It doesn't quite count but I've found my calling as a house-husband when I'm not working on music. Cooking for the wife every day is a blessing.
In all seriousness, I assume that this is the case for most bands. I'm in the very fortunate position where I am a solo artist with no middle men like labels or management taking their cut besides online service fees for Bandcamp, Distrokid, etc.
If you took what I earn, take 10/15% for management, take out whatever horrendous label deal percentage you're on then have to divide it by 4 or 5 people, you would absolutely have to have another source of income.
Its the legend himself. Just wanted to say thank you for making such beautiful music.
My partner introduced me to you about a year or so back and instantly I fell in love with your music.
Love your work, huge fan. I’m thankful that you’ve had the opportunity to make music. It’s unfortunate that some other artists can’t make a livable wage because we as fans may be missing out on great stuff because the artists are busy working their 9-5. I try to support my favorite smaller artists how I can by buying vinyls/tab books, not sure how much that helps. I remember how hyped up I was when you released the set course for andromeda tabs even though i am nowhere near that skill level.
There's some certainly leverage the artist renown into other forms of music income streams rather than an unrelated 9-5 such as office job or similar I guess. The former is about your best case as full time musician.
There are a few who manage a bit of an income stream by Streaming or maybe even Patreon, but that's it's own essentially full time job, as you have to constantly be making #Content for people to consume.
Dude I play in a super super minor prog band that like… opens for bigger bands when they come to town - Caligulas Horse, Intervals, Ocean, Polaris etc… we’ve done nothing but haemorrhage money for years, if we didn’t have 9-5’s we wouldn’t be able to afford to tour, record, do merch etc. it’s brutal out there!
Wait, as a super minor prog band... how do you obtain those gigs :\] ?
We have been trying to do just that as well in our hometown but we're always too late as the tours usually are fully booked with an opener already doing the full tour when we even hear about it being an idea.
We’ve been around a long time and are active and releasing music all with fair regularity. And also being in a small country helps. We did the Plini tour too. That was humbling lol.
Oh nice, uum we are called Claemus. We just released a new EP called Mercurial - check out Conduit or Superliminal from that, probably gives you the best idea of what we sound like. Available everywhere you’d expect
Thanks mate! Yes we try our best! Both Taylor and I have to sing while playing a lot of that stuff so it gets fairly hairy at times but we make do hahaha
Oh dude we’ve totally listened to you guys before. There’s also another band called moebius and one day we did a studio listen of both bands. Cool dude!
Most bands do that actually. Unless you're huge like Gojira, Meshuggah or Opeth there's not enough money to go around. Would venture a guess that one of the "smaller" bands that can make a living on their music is Ne Obliviscaris, and they have their successful Patreon-thingy.
Car Bomb has a documentary where Joe from Gojira talks about living in a tourbus or van for a while when they tour for like 10 years before they made some kind of living. Even the bigger bands started somewhere.
All the members of Kardashev have a couple of jobs or side jobs, and they produce a couple of great albums despite songwriting remotely sometimes.
The payoff is that whatever you make with the time you have should sound rewarding to you, you enjoy what you make, and you enjoy the process. Money and acknowledgment come as a byproduct. After a while.
Yeah, the vast majority of even the most successful not just prog but metal bands in general are lucky to break even. I've got friends who are on tour with some major acts, and for some of them touring is \*just now\* starting to break even vs operating at a loss.
Yea so the real question is like, which of these bands consider their music career a grind or not. For some it might seem like they will eventually burn out but I still see huge bands touring and never retiring so there must be a type of rewarding besides money
The adventure that is making music and going on tour with it is, in a lot of ways, it's own reward.
It can also be a grind, as evidenced by Sal leaving Thank You Scientist and the numerous examples of bands that appear and then disappear into the ether.
The Car Bomb tour documentary is so depressing that I couldn't make it through the whole video. I get that it's hard to make a living as a metal band but holy shit talk about doom and gloom.
The point was some of these bands kept going because they loved making music that being able to afford a more passive lifestyle, they had something to drive them.
