{"items": [{"author": "Ralph", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=669986858842", "anchor": "fb-669986858842", "service": "fb", "text": "Thanks. I've wondered.", "timestamp": "1406560335"}, {"author": "Mac", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=669988166222", "anchor": "fb-669988166222", "service": "fb", "text": "Really interesting! On your accommodations: Visiting friends and relatives down south, the Atlanta dance was on my way. I wrote one of the organizers asking for motel/hotel recommendations. She wrote back, \"People in our community don't have to stay in hotels.\" And she put me up.", "timestamp": "1406561173"}, {"author": "Bill", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=669991354832", "anchor": "fb-669991354832", "service": "fb", "text": "Sounds like a good pay out, however there are way more hidden costs to this. How much did you spend to learn to play like you do? How much time [which is money in this case] did you spend on learning to be a musician?...Pretty much, you just have to love doing it an hope you break even for what ever the expenses are at the moment.", "timestamp": "1406563148"}, {"author": "Theresa", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=669992018502", "anchor": "fb-669992018502", "service": "fb", "text": "Your transparency (financially) is so refreshing, Jeff. That your life journey is so deeply invested in music is a very good thing, imho.", "timestamp": "1406563632"}, {"author": "Adam Yie", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/114873051319510815414", "anchor": "gp-1406566173601", "service": "gp", "text": "> accounting is tricky.\n
\n
\nYup.", "timestamp": 1406566173}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=669998211092", "anchor": "fb-669998211092", "service": "fb", "text": "@Bill: Becoming (say) a teacher also has large hidden costs in the form of education. But we wouldn't say \"you just have to love doing it and hope you break even for whatever the expenses are at the moment\" to a prospective teacher, instead we try and figure out whether you can live as a teacher and what the pay looks like. Dance musicianship is much more opaque than teaching, in terms of how you get into it and what you get paid, so it's harder for people to figure out if they can afford to do it, so I share what I can.", "timestamp": "1406568266"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670001903692", "anchor": "fb-670001903692", "service": "fb", "text": "One thing worth considering is that CD sales for a brand-new album vastly outpace those of albums that have been out more than a few months (in my experience and that of a lot of others), which makes the pay-per-night unrepresentative unless you're always either bringing in lots of new fans or selling new albums each time.
In your profit calculations for the album, is that profit reported after paying the costs of making the album, or are you accounting for that differently? I ask because people often assumed that we were making profit as soon as we started selling our album, where in reality the first n albums sold went to reimburse us for the money we spent making the album.", "timestamp": "1406569701"}, {"author": "Sarah", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670004159172", "anchor": "fb-670004159172", "service": "fb", "text": "A couple of other hidden expenses - time spent booking the tour and making arrangements, website and social media management, and driving time. Don't forget purchase, maintenance, and depreciation of instruments and equipment.", "timestamp": "1406570815"}, {"author": "Mac", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670011404652", "anchor": "fb-670011404652", "service": "fb", "text": "For me a very slippery concept, but one that might apply here: sunken costs. Instruments and equipment are capital costs versus operational costs like van rental. Yeah, capital costs need amortizing, but don't really mount up like the marginal cost of gas needed to get to get to the next gig. But this is kinna angels dancing on the head of a pin. Economics is a decision making tool. Would you do another tour? Hell, yeah! Go for it! Unless you have an opportunity to make $50 an hour at something. Then you need to bring in concepts of worth other than merely economic.", "timestamp": "1406574583"}, {"author": "Dave", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670012971512", "anchor": "fb-670012971512", "service": "fb", "text": "Do you have numbers for previous tours without the rental?", "timestamp": "1406575236"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670013859732", "anchor": "fb-670013859732", "service": "fb", "text": "@Dave: \"Do you have numbers for previous tours without the rental?\"
In 2012 we borrowed my parents' car (a corolla) and paid them $200 based on bluebook depreciation. In 2013 we borrowed their car again and paid them $225. In 2014 we paid Hertz $686 [1].
If we had been travelling as 3 people in 2014, like we were in 2012 and 2013, we could have rented a smaller/cheaper car, though. If we had gotten a corolla-sized car again, that would have been about $300 through Hertz, which is actually a bit cheaper per day than my parents car was.
[1] The rented van had unlimited miles, which is good because we probably cost Hertz $430 in mileage-based depreciation alone.", "timestamp": "1406575932"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670013959532", "anchor": "fb-670013959532", "service": "fb", "text": "@Walker: \"Instruments and equipment are capital costs versus operational costs like van rental\"
Useful concept, and good explanation. This is all operational costs, so it doesn't count (among other things) the cost of our instruments or of creating the CDs.", "timestamp": "1406576029"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670014189072", "anchor": "fb-670014189072", "service": "fb", "text": "@Hollis: \"CD sales for a brand-new album vastly outpace those of albums that have been out more than a few months\"
Do you mean with the same crowd or with new crowds? I would think the main question would be \"is this the first time this crowd has had the opportunity to purchase this CD\".
But even then we sold 5 of our first CD at NEFFA in 2013 when it had been out for 4 months and then a year later in 2014 we sold 15 copies. I think most of this is we're better now than we used to be. And I don't think NEFFA is unusual here: it doesn't look to me like sales of our first CD dropped off until we put out our second and people started buying that one instead. (Which I'm fine with: I like both CDs, but other things being equal I'd rather people hear our second one.)
So my prediction is that if next summer we do a tour of the pacific northwest, north carolina, or anywhere else we've not yet had our new CD available, that we'd get sales similar to this trip. Ideally better, because I hope we'll continue to be improving as a band. We did do some amount of trying to call this 2014 tour a \"cd release tour\" but I don't think this actually worked out, and mostly we sold cds to people who like to buy cds when they like the music.
