Our band, as some of you may know, comprises of a group of university students and one sixth form student (though she's six foot, you'd never tell). Not to conform to stereotype of student living, but we're all relatively poor; we live off student loans and shop at Aldi etc. etc. We all love playing in the band, but lately I've come to a bit of a realisation. The trouble is, being in a band is expensive. Obviously there's your initial startup costs of instruments and gear, without which you really wouldn't get far. But, for unsigned artists, this stretches way beyond just decent kit: it costs to pay for petrol to get to gigs and back with 2 cars full of gear; it costs to pay for studio recording sessions and mixing; it costs to get cover art produced if you aren't doing it yourself; it costs to film, edit, and produce a music video; it costs to take press shots and if you aren't a writer, comprise an EPK and press releases for new music; it costs to get your music on Spotify and Apple Music etc. through a distributor; it costs to produce merchandise. It even costs if you want to employ someone to put in the hours and hours of work submitting your song to radio stations, blogs, contacting venues, and managing social media. If you're really putting your all into a release, which most bands try to do, this stuff really adds up.
Now we as a band are incredibly fortunate. Our drummer, Lee, is doing a film production degree, which means we do all of our music video filming and post production ourselves. Lee's sister Rachel (https://www.instagram.com/rachel_shootz/) and George's sister Lucy (https://www.instagram.com/lucysewall_photography/) have taken some beautiful photographs for us that discount the price of hiring a photographer with a camera better than my crappy iPhone. I'm doing an English Literature Degree and George is doing History, meaning we both can write to a decent level, so I'm in charge of social media and radio / blog contacts and George and I both do press releases. George's friend Joe has a sustainable t-shirt company called Meraki Surf Wear (https://www.merakisurfwear.com) who are producing merchandise for us at what is a very reasonable price for a hand-made product. Mine and Ella's friend Georgia (https://www.instagram.com/georgialight.art/) creates our artwork for our single covers at what we feel is drastically under what she should be charging. Even our wonderful London Road Studios don't overcharge us. But even with what is an extensive list of contacts, shortcuts, and freebies, releasing music is still time consuming and costs hundreds per song. And you don't just do this once and it's all over - you need all this new material every time you release music or make an announcement. You need it to be taken seriously by major venues, bands, blogs, radios, and your audience.
Now, this isn't to say that we as a collective don't enjoy releasing the music we do. I love it, the whole process, the level of organisation and effort needed has made me realise that PR is something I would consider doing full time. But what I am saying is that I can understand why so many bands never get off the floor. It could be time, commitment, lack of knowledge about what it takes to get noticed, sheer dumb chance - or it could be money. I love the music world and being a musician, but especially now, it is an elitist industry. Most grassroots bands play gigs to cover their costs of recording, but right now, none of that is possible. We've had an entire summer without venues being open but we don't want the production of music to stop, so everyone has to reach into their pockets to make it happen. I don't really know if this is a problem that could be fixed - aside from perhaps saving the cost of distribution by Spotify allowing unsigned artists to directly upload to their company for a fee, if that's possible - but I do know that it's something that frustrates me. Yes, you could just grab a microphone and record it all into GarageBand, but without quality content you really won't get off the floor (aka noticed, for want of a better term). So the only solution is to save money in any little ways you possibly can, and hope and pray that you have the friends that can help you out in your moment of need - and big love to all of ours, we really couldn't do it without you.