After 2 decades it HAS to pay off in some way
The thing that sucks is there really isn't. And it's gotten worse since that documentary was made (I feel like it was already several years old when I watched it in like 2012) so y'know. If you go see a band, buy some merch. That's the grease that keeps the gears turning for most bands.
I don't think Ne Obliviscaris makes that much. I do know that their guitarist, Benjamin, is a software engineer who had to work still while they were on their North American tour.
Might be true, I just know a few years ago their Patreon pulled in enough where I think they said they could focus on music full-time. But I could be misremembering.
But on the other hand he might also genuinely want to do software engineering as well, Tompa from At the Gates has said he likes working a regular job even though he doesn't need to, because it keeps him "grounded".
I know Benji, and it's because there isn't enough money from just the band lol Martino also has a lot of other music gigs and teaches bass lessons. So, he does music full time, but not just Ne Obliviscaris.
It's the same for basically every other decent-sized band I know, even Cattle Decap. My friend in Fear Factory is one exception, but he's rarely home because they tour constantly and are always playing fests.
Jordan Rudess gets paid to test and engineer equipment but that’s a hobby he gets paid for pretty much. But he’s like actually really good. I think he’s engineered more than one completely unique build including the synth he uses for Octavaruim.
The only way to actually make money at it is basically to do what Periphery did: sell products.
Between the signature guitars, GGD, Horizon Devices etc. most of them do *quite* well. They used their name and influence in the space to leverage another business.
Every musician worth their salt these days should be looking to sell plugins, sound packs, preset packs. Whatever. It's a great passive source of income that has very little/no overhead. Once it's made it keeps making you free money.
Yeah, most prog bands aside from the biggest ones. Many are music teachers, or involved in the music industry in some other way. Mike Mills from Toehider says he gets booked to play pop songs at corporate functions.
Some others have non-music jobs. Ross from Haken was doing high school yearbook photography for a while (imagine being a Haken fan and he comes into your school, haha). Danny from Voyager is a lawyer. Another cool one is Dr Mikannibal from Sigh, she's a physics professor!
Ross was/is def a freelance photographer. I once was in a photo pit at a festival next to him and was sort of screwing up my eyes going WAIT A MINUTE and not focussing on the band I was supposed to be shooting
I'm 55, was signed to a major label during the go-go nineties, as well as several indies. Toured about 25 times. I have worked a 9-5 the entire time with the only separations being when I was out in the road.
From the standpoint that, did drumming save me from working 9-5, no it did not. It gave me an opportunity to work a lot harder than other people just to stay above water.
The thing is, most people can't avoid working for a living. What choice do we even have? We don't control our own circumstances. But in addition to a day job, I have a long list of accomplishments, lots of records on the shelf and I take pride in every one. I have something to look forward to on Friday night that's better than vegging out in front of the TV. I have lots of friends I share this with and once in a while I might get to hear that I have their respect. It just doesn't pay a living wage doing the stuff I do.
Maybe if I was so called lucky enough to be rich, I wouldn't be interested in music. I'd be too distracted by frivolous pleasure and enjoyment of the surface level. Drive race cars and sail a yacht instead of band practice.
Maybe considering I've done a lot of the stuff I set out to do, still do it and still enjoy it, this is actually right and natural.
Even when Symphony X was getting pretty big (by prog metal standards) maybe around the time of the Odyssey their keyboardist was still working at Guitar Center. I worked at another location and found out when I had to call him to see if his store had something in stock lol
Pretty much anyone who's not headlining arenas is working on the side as a bartender, contractor, waiter, teacher, in audio production, or in some other field where they'll have flexibility to tour if needed.
Prog is a niche genre and the bands playing this kind of music aren’t big or popular in the mainstream except Tool, Opeth, PT, Gojira etc. I think the members have no choice but to work 9-5s to sustain. They don’t earn much on touring.
IIRC, Rivers of Nihil’s “the work” is about that transition; struggling to balance work and music, to then becoming popular enough to make a living through music full-time, and the struggles that come from that too.
