Death from exposure

ByBret Pimentel

Working musicians, especially those trying to launch their careers or take them to the next level, are all too familiar with the idea of playing for “exposure”—in other words, playing gigs for free with the idea that maybe it will somehow lead to paying gigs.

Playing for free is one thing; there’s no reason you can’t do a favor for a friend, or show up at a jam session for fun and/or practice. But it’s more insidious when your unpaid labor is fueling somebody else’s profits. This seems to be a phenomenon that particularly affects creative types: the same people who want your band to play at their event for “exposure” or “experience” are no doubt paying the waitstaff, stage crew, or what-have-you, because people in those jobs simply don’t work for free.

Photo, Mark Robinson
Photo, Mark Robinson

The fallacy here is that the prospective employer is offering you exposure and experience and networking instead of money, as if the alternative were gigs that paid money but didn’t offer those things. That simply isn’t the case: you get all those benefits from paid gigs, too, plus you get to pay your rent that month.

I’m discovering the same issue with this blog. I am always pleased and flattered when someone finds my posts interesting or useful. But recently I heard from a major woodwind business, one you have most certainly heard of if you are a woodwind player. An intern (again: unpaid labor for “experience” [note: I have been informed by the company in question that their interns are paid. hooray!]) contacted me, bubbling over with excitement about the suggestion that the company might like to copy some of my blog posts to their own website and call attention to them in their email newsletter. By way of (non-)compensation, a link would be provided back to my site. “What we are offering is increased traffic to your website,” the intern enthused.

I have been down this road before, and I know that this situation is going to get me a tiny traffic boost the day the newsletter is published, and very little after that. But a copy of my content will live on the company’s website indefinitely, drawing away traffic that otherwise would have been mine, and diluting my online presence.

I suggested a compromise: a summary or quote from one of my posts, with a link for people to finish reading the article at my site. Nope. Apparently the company isn’t really that interested in sending traffic my way—they want to fill their own site with good content to build awareness of and loyalty to their own brand (no surprise there; they are a business). They are surely paying web hosting expenses and a web designer, a marketing team, etc. (with the pitiful exception of the intern). But they want the content for free.

I give my content away, directly to the reader, for free at my own website, but I retain the copyright. If someone wants to read it, they visit my site or retrieve one of my feeds. I make an astonishingly tiny amount of money from minimal advertising, the occasional affiliate product link, and a few donations. But the content remains under my control, in a single canonical copy.

Don’t fall for the flattery. Playing (or writing) “for exposure” means your “employer” is keeping your paycheck for themselves.

Similar Posts

  • What should be on your musician website

    ByBret Pimentel

    It’s cheap and easy to create a website. Any serious freelance musician (or aspiring musician) should have one.

    This should be a website about you, an individual musician. It should be separate from your ensemble’s website or your academic institution’s website. It should exist long-term, and serve as a sort of permanent address for finding you online. If you do most of your online stuff on social media sites or on your organizations’ sites, that’s fine. Your individual website doesn’t have to replace or duplicate any of that. It can simply point people to those resources.

    I won’t go into any technical details here, because there is very extensive information available online about the ways to make websites. Suffice it to say that if you have only enough technical skill to send and receive email and post things on Facebook, there are website services simple enough for you to operate. Or if you want to roll up your sleeves and code every line from scratch, you can learn how to do that too.

    Here’s what you need, content-wise:

    Mandatory items

    • A domain name. Preferably this is something very simple and clear, like your name. Mine is bretpimentel.com. It works well because there aren’t a lot of Bret Pimentels, so web searches for my name usually put my site right at the top of the results.
      • If you have a more common name, you might need to add something meaningful to it. bretpimentelwoodwinds.com might work well, or bretpimentelmusic.com.
      • Pay for a real domain name. It’s not expensive. Something like bretpimentel.freewebsites.com looks unprofessional.
    • At minimum, a simple indication of what it is you do and how to contact you. That’s enough to be your whole website if you like. Here’s an example: “Bret Pimentel is a performer and teacher on the woodwind instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone. Reach him at bret@bretpimentel.com.”
    • Some longevity. Go ahead and prepay the domain name and whatever hosting services you need for a good long time, maybe five or ten years, or set it up to renew automatically.

    Optional items

    • A more detailed biography.
    • A nice picture of you, especially one that helps reinforce what you do (like one where you’re holding your instrument).
    • Links to your social media profiles, YouTube channel, or other online things you want people to find.
    • Links to the websites of things associated with your career, like your performing ensembles or the institutions where you teach.

