it. But you’re also building your crowd and you’re in front of people etc.” – John Pointer

Training, Workshops

“Conferences, workshops and things, those help and a lot of it has just been having the community of friends, we’re all throwing stuff against the wall, you know, and telling each other what we think seems to help or not help, what works, what doesn’t work, that kind of thing. Or why isn’t this working anymore? Have you noticed all of your posts are doing this? You know, that kind of thing.” – Singer-songwriter