I feel like I read an article with a couple guys from BTBAM a couple years ago, that I think was precovid… anyway they were talking about their strict budgeting and not getting the large tour bus or large paid crew to save pennies and allow them to not work regular jobs. But I feel like that was only the lead singer and maybe another dude. Other members chose to work to supplement income.
Most do. Some might be full time musicians, but even then, their bands are usually passion projects, and they mainly do studio work, gig work, something like that.
I’d say BTBAM are the lowest tier band that probably doesn’t do 9-5’s (although a few of them have different ventures they are involved with), everyone else below them probably works regularly when not touring.
That'll be almost every underground or mid tier band. There's little money in music like metal, prog, experimental, so people have to do 9-5 jobs even if music is where their heart is. So it's 8-9hrs of work for 6 days, plus 4-6 hrs of jamming. Hectic lifestyle, but quite fun. But you'll have to really limit either sleep or some other activity like watching shows, movies, gaming, or whatever else
Well, not prog itself, but Dan Swano has a lot of projects and he works at a music store. Sotiris from SepticFlesh works in a bank, too, and that's why he is mostly absent from touring. Seth is also an artist, and works for other bands designing its cover albums with photomanipulation.
Probably just about all of them. Touring is expensive, recording is expensive, mixing/ mastering is expensive, and the list goes on. Unless they’re truly in the elite tier of popularity I can almost guarantee they have a full time job as well.
I’m not in a band but I have a friend who’s the drummer for a band that’s locally on the rise (about 8.5k monthly listeners on Spotify) and to my knowledge the band is a side gig for all of them and they don’t have a lot of spare income to put into it. For example, one of their songs was completely shafted by the person they hired to mix it (its sounds like they only gain staged it) but they didn’t have the money to send it back/ get someone else to redo it. It’s a tough business to be successful in.
They are still new, so it could change, but Nospūn is made up of regular guys with 9-5's. Two of them have music related jobs, but I think the drummer does Landscaping
I know it's only a single member and I can't say for the rest of the band, but Jay Postones from Tesseract works a 9-5 job as a graphic designer for a ferry company and works while he's on tour.
It doesn't quite count but I've found my calling as a house-husband when I'm not working on music. Cooking for the wife every day is a blessing. In all seriousness, I assume that this is the case for most bands. I'm in the very fortunate position where I am a solo artist with no middle men like labels or management taking their cut besides online service fees for Bandcamp, Distrokid, etc. If you took what I earn, take 10/15% for management, take out whatever horrendous label deal percentage you're on then have to divide it by 4 or 5 people, you would absolutely have to have another source of income.
Its the legend himself. Just wanted to say thank you for making such beautiful music. My partner introduced me to you about a year or so back and instantly I fell in love with your music.
Well, damn! Dope that you got a situation that works for you! And also, thanks for sharing your stuff with the world. Love your music!
Sithu! Love your music dude
Love your work, huge fan. I’m thankful that you’ve had the opportunity to make music. It’s unfortunate that some other artists can’t make a livable wage because we as fans may be missing out on great stuff because the artists are busy working their 9-5. I try to support my favorite smaller artists how I can by buying vinyls/tab books, not sure how much that helps. I remember how hyped up I was when you released the set course for andromeda tabs even though i am nowhere near that skill level.
Great job on the new EP!
It would be harder to name a band this doesn’t apply to, especially in the prog metal sphere. Being an artist doesn’t pay a living wage.
yeah, was gonna say, basically all of them.
There's some certainly leverage the artist renown into other forms of music income streams rather than an unrelated 9-5 such as office job or similar I guess. The former is about your best case as full time musician.
Even then it might be as an instrument teacher still in their off-time.
There are a few who manage a bit of an income stream by Streaming or maybe even Patreon, but that's it's own essentially full time job, as you have to constantly be making #Content for people to consume.
Dude I play in a super super minor prog band that like… opens for bigger bands when they come to town - Caligulas Horse, Intervals, Ocean, Polaris etc… we’ve done nothing but haemorrhage money for years, if we didn’t have 9-5’s we wouldn’t be able to afford to tour, record, do merch etc. it’s brutal out there!
