What Are These Mythical Events You Speak Of ?
Everyone is familiar with weddings and we will discuss some of the Dos and DON’Ts of the wedding entertainment industry in another post. Less common is the understanding of Corporate Events. Corporate Events can be any number of things, but most often they consist of a large corporation getting some significant number of its employees (be it 50 or 500) together for some sort of retreat, sales meeting, bonus for a job well done, etc. The Company will often cover the cost of all of the employee’s flight, hotel, food and entertainment. They will also plan out the entire weekend with back-to-back activities, luncheons, dinners and parties.
You can imagine how much money gets spent by corporations to fly, house and feed, hundreds of employees. This is good news because it means the company is probably celebrating a profitable quarter or year and they have cash to spend to congratulate their hard-working employees. But for you and I, it means that they are willing to pay for quality entertainment and won’t be “nickel and diming” their vendors. If we are successful in breaking down how to get these gigs, you too can be one of those vendors!
A good number of the Corporate events that I have played are for a large company’s extensive sales team being rewarded for hitting their sales numbers. They are given a two or three-day trip where the company sets up cocktail parties, lunches, dinners and any number of other activities for the employee’s to participate in throughout the weekend.
Nearly all of these events require some kind of entertainment. Nearly every cocktail hour, lunch, dinner and party will have a solo acoustic guitar player or DJ and for the bigger parties a full band. In fact, they aren’t limited to just music, I once opened up for Saturday Night Live’s Norm McDonald. I played music for an hour and then he did Comedy for about 30 minutes. Then we took a selfie. See? 🙂
What do you think Norm made that night? I won’t venture to guess, but according to BrainChampagne.com, top tier comedians like Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld make upwards of $100,000 for a single show. So, deduce what you will, but there is definitely money to be made in this space!
To dip back into weddings for a minute, I imagine most of us have heard the stories about how much wedding bands can cost. Whether from a cousin trying to hire a hot wedding band for 5 or 6K or from a fellow musician who filled in on guitar for a wedding gig and got paid $900 for the evening. Well, none of these #s are crazy. The Corporate scene sits around the same price point, often times a little bit higher.
So How Much Money Can I Really Make?
Not that it’s ALL about the money, but if you’ve made it this far it is because you are at least partially interested in getting paid! Otherwise we’d all be perfectly content sitting around our living rooms strumming away for our own enjoyment!
I’ll be honest with you, it IS just a tiny bit weird putting into the webiverse what my standard fees are. My ultra paranoid side started to think about competitors underbidding me, or clients being upset with me broadcasting what they are paying for entertainment. But, I have spoken to my most important clients (The first C: Communication!) and they have said they think the information contained here will actually help their events run smoother since other musicians they hire will hopefully read this and be better informed!
And if knowing what the hard numbers are is enough to inspire a few musicians to get out there and start improving their lives by doing what they love, then I am happy to put my irrational fears aside!
My standard rate for corporate events and weddings is $900 for 3 hours with a 3 hour minimum. The 3 hour minimum means that if a client wants me to play for only two hours I will still charge $900. This may seem aggressive, but it is important to remember that a good portion of the cost you are passing on to the client is the travel to and from the gig, and the transport and set up of your equipment. Whether you play for 20 minutes or 5 hours the effort you must put in to be ready to play is the same and it is fair to charge accordingly for this.
I also charge $250/hr for any portion of an hour beyond the 3 hours. It is not uncommon for the client to request 4 hours of performance time.
The service provided for the above pricing is a self-contained set-up in which the client provides a performance area and access to power, and barring any additional requests by the client, I provide everything else needed to make the background music sound great for their event. See the next Chapter where I cover a BASIC SOLO ACOUSTIC EQUIPMENT SET UP, to see my basic set-up.
A friend once asked how it is that I can charge a bar $250 to play for 3 hours but then feel ok turning around and charging $900 for the same amount of time at a wedding. I told him he should go ask the bar how they feel ok paying a musician only $250 for doing the same thing he can get $900 for! But as a small business owner myself I totally get it.
If you have the talent, and you’ve honed your chops, and you’ve spent years practicing, and you’ve invested in the right equipment and you’ve gotten your contracts together and you’ve purchased the Insurance Policy, and you’ve done the legwork to position yourself such that you can get hired for the premier gigs, then you are worth every penny of your corporate rate!
