Pay-to-play (was; my response)

[TERROR FIRMA SKY]

--- Jeremy David <epistemology at gmail.com> wrote:

> I wouldn't call this pay-to-play, but I would call it
> work-to-play,
> which is a similar principle, since it's the basic idea that you
> have
> to do something other than actually make music in order to play a
> show
> while someone else gets all the profit.
> 
> I have occasionally gotten tickets for friends for shows, but if a
> promoter asked me to sell tickets for him, I'd probably just
> laugh. It
> would be totally unprofessional. If a promoter isn't going to take
> responsibility to *promote* when why would a musician need him at
> all?

You know in a perfect world musicians wouldn't have to worry about
promoting themselves. They could just sit back and create and people
would buy the cd's when they came out and go to the shows when they
happened. Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world and whether
the promoter you're working with is good or not doesn't mean you
shouldn't still be making the effort to get the word out about your
shows. 

Until you reach a certain level of success there's something called
"paying your dues" which means you get out there and flier and sell
tickets and do what ever else it takes to let people know what's
happening. Even if you have a really great promoter who has spread
the word like wild fire, there's always a chance you may be able to
reach people they havn't. If you're not willing to do this then you
probably don't have the drive it takes to be successful in the first
place. It's a lot of hard work and takes up a lot of time that could
be used for writting or practicing, but that's just the nature of
how things are.

"I just wanted to kick it . . . one time . . . signed, a ghost"

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