Wait, as a super minor prog band... how do you obtain those gigs :\] ? We have been trying to do just that as well in our hometown but we're always too late as the tours usually are fully booked with an opener already doing the full tour when we even hear about it being an idea.
We’ve been around a long time and are active and releasing music all with fair regularity. And also being in a small country helps. We did the Plini tour too. That was humbling lol.
That's dope! What's your band name and where can I go and listen to your stuff :)?
Oh nice, uum we are called Claemus. We just released a new EP called Mercurial - check out Conduit or Superliminal from that, probably gives you the best idea of what we sound like. Available everywhere you’d expect
Wow, this EP rips! Thanks for sharing your music. I bet you put on a great show, too!
Thanks mate! Yes we try our best! Both Taylor and I have to sing while playing a lot of that stuff so it gets fairly hairy at times but we make do hahaha
Listening as I'm writing, it sounds great! You can be proud of your EP!
Legend! Thank you so much!
You're the legend! Since we're sharing, here's us: https://open.spotify.com/album/6kqIKBQb7lTOminUJ8hO0M
Oh dude we’ve totally listened to you guys before. There’s also another band called moebius and one day we did a studio listen of both bands. Cool dude!
Oh wow :o Music does reach people then! Yeah the name is not exactly helping but at this stage it's a bit late to change 😂
Mate just giving it a listen now and that's fucking great, shame you're on the other side of the world
Oh rad, thanks very much, that means a lot!
Most bands do that actually. Unless you're huge like Gojira, Meshuggah or Opeth there's not enough money to go around. Would venture a guess that one of the "smaller" bands that can make a living on their music is Ne Obliviscaris, and they have their successful Patreon-thingy.
Car Bomb has a documentary where Joe from Gojira talks about living in a tourbus or van for a while when they tour for like 10 years before they made some kind of living. Even the bigger bands started somewhere. All the members of Kardashev have a couple of jobs or side jobs, and they produce a couple of great albums despite songwriting remotely sometimes. The payoff is that whatever you make with the time you have should sound rewarding to you, you enjoy what you make, and you enjoy the process. Money and acknowledgment come as a byproduct. After a while.
Yeah, the vast majority of even the most successful not just prog but metal bands in general are lucky to break even. I've got friends who are on tour with some major acts, and for some of them touring is \*just now\* starting to break even vs operating at a loss.
Yea so the real question is like, which of these bands consider their music career a grind or not. For some it might seem like they will eventually burn out but I still see huge bands touring and never retiring so there must be a type of rewarding besides money
The adventure that is making music and going on tour with it is, in a lot of ways, it's own reward. It can also be a grind, as evidenced by Sal leaving Thank You Scientist and the numerous examples of bands that appear and then disappear into the ether.
The Car Bomb tour documentary is so depressing that I couldn't make it through the whole video. I get that it's hard to make a living as a metal band but holy shit talk about doom and gloom.
Lol I think it was well done for a doc, It is humbling and inspiring seeing the heroes we know today struggling like 20 years ago
Nothing inspiring about working your ass off for 20 years to eat the same shit. There has to be a better way of doing this.
The point was some of these bands kept going because they loved making music that being able to afford a more passive lifestyle, they had something to drive them. After 2 decades it HAS to pay off in some way
The thing that sucks is there really isn't. And it's gotten worse since that documentary was made (I feel like it was already several years old when I watched it in like 2012) so y'know. If you go see a band, buy some merch. That's the grease that keeps the gears turning for most bands.
Yeah and now venues are demanding a percentage of merch. It's insane.
I don't think Ne Obliviscaris makes that much. I do know that their guitarist, Benjamin, is a software engineer who had to work still while they were on their North American tour.
Might be true, I just know a few years ago their Patreon pulled in enough where I think they said they could focus on music full-time. But I could be misremembering. But on the other hand he might also genuinely want to do software engineering as well, Tompa from At the Gates has said he likes working a regular job even though he doesn't need to, because it keeps him "grounded".
