Breaking even in the gig economy

Things change fast in societies dominated by the market economy.  When a place is growing, it grows fast.  When a place is decaying, it decays fast, too.  It’s the same with professions of all sorts.

An average gallon of gas in the US now costs over $5, and the cost of food has risen dramatically as well.  Plane tickets, as well as the fees charged by rental car agencies in much of the world, have doubled or tripled in price.  The cost of housing — whether buying or renting — has risen at a far higher rate than anything.  These are all regular stories in the news.

The impact of these more recent developments on the cost of traveling in particular seem to warrant a little revisit to the topic of the current state of the gig economy, for that classic little subset of the gig economy known as touring performers.  It occurred to me how much things have changed at this point when I realized, without having consciously made any decisions, that my orientation towards booking the next tour had changed dramatically from what it was even just a few years ago.

The new business plan, such as it is, is breaking even.  Given that my situation is very relevant to the situation other artists are in currently, I thought maybe I’d help unpack some of those snippets you might have heard on NPR, such as an interview I heard recently with a member of a band that is thinking about canceling some festival gigs because of the rise in the cost of gasoline.

Some folks are doing just fine, to be sure.  The real estate companies and the banks that own them.  The property management companies and the banks that own them, they’re doing better than ever.  Big Tech is doing very, very well.

Similarly with music acts that are able to scale up, or charge more, or otherwise adapt to the new circumstances.  If an artist is popular enough, their touring operation may be able to triple the ticket price for the show at the 1,500-seat venue that’s going to sell out anyway, for example, in order to deal with the rising expenses.  Artists and audiences may be unhappy with the ticket prices, but not as unhappy as the artists that can’t afford to pack those venues anymore in the new economy, and thus have to stop touring with a band altogether.

And then there’s the more subterranean, or maybe street-level arts and music economy, the ever-elusive Greenwich Village-in-the-60’s kind of scene, the sort that tends to vanish almost as soon as its existence is acknowledged by the corporate establishment, which then systematically destroys it by trying to profit off of it.

Scenes like Greenwich Village in the 1960’s, or Portland, Oregon 15 years ago, can only exist in a place where the cost of living is low.  It’s sad to see the surprise on the faces of people who moved to Portland more recently, who had no idea that so many of the now comparatively sterile streets around the city full of upscale establishments were once lined with funky little cafes, from which acoustic music could be heard, often old-time fiddle music, which was all the rage around here for years.  And when I say acoustic, I mean totally unamplified, in so many cases.  You’ll find very little of this kind of thing in Portland today.

The ongoing gentrification of Portland and so many other cities notwithstanding, if you look for the underbelly of the traveling performer gig economy you’ll find people who are traveling like bees to flowering plants, seeking out those diminishing spaces where there is still a more or less thriving scene involving small independent cafes and other such venues for small acts to perform for small audiences.

When we’re talking about a few dozen people in a space that fits a few dozen people at the maximum, this is a fragile ecosystem, easily destroyed by capitalism.  These spaces really only tend to thrive, or even exist, in areas where those running the venue aren’t having to spend most of their time and effort figuring out how to shell out another trove of monthly earnings to the landlord.  Venues that have to come up with enough money to buy a new car every month have other priorities, and can’t even think about offering their space to host your weekly folk club, because they no longer have that function room upstairs from the cafe anymore anyway.

Counterpunch