Why should you hire live musicians?

In playing live music for a living, we often encounter venues that demand that you have a following, an in-built crowd to come and fund the establishment. These venues aren’t seeking bands. Instead, they’re seeking a clientele and wanting bands to provide that for them.

This makes sense when you’re running a big thousand-occupancy music venue with national touring acts coming through several times a week. In the case of venues like that, the music IS the business. Food, drinks, or merchandise are simply an additional revenue source. People come for the music and everything else is secondary.

Other venues like restaurants, bars, and wineries make their primary revenue from the products they’re selling, not from the music itself. The problem is that many of these venues often approach their booking and musical acts as if primary drive of their establishment is music rather than the food or beer.

Often, this outlook works out poorly for the venue and musicians both, and creates a strained working relationship. The problem is that the fundamental function of music in such a venue is being misunderstood. The venue is gauging the value of the musicians they hire not on the merit of the experience they provide for the patrons, but on the potential income that will come with the band.

Every business needs to make money. That’s understandable. Not every aspect of running a business directly translates to an income balance, though. The value in having music at an establishment that isn’t primarily a music venue is that it enhances the atmosphere and quality of the experience for the patrons.

When a restaurant buys a piece of art for their wall, they can rest assured that the art will NEVER be responsible for direct income. If they have a nice fountain in the foyer, that fountain will absolutely NOT have a following that comes out to the restaurant just to see it. A brewery can pay for ten TVs to show ten different version of ESPN simultaneously, but those Sonys won’t have friends and family that come out to buy beer.

That piece of art, that fountain, and those TVs are still invaluable for the business, however. They enhance the pleasure of the guests in a way that is immeasurable, non-quantifiable, and yet immense. Musicians and bands function in this very same way. It may be impossible to look at a spreadsheet and balance the cost of hiring a band versus how much money you made from that band, but that’s never really been the point.

At the end of the day, patrons will remember the experience they had at your establishment. They will remember the way that being in your venue made them feel. Live music can be just as big of a part of that feeling and experience as your primary product. If you make these customers feel good, they’ll come back time and time again and they’ll bring people with them. More than making a sale, you’ll make a community. In the long run, that money you spent on the band won’t amount to much, but the way you made a customer feel? That’s immeasurable.

To the venues who understand this, to the owners and managers who know that the music brings to your patrons, to those choirs that I’ve probably been preaching to for five hundred words:

The Brown Mountain Lightning Bugs thank you, sincerely.