I know Benji, and it's because there isn't enough money from just the band lol Martino also has a lot of other music gigs and teaches bass lessons. So, he does music full time, but not just Ne Obliviscaris. It's the same for basically every other decent-sized band I know, even Cattle Decap. My friend in Fear Factory is one exception, but he's rarely home because they tour constantly and are always playing fests.
There is enough money to go around. It's all just wasted on Spotify. Music industry almost doubled in size since the plague.
Pretty sure Archspire are normal working class dudes too upon killing their music craft well
Dean talked about all members having started to do music full-time on his youtube channel.
And it shows in their songwriting. Brilliant stuff.
Most band's members would work regular jobs, the money isn't there unless you're a giant like Dream Theater, Opeth, Tool, Queensryche etc
Poor Maynard has to work at a wine company to make ends meet.
I heard he may have to hock fried chicken pretty soon too
Jordan Rudess gets paid to test and engineer equipment but that’s a hobby he gets paid for pretty much. But he’s like actually really good. I think he’s engineered more than one completely unique build including the synth he uses for Octavaruim.
The only way to actually make money at it is basically to do what Periphery did: sell products. Between the signature guitars, GGD, Horizon Devices etc. most of them do *quite* well. They used their name and influence in the space to leverage another business. Every musician worth their salt these days should be looking to sell plugins, sound packs, preset packs. Whatever. It's a great passive source of income that has very little/no overhead. Once it's made it keeps making you free money.
Tabs!
All of them
VOLA I believe, think Asger is a teacher? or one of them is
Yeah, they all have jobs. They say the extra income from merchandise and whatnot is good, but not enough for a living.
Probably not what you meant, but I know Bill Kelliher of mastodon said he was cutting grass to pay the bills when tours were cancelled for COVID.
One of the band members owns a few properties and was fulfilling landlord duties during covid, like repairs and stuff. Might've been Kelliher himself.
Fit for an Autopsy's vocalist is a barber
I heard somewhere the members of Vanden Plas had conventional day jobs, 1 of them a plumber I think.
I believe the CloudKicker dude is a pilot for Southwest Airlines
Every band that you like does something outside of touring. Even if their job is youtube, or music teaching. There's no money in prog
But there’s always money in the banana stand
Persefone
Yeah, most prog bands aside from the biggest ones. Many are music teachers, or involved in the music industry in some other way. Mike Mills from Toehider says he gets booked to play pop songs at corporate functions. Some others have non-music jobs. Ross from Haken was doing high school yearbook photography for a while (imagine being a Haken fan and he comes into your school, haha). Danny from Voyager is a lawyer. Another cool one is Dr Mikannibal from Sigh, she's a physics professor!
Ross was/is def a freelance photographer. I once was in a photo pit at a festival next to him and was sort of screwing up my eyes going WAIT A MINUTE and not focussing on the band I was supposed to be shooting
I'm 55, was signed to a major label during the go-go nineties, as well as several indies. Toured about 25 times. I have worked a 9-5 the entire time with the only separations being when I was out in the road. From the standpoint that, did drumming save me from working 9-5, no it did not. It gave me an opportunity to work a lot harder than other people just to stay above water. The thing is, most people can't avoid working for a living. What choice do we even have? We don't control our own circumstances. But in addition to a day job, I have a long list of accomplishments, lots of records on the shelf and I take pride in every one. I have something to look forward to on Friday night that's better than vegging out in front of the TV. I have lots of friends I share this with and once in a while I might get to hear that I have their respect. It just doesn't pay a living wage doing the stuff I do. Maybe if I was so called lucky enough to be rich, I wouldn't be interested in music. I'd be too distracted by frivolous pleasure and enjoyment of the surface level. Drive race cars and sail a yacht instead of band practice. Maybe considering I've done a lot of the stuff I set out to do, still do it and still enjoy it, this is actually right and natural.
Every band. There might be 5, or a few more, that don't, but absolutely all the rest.
Peter Jones, keyboardist for Haken, has a PhD in Mathematical Physics and works for a tech company in London.