\"is that profit reported after paying the costs of making the album, or are you accounting for that differently?\"
That's ignoring album production expenses. From a perspective of \"should you tour\" I think this is about right, because the people who bought our CD on tour wouldn't have bought the CD had we stayed home. On the other hand, we wouldn't have moved as quickly with the CD if we hadn't had a tour coming up, which cost us some in faster processing for the CD printing and faster shipping (though not that much). Though you could also say it saved us money: without the manufacturing deadline we probably would have gone through more tweaking back-and-forth with our recording engineer, and those are all billable hours.
For us the magic \"n\" for albums is ~485. After this tour, and counting a few sales before the tour, we're a quarter of the way there.", "timestamp": "1406576228"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670014812822", "anchor": "fb-670014812822", "service": "fb", "text": "@Sarah: Time costs are pretty hard to measure or account for. We've played a bit over 100 nights of dancing over the past four years, and each one was a fuzzy mixture of fun, paid work, and learning. Especially learning: a lot of becoming a good contra dance band is learning how to work together to be interesting and creative while playing live, and also learning how to play the dancers. These aren't things we could have done simply practicing on our own, we needed to get out and play dances. So should we count the time playing those dances as an \"expense\" for playing dances now? Maybe! But then it gets hopelessly confusing and hard to reason about.", "timestamp": "1406576547"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670015281882", "anchor": "fb-670015281882", "service": "fb", "text": "@Sarah: \"social media management\" was mostly us posting to fb from phones while we were driving to a dance or at the dance, so I think including it would be double-counting our time. Website stuff is relatively small: no marginal cost for hosting because I already have a server for jefftk.com, $10/year for the domain, some of my time for design (but not much, as you can tell by looking at it), some of my time for keeping the calendar current (but this is pretty quick).
Instruments and equipment are much more substantial. To some extent we would each have these instruments for recreational playing even if we weren't playing gigs and earning money, though I probably wouldn't have upgraded my mandolin ($500 -> $2500) and I don't know if Amy would have bought the same keyboard. Audrey broke two nice E strings on tour ( http://www.jefftk.com/p/whoops ) so perhaps I should count those here too, though this was atypically often.", "timestamp": "1406576894"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670015815812", "anchor": "fb-670015815812", "service": "fb", "text": "@Bill: \"How much did you spend to learn to play like you do? How much time [which is money in this case] did you spend on learning to be a musician?\"
Again, the accounting is very hard. All three of us had music lessons as kids, but I would normally think of it as a recreational expense. Like, you get music lessons for your kids because you think they will enjoy being able to play music with friends when they're older. Same with the time: it's a fun thing to do, and to some extent it displaces other fun-time activities that also cost money like buying video games or going to the movies.
One way to look at this is is to look at how I'd feel about that time and money if I'd never gotten into playing contra dances and instead only played jamming with friends and accompanying informal singing at parties. I'm pretty sure I'd think it was entirely worthwhile. So I probably wouldn't count *any* of this time and money against performing at dances, which seems entirely bonus to me.", "timestamp": "1406577226"}, {"author": "Sarah", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670016624192", "anchor": "fb-670016624192", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm curious, are you looking to see if you can make a living as a touring musician? Expense calculations are different when you are looking to see if business will be profitable (meaning you can make a living wage from it) as opposed to having a hobby that pays for itself.", "timestamp": "1406577799"}, {"author": "Bill", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670017896642", "anchor": "fb-670017896642", "service": "fb", "text": "One of the key lesson I learned at MassArt was that you make a decision to either figure out how to have your art support you or you support your art. Making a CD is a whole lot of fun, as is playing concerts and dances. I think it's just one of the most fun things in the world. So if you do go down that path, the finances are almost pointless.", "timestamp": "1406578981"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670024159092", "anchor": "fb-670024159092", "service": "fb", "text": "@Sarah: \"are you looking to see if you can make a living as a touring musician?\"
I'm not, though I'm hoping sharing our details would be useful for other people trying to figure out if this might some day be practical for them.", "timestamp": "1406582947"}, {"author": "Sarah", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670026349702", "anchor": "fb-670026349702", "service": "fb", "text": "I think that's an important distinction. People who are trying to make their living as touring musicians need to calculate both gig-related and overhead expenses, just like any other business. Bands that are essentially doing this for fun, tend to be more relaxed and take the attitude that they just don't want to go broke playing for contra dances. Your summary is very useful for a \"hobby\" band, but a musician trying to make a living at playing for dances will be calculating additional expenses, including administrative time.", "timestamp": "1406583966"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670027861672", "anchor": "fb-670027861672", "service": "fb", "text": "@Sarah: \"a musician trying to make a living at playing for dances will be calculating additional expenses, including administrative time.\"
I'm not so sure: what I'm showing here is basically cash accounting [1] and it's pretty much the only choice for individuals who aren't accountants.
While you could do something more complex that took into account administrative time, I'm not sure that time is actually additional if (hypothetically) one did this full time. There's enough down time traveling between gigs and waiting around that I think administration fits there.
[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_method_of_accounting", "timestamp": "1406584806"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/669986314932?comment_id=670029782822", "anchor": "fb-670029782822", "service": "fb", "text": "It also depends on whether you count time taken off of work as vacation that you would have taken anyway, or as time you would have been doing something else with financial value (in your case, working or caring for Lily). Not that the only value of any of these activities is financial, but if you're looking at the dollar cost it's something to consider. If you're a teacher, a summertime tour may have a much lower opportunity cost.", "timestamp": "1406585693"}]}