Original live music ain't paying. We're hoping when we have an album to sell, we will be able to make the record sales pay for the expense of performing live! If recordings don't sell, we'll have to hang it up. There's no money in playing live w/o something to sell, as far as I can tell. Not for an up and coming act, no matter how good.
But, where to sell the records other than at the gig? I'd like to know. I don't care to give the venue a great act for a token fee just so I can have some "distribution". Even if I can make it work for us by vending, we're still rewarding the venue for ripping off the talent.
And the talent is lined up around the block, eager to get ripped off.
And when you see what's out there, it's persistence, sheer sell, and the willingness to do whatever it takes to be gigging, that's out there. That's it. Standards only get in the way. Fitting neatly into a box sells, just enough to keep the carrot in front of the horse. Suckage.
There's plenty of grist for the mill. That's all the mill is interested in. Status quo, status quo.
There ain't a whole lot of incentive to create for-real live and happening original music. I mean really original, not genre cookie-cutter stuff. Plenty, but plenty of that around, and very, very good as far as ultra-competent genre stuff goes. You got to look for it, but it's there.
Really original stuff, I ain't seeing much of.
Van Gogh could be appreciated posthumously. Great live music requires living musicians.
My thought- better do something you can keep doing, and try to live long enough to collect!