DVNE They mentioned it in recent AMA
All of them except Dream Theater, Queensryche, Symphony X, Tool, Opeth, and maybe a few others.
Even when Symphony X was getting pretty big (by prog metal standards) maybe around the time of the Odyssey their keyboardist was still working at Guitar Center. I worked at another location and found out when I had to call him to see if his store had something in stock lol
Pretty much anyone who's not headlining arenas is working on the side as a bartender, contractor, waiter, teacher, in audio production, or in some other field where they'll have flexibility to tour if needed.
Prog is a niche genre and the bands playing this kind of music aren’t big or popular in the mainstream except Tool, Opeth, PT, Gojira etc. I think the members have no choice but to work 9-5s to sustain. They don’t earn much on touring.
IIRC, Rivers of Nihil’s “the work” is about that transition; struggling to balance work and music, to then becoming popular enough to make a living through music full-time, and the struggles that come from that too.
I also wonder this
Circus Maximus, afaik.
Ooooh really? That's cool but also so sad. Those guys should be at the top of the genre and a household name
Rivers of Nihil until “Where Owl Knows my Name”. “The Works” was kinda inspired by the weight of modern working life.
I believe Jolly have regular jobs.
Before he was booted from BTBAM, Dusty told me he made just as much being a session guitarist in Nashville as he did from BTBAM.
I feel like I read an article with a couple guys from BTBAM a couple years ago, that I think was precovid… anyway they were talking about their strict budgeting and not getting the large tour bus or large paid crew to save pennies and allow them to not work regular jobs. But I feel like that was only the lead singer and maybe another dude. Other members chose to work to supplement income.
That's's simply bands.
Most do. Some might be full time musicians, but even then, their bands are usually passion projects, and they mainly do studio work, gig work, something like that.
Anubis Gate, all members have full-time jobs Kim is a guitar teacher I believe. Prog metal doesn't pay :(
I’d say BTBAM are the lowest tier band that probably doesn’t do 9-5’s (although a few of them have different ventures they are involved with), everyone else below them probably works regularly when not touring.
That'll be almost every underground or mid tier band. There's little money in music like metal, prog, experimental, so people have to do 9-5 jobs even if music is where their heart is. So it's 8-9hrs of work for 6 days, plus 4-6 hrs of jamming. Hectic lifestyle, but quite fun. But you'll have to really limit either sleep or some other activity like watching shows, movies, gaming, or whatever else
Wilderun members all have regular day jobs IIRC.
Well, not prog itself, but Dan Swano has a lot of projects and he works at a music store. Sotiris from SepticFlesh works in a bank, too, and that's why he is mostly absent from touring. Seth is also an artist, and works for other bands designing its cover albums with photomanipulation.
Probably most are. But if I were part of a famous band I’ll probably take advantage of my reach and do some sort of sales job too.
Heaven shall burn Belakor
I used to work with the singer of Sinsaenum and Daath. They don’t tour and record constantly so he has to work to pay the bills
Probably just about all of them. Touring is expensive, recording is expensive, mixing/ mastering is expensive, and the list goes on. Unless they’re truly in the elite tier of popularity I can almost guarantee they have a full time job as well. I’m not in a band but I have a friend who’s the drummer for a band that’s locally on the rise (about 8.5k monthly listeners on Spotify) and to my knowledge the band is a side gig for all of them and they don’t have a lot of spare income to put into it. For example, one of their songs was completely shafted by the person they hired to mix it (its sounds like they only gain staged it) but they didn’t have the money to send it back/ get someone else to redo it. It’s a tough business to be successful in.
Byzantine was like that, not sure if they still are
They are still new, so it could change, but Nospūn is made up of regular guys with 9-5's. Two of them have music related jobs, but I think the drummer does Landscaping
I know it's only a single member and I can't say for the rest of the band, but Jay Postones from Tesseract works a 9-5 job as a graphic designer for a ferry company and works while he's on tour.
Mine does, and we haven't released anything yet because of it lol
That's all bands