In this episode, Jared explains why pursuing high-end gigs in the events industry is more profitable and fulfilling than playing low-paying bar gigs. He shares insights from his recent networking events, discusses the benefits of private gigs, and reveals strategies for breaking into the corporate and wedding gig markets. Jared also highlights the significance of the Major 6th Award and how musicians can achieve it.

"Our bodies have a limit to what they can do. The more hours you spend doing low-paying gigs, the more wear and tear you put on yourself. High-end gigs allow you to work less, earn more, and have energy left for the things you love."

- BookLive: Everything you need to start marketing and booking your act online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)​
- Your First Gig: Everything you need to book your first high-paying gig.
- Fulltime Music Masterclass: The Secret To an Unlimited Stream of High-Paying Private Event Gigs …Without Spending a Fortune on Online Advertising or Having Any Connections!
- Fulltime Music Academy (Gig Vault): 24,665 High-End Venues + Event Planners: Use this directory to book your highest-paid gig to-date.
- Breaking Into High-end Gigs Masterclass: How I Went From Broke Musician to Thriving By Breaking Into These Largely Unknown High-Paying Gigs

What's up, renegade musicians? It's Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast, where we do things differently than the musicians who are relentlessly pursuing low end, low paying gigs, trying to get millions of fans and streams on Spotify. Because those strategies you got to get lucky for, we pursue strategies that don't require luck.

They just require hard work and persistence. And so I am actually on my way to a networking event in the events industry because remember, we are not members of the music industry. We are members of the events industry because that's where the high end gigs are.

They are usually opportunities created by a corporate event or a wedding. And so I'm on my way to a networking event put on by a networking group that I went and sponsored one of their events last year. It's called venue Hub.

And what they do is they get together with all the different venue owners. I'm not talking like bar and restaurant venues. I'm talking about like wedding venues, ballrooms and hotels where corporate events host their gatherings and so forth.

And so they gather all these venue owners, and then they also gather, you know, other auxiliary event service providers like bakeries and event planners and musicians, and they just put on these monthly events. And that's why I do these things, because you get to rub elbows with the literal people who can recommend you for the high end gigs. And, yeah, I'm actually interested in checking, chatting with one of their sponsors today.

One of their sponsors is an agency, a booking agent here in the Denver area. I think they started out doing dj's, but they also work with musicians, too. It's called th entertainment.

I don't know what it stands for, but I probably should. And the event is at a really cool spot. I think it's on the University of Denver's campus called Tivoli Turnhalle

I'm probably butchering that pronunciation, but Tivoli Turnhalle. So it should be fun. And I wanted to kind of talk about, you know, I was chatting with a musician yesterday on Zoom who does similar things to me in the Madison, Wisconsin area.

So, hey, Wendy, shout out to you. And we were talking about, she had asked me about the awards that I had behind me in my Zoom background. So they've got a bunch of plaques, they're gold record awards, and they are my major 6th awards.

And they're not awards that I've personally have earned. They are awards that musicians that I have helped have earned because they use the BookLive software and the BookLive app. It kind of keeps track of what gigs you've played and how much you've earned through it.

And then once a musician hits the six figure mark, I send them a gold record award and then I make a copy and put it up in my office. And I actually am. I have a little backlog of that.

I've got some awards to send out. We've got some new winners, which is really exciting. But the main, like, thing that we, we only chatted briefly about it, but one thing that came up was like, it's really hard to earn that award if you're just pursuing bar gigs, right? Because typically a bar gig does not pay super well.

They will pay you, what, $100 a man? Which from, you know, I'm a member of a lot of the Facebook groups for musicians and gigs from hell, cover band Central, that kind of thing. And I see posts constantly about, you know, the pay rate at a bar restaurant venue has pretty much been the same since the 1970s, and it is 2024 right now. So over 50 years, it has not adjusted for the cost of inflation.

So it's still about $100 a man. And, you know, if you're doing $100 a man to earn $100,000, you know, let's say you're doing a solo act and you get $100, then how many would that take? That would take 1000 gigs to actually make $100,000, 1000 hours of your time. And that's assuming the gig is 1 hour, which most gigs are not.

Most gigs are, what, like three to 4 hours if you're doing a bar restaurant gig. So let's say that's 3000 hours for $100,000, which to me, that is a lot of time. I don't even know how many years that would be.

