To Play Or Not To
PlayTop 40 Music
Top 40 Music
Are you rich or are you a starving
artist. My guess is normally the latter. If you work as a
musician, sooner or later you will have to do something kind
of humiliating in order to pay the bills. Many musicians
play weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, or graduation and birthday
parties. Others write songs for commercials and soundtracks.
In my case, I pay the bills working in a cover
band.
The Top 40 Music Charts
It is a harder gig than you might
imagine. You really have to stay on top of the tastes of the
bar crowd, and that can be tough. At first, I really did not
know how to stay up to date. I looked at the top 40 music
charts, figuring that that would be the best way to figure
out what was popular and what was not.
As the band leader, I had the
authority to decide which songs we played. The Billboard top
music songs seemed to work pretty well for a while, but the
crowd was not quite with us.
They would nod along to the music, and
we would make decent tips on most nights, but for the most
part no one really listened to what we were doing. The top
40 music songs just were not working. Whatever the reason,
we were not in sync with what this crowd wanted to
hear.
From Top 40 To 70s
For a while, we switched it up. We
disregarded the top 40 music entirely, and focused on
classic rock and oldies, mixing it up with a bit of blues
and R&B.
That seemed to work pretty well for a
while. We would have more folks actively listening to us,
and we seemed to get better tips as well.
The weird thing was that people would
not stick around as long. Mostly, the younger folks would go
somewhere else. It is possible to make a living off of the
tips of the 35+ crowd, but you really don't want to alienate
younger listeners.
Mixing It Up With Top Forty Music -
A Winning Combination
We only hit on the right formula when
we decided to mix things up. We would play top 40 music,
oldies, and a few more obscure numbers for the music snobs
in the crowd.
Somehow, that was the golden formula.
Usually, you can not keep everyone happy, but at this bar we
could. People who liked top 40 music got enough to keep them
around, but we also kept the classics there for people who
favored older tunes.
It was a good bar, so it wasn't that
hard to get everyone to stick around once we figured out the
right mix. So, what's your venue? Do you want to play just
what you like or do you want to get paid? Mixining in top 40
music might just help pay the rent, or at least, help buy
some new guitar strings!
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