    Optional items with caveats

    Most of these things have to do with updating the content of your site on some kind of regular basis. That’s worth doing if your intention is to bring people back to visit your site again in the future. If you prefer to use your site as just sort of a digital business card, with no updating content, that’s fine too, and is much less effort to maintain.

    • A calendar of your upcoming performances. Only do this if you are thoroughly dedicated to keeping it up to date. An expired calendar makes your website look abandoned.
    • Recordings (audio and/or video) of some of your performances.
      • If you are hoping your website will help you get hired for things, only include recordings that you think appropriately and honestly reflect your current abilities.
      • Only post material you are certain you have the rights to post. For most individual-musician websites, chances are slim that anyone will take legal action against you for posting copyrighted material, but it’s still decent and polite to respect others’ intellectual property. (Acknowledging your non-ownership doesn’t make it okay to post something that isn’t yours. The copyright owner has to specifically give you permission or license the material to you in some way.)
    • A blog and/or some articles or other resources.
      • Again, this should be your own intellectual property or something you have explicit permission to post.
      • If you start a blog, start with a post that is about something, not a post about how you intend to start blogging soon, or asking people for ideas what to blog about. Lots of blogs start that way, with a single post promising big things to come, and then nothing more ever.
      • You don’t have to blog on any particular schedule if you don’t want to, just post when you have something to say.

    Don’t include these

    • Lists of who you have played with, unless they are significant and career-defining.
      • As a graduate student I got to play at a university event honoring Dave Brubeck, including playing in an ensemble “with” him. For years my professional biography indicated that I had played with Dave Brubeck, even though after the one gig was over he almost certainly wouldn’t have remembered me, much less considered me some kind of collaborator. Listing him on my website was a pretty transparent inflation of the truth. (If he had hired me to join his quartet and go on the road for a few years, that would definitely be worth mentioning on my site.)
      • There have also been many less-famous names I have performed with, and why list those?
    • Lists of the equipment you use. One possible exception is if you have official endorsement deals that contractually require you to include this information. Otherwise, what is the list for? To prove how much money you have spent? To encourage others to blindly buy the same products as you?
    • “Links” lists, except in the rare case that your curation brings something valuable to the table. Lists of sites that you think are interesting or somehow related to your site are an artifact of earlier days of the web. Now if people want to find sites related to a topic, they just do a web search or follow related entities on social media.
    • Gratuitous photo albums, unless there’s a good reason to post them. Being attractive and/or vain isn’t a good reason, if you are hoping people will focus on what you have to offer musically. And you do need permission from the copyright holder.

    A simple website is part of the modern musician’s professional face—you need one the same way you need a phone number, an email address, and black clothes for the gig. You can start for a few dollars and finish in less than an hour, or spend years building it into a powerful communication outlet. Get started today!

  • Still going strong: Seymour “Red” Press

    ByBret Pimentel

    The Theater Development Fund‘s Stages blog has a nice little story on Seymour “Red” Press, a veteran Broadway woodwind doubler and contractor and an alumnus of Benny Goodman’s band.

    The cast of Chicago changes frequently, but if you listen to the orchestra behind the actors, then you’ll hear the same man night after night.

    Woodwinds player Seymour “Red” Press has been in the orchestra of the long-running Broadway revival since it opened in 1996, and that’s just part of a career that spans over fifty years and 100 shows. He’s played everything from Pippin to Meet Me in St. Louis to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, not to mention the original production of Chicago.

    Read the whole thing here, and see a photo of Mr. Press in his natural habitat.

    This thread at the Clarinet BBoard brought the story to my attention, and has some nice comments from some of Mr. Press’s colleagues and admirers.

  • Interview: Ryan Lillywhite of Cannonball Musical Instruments

    ByBret Pimentel

    Ryan Lillywhite of Cannonball Musical Instruments

    I’m pleased to share an interview that I did with Ryan Lillywhite of Cannonball Musical Instruments. Ryan and I played in college jazz band together, and recently reconnected. He is a really creative and fun soloist with an incredible tenor sound, plus a cool guy with a cool job, not to mention a new dad. Read all the way to the bottom to find a video of Ryan and his Cannonball colleagues (all very tasty players) showing off their chops and their horns. Cannonball is a serious contender in today’s saxophone market, doing some very interesting and innovative things, generating some great buzz, and signing big-name endorsing artists left and right. Ryan was kind enough to answer a few questions about what he does at work. [Full disclosure: I recently bought a new Cannonball tenor with Ryan’s expert help, and it is a seriously awesome horn.]

    BP: Tell us a little about yourself.

    RL: I work for Cannonball Musical Instruments. I studied at Brigham Young University where I started in music but ended up graduating with a business degree and a music minor. When I’m not working, I stay busy performing, fixing up old horns, working on my old muscle car, and spending time with my wife and five-month-old daughter.