I'm in my car driving to the networking event, so I can't really run the calculation right now, but I imagine that, like, without sleeping, that's probably over a year. 365 times 24, actually, that's probably about. Just, just about a year, which I don't know about you, but I need to sleep, I need to eat, I need to have a family life.

I need to pursue hobbies. And so, you know, there's nothing wrong with bar gigs if that's your goal. If the goal is not money, you know, let's say you want, you really just want to want to play and enjoy the experience of playing on its own, which is great.

That's a noble goal. But, you know, I wouldn't kid yourself into thinking like this. The bargain scene is a lucrative scene for you, especially if you don't want to work as many hours, right? And that's another thing, is like, our bodies have a limit to what they can do.

I don't know about you, but I'm not a young spring chicken anymore. I'm not 18, I'm in my mid thirties. And so, you know, I'm noticing that I'm not young anymore, which kind of sucks, but that's kind of how life goes, I guess.

Got to accept it. And the more hours that you spend doing something, the more wear and tear it is on your body. So that's kind of why it's easier to earn that major 6th award if you pursue private events, corporate events and weddings and things like that, you know, because you can do less of them.

The pay rate is typically higher, like multiples higher than what a bar gig is, is. But the problem is that most musicians just don't know how to do that. They don't know how to break into the corporate gig scene or the wedding scene.

And it really is not as difficult as you might think, right? You don't have to be a stellar, top notch musician. You have to be good, for sure, but you don't. Like, I make mistakes in my playing.

I talk about this all the time. Like, when I played a make you feel my love at a wedding recently, the second note I played was wrong, but nobody noticed. Like, you can make these mistakes.

In fact, one of the nice things about private event gigs is that oftentimes you are background music, which means that people are not, you know, putting you under a microscope and picking out every detail about your playing. So you have some creative flexibility. And I actually take advantage of that when I'm at gigs because I'd say I'm probably improvising maybe about 33% of the time.

And being that, like, I'm the background means that I'm less worried about making mistakes, which is kind of interesting because I feel like that's a huge benefit to public gigs, or, like, a huge. That would be such a huge asset if I were to play lots of bar and restaurant gigs, is like, not really caring about making mistakes. It's kind of like, I don't know what's a good analogy for this.

You know, when you do something so much that you no longer have a fear of doing it, it just is routine for you. I think that's probably one of the benefits of being a touring musician. I had a friend who used to tour for Broadway musicals, and he would get so many reps of that show in, you know, probably hundreds of that show in a given year that he said it was so routine, like he had to actually make a conscious effort to not go on autopilot a lot of the time.

And I think that's a good thing. And it also can be a bad thing because if you go on autopilot and you check out, then what more do you have to give to that performance? And I think that's kind of another big benefit of playing private event gigs, is that you don't have to work as hard, you don't have to spend as many hours doing it, which means you actually have more energy in your reserves to give to each performance. So, you know, when I'm improvising that 33% of the time, I'm not exhausted.

My fingers aren't shredded up because I've been playing, you know, five nights a week or more. I have that, like, rested energy, that rested state to do it. So, yeah, I'm throwing a lot of rocks at public gigs here, and nothing wrong with that if you enjoy doing them, but just don't kid yourself that they are a way to make a primary income source.

Like, yeah, they'll throw you a stipend that, I don't know, maybe covers the cost of your gas and a little bit more like the cost of your taco bell on the way home. But, you know, that's not the only thing that you're getting out of it. And it's totally fine if that's like, what you want out of your performances is just a good opportunity to be seen by the public and heard and gather a fan base.

But I think that there's a way to do that and get paid brilliantly as well. So that's it. The big thesis of this is that bar gigs are not the fastest path to earning a major 6th award.

So if you're interested in learning how to earn a major 6th award, well, I suggest signing up for a free trial of the BookLive software. BookLive is the tool that will help you find your next private event gig, because it's got a directory of private event venues and event planners in it, as well as email templates of how to reach out to them. And then it's got a whole bunch of other management features that when you add gigs to it, it starts to track how much money you've earned.

And once that money crosses the six figure mark, then we send you one of those awards. So that's all I got for you guys today. Get your free trial of BookLive at BookLive.com.

And yeah, remember, "Your music will not market itself!". Bye, everybody.