    Tell us about your performing background.

    I had a blast as lead tenor in Synthesis (BYU’s jazz band); I’ve performed with the Utah Symphony and some smaller local groups, recorded for movies and commercials, and recently performed with the Cannonball Band at the Salt Lake City International Jazz Festival. Most of that was on tenor sax, but I’ve done my share of doubling on flutes and clarinets in pit orchestras. I currently take my jazz quartet around for local weddings and other events, which I’ve been doing for about a decade now and still enjoy. Especially when food is provided.

    What is your job title? What do you do at work?

    It kind of depends on the day … we all wear a lot of hats around here. I play test, inspect, and acoustically customize about half of the saxophones we sell; I’m in charge of the spare parts/repair department; I manage a number of international accounts; I do our social media; I contribute to product and acoustical development and testing; I clean the boys’ bathroom (hey, you asked!); and whatever other projects come up. Things definitely don’t get boring around here.

    How did you get the job?

    Read More “Interview: Ryan Lillywhite of Cannonball Musical Instruments”

  • Interview: Jay Mason, saxophone and woodwind artist

    ByBret Pimentel

    One of the cool people I’ve come in contact with through this blog is Jay Mason, a very busy southern California woodwind player. If you’re a fan of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band (and you should be), you have heard Jay’s baritone anchoring the saxophone section. You may have also heard him on film scores (like the recent Monsters University), on television (The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, for one), in the theater (numerous productions around southern California), on high-profile recording projects (Patti Austin, Barry Manilow, Chick Corea…), and backing up a wide variety of marquee acts in concert (Barry White, Kenny Rogers, Michael Bolton, Bob Hope, and many more). He also teaches at Cal State Long Beach and Concordia University – Irvine. Jay was nice enough to take the time to answer some questions about his work.

    Jay Mason and friends
    Jay Mason and friends

    BP: What do you do for a living?

    JM: A combination of playing saxophones and woodwinds in recording and live situations, and music education.

    What education (formal or otherwise) and experience prepared you for the work you do?

    I was very fortunate to have several great young players in my high school bands, both jazz and concert band, who have gone on to successful careers in music. The choir director there started a music theory class during my junior year, which was very thorough and inclusive of many styles, which really helped me to understand how music works, not just how to play. In college, quite a few of the professors either were or had been involved in studio and live work, and working with them, talking shop, etc. helped me to understand what I needed to do if I wanted to become part of that scene. In terms of experience, the opportunity to double on flute and clarinet, as well as all of the different types of saxophones, came along in college in a variety of situations in and outside of school: musicals, different ensembles, saxophone quartets, you name it. After college, I performed at Disneyland for quite a while, which put me into a huge variety of situations, playing everything from piccolo to bass saxophone, often having to read new material or learn new parts quickly, and make it happen day in and day out, no matter the weather, the crowd, or my mood and health.

    What is a typical work week like for you? Read More “Interview: Jay Mason, saxophone and woodwind artist”

  • Stuff bad music teachers say

    ByBret Pimentel

    We can all stand to improve our teaching. Here are some things I’ve either said or heard said that are symptomatic of gaps in pedagogical knowledge.

    “I’ve been doing it this way for years and I’m very successful.”

    Nobody is arguing with your success. But success isn’t a reason to stop improving, nor is it evidence of a perfect approach. Be open to new ideas. Choose to accept or reject a new approach based on its merits, not based on inertia.

    “My famous and well-respected teacher taught it to me this way.”

    The craft doesn’t progress if your let hero worship blind you to new ideas. Would your teachers want you to cling to outdated pedagogy out of loyalty, or to further your knowledge and advance the discipline?

    “Well, those scientific results don’t matter, because this is music and it can’t be studied in that way. I think musicians know a little more about music than scientists, don’t you?”

    Sound is a phenomenon very observable, measurable, and understandable through empirical study. Don’t worry, more information won’t ruin the magic. Take the example of high-level athletes and embrace careful, systematic scientific method as a means of achieving more.

    In woodwind teaching in particular, I hear a lot of vague, contradictory, or fantastical ideas that fall apart after even a cursory study of anatomy, acoustics, or fluid dynamics.

    And, just like you wouldn’t expect a stodgy old scientist to fully grasp the finer points of your musical performance, recognize your own limitations when it comes to scientific rigor. The Wikipedia article or a blog post you read probably aren’t very solid sources, and the experiment you did with different mouthpieces in your living room probably wouldn’t pass muster with a scholarly journal.

    “It’s not a contradiction.”

    If your teaching is making you and your students experience cognitive dissonance, getting defensive and brushing past the problem doesn’t help. Watch out for this kind of nonsense: “You have to increase the breath support as you go up to the high register. No, no, don’t reduce the breath support as you go back down to the low register.”

    “No, I haven’t read it.”

    Music teachers should be active readers of pedagogical materials new and old, and should be actively questioning what they read. (Attending masterclasses, watching videos, etc. is also good, but you will find someone’s clearest, most organized thinking when they have to commit it to paper and/or digital text.) Proliferation of small publishing companies, self-publishing operations, and, of course, the internet, have made the bar for “expertise” very low, but have also made it possible for conscientious readers to consume more and to police what is written. Readers shouldn’t take anything at face value, and authors shouldn’t expect a pass on low-quality work.

    Have the courage, conscience, and dedication to pursue deeper, broader, and more accurate knowledge of the concepts you are teaching!

  • Q&A: Personal reflections

    ByBret Pimentel

    A couple of weeks ago I put out a call for questions, in honor of today being the fifteenth anniversary of this blog. A few of the questions asked about my own career and approaches to various things. I’ll try to answer the best I can.

    One reader asked about music education and work/life balance. This person completed a degree in music education but found there was pressure to make teaching a “lifestyle” rather than just a 9-to-5 kind of job.

    To be clear, my degrees are in performance, not music education, though I make my living as an educator at the university level. But most of my students are music education majors, and on the track to become public school band directors. Some of my former students have really embraced that career, have excelled in it, and have wrestled with the work/life balance aspects to various results. Others have burned out quickly and moved on to other career options. I do think sometimes there’s a sort of cult around music as a career—the rueful but revealing jokes about college music majors “living” in the practice rooms, or about high school band directors kissing their families goodbye until after marching band season. It’s a complex and very individual calculus whether passion, time investment, family and other “life” demands, finances, and identity balance in the right ways to make those careers worthwhile. It’s also a moving target: after 14 years and a couple of promotions in my university position, the demands on my time and energy have shifted, and my approach to the job has adapted to make it more sustainable for me and my specific needs.

    A related question came from another reader: am I happy with the balance of teaching and performing in my life, and do I have plans to adjust that?

    As a full-time university music professor, a certain quantity of teaching (and to some extent performance) is non-negotiable. And I live in a rural and relatively remote area, so pre-made freelance performance opportunities are somewhat limited. But there are some choices I have made to adjust my balance. I don’t teach summer classes, so I’ve got a few months each year to do some relaxing/recovery and some concentrated work on projects that are important to me, like preparing recitals, working on online content and tools, and writing. A few years ago I cut loose my private students outside of my university responsibilities, in order to focus on finishing a book and further developing some online projects. I’m fortunate that the book and online things have more than replaced the income from those additional students, and let me have a little more variety in my days. Plus, I get to refer lesson inquiries to my college students, who are usually anxious for the experience and the reed money.

    A longtime woodwind player asked what I do to “keep things fresh.”

    I can respond with some of the things I’ve done, but of course these are specific to my interests and circumstances. I continue to pursue interests in world/folk instruments, and the Zoom era has opened up some possibilities for connecting and studying with expert players around the world. I’m also having fun with combining woodwind instruments with electronics. My university job gives me a venue and audience to do new and/or familiar things on stage, in annual faculty recitals. This blog and my other web-based projects combine my interest in music and woodwinds with my interest in software and coding. I’ve released the one book, and am in the process of writing another. And of course I’m always on the lookout for new etudes, exercises, and repertoire for me and for my students.

    Thanks for the thoughtful questions!

3 Comments

  1. Glad you’re addressing this issue here, Bret. Musicians love to play so much, that it’s difficult to resist the temptation to play for free. I stopped doing that years ago. Your points and your logic for resisting the temptation are spot on. Not only does it lead to nothing for the artists, it devalues our work in general.

    Regarding web content, I have had to learn this same lesson all over again. Your experiences with this reflect mine, as well. I’ve even had someone request to post one of my articles (with credit, links, etc.) only to find out when I visited the site that they didn’t even do that. (I had them take down the content they “borrowed” from me. Never again. Great that your giving us this info and (for folks like me) reminder. Thanks!

    Reply

  2. Thanks so much for addressing this issue. I couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve said. As professional musicians, we must avoid this ‘race to the bottom’ where it is impossible to compete with someone who will give away their services. I would also like to put in a plug for the American Federation of Musicians, which has fought hard to maintain union standards in a difficult environment.

    Reply
  3. Pingback: Don’t Play for Pasta - Adam J Berkowitz – Clarinetist

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