I recently played a show in Saratoga Springs, NY. It was the first time I had ever been to Saratoga. Which had been described to me as “a small town with a swanky college and known mainly for its’ [horse] racing track”. So when my friend asked me to drum in his show on a Monday night in mid-June at a place called “Super Dark Collective”, I said “sure”, but I had no idea what to expect from the show.
When we got to Saratoga, we had about 8 hours to kill before the show. During those long 8 hours (there’s maybe about 4 hours worth of stuff to do in Saratoga on a Monday afternoon), my questions and reservations about this show only grew.
Since it was mid-June, the college was out for the summer, and the race track wouldn’t open for another month. Which left only true Saratogan locals in the town. Mainly, families. And while I’m not big on judging others, these families did not look like regulars at “Super Dark Collective” for a Monday night rock show at a dive bar.
And I was right. Those families were not the ones to attend the show that night. But the 75-100 rowdy, fun-loving, die-hard music fans that had no other show to go to but the one at “Super Dark Collective” that Monday night sure did attend. Just as they did the week before. And the week before that. And they’ll be there next week too.
Why?
Short Answer: Supply and Demand.
After the show I got to talking with one of the musicians from one of the other bands that played that night. A local Saratogan. Who had been living in Saratoga for the past three years. Before that, he told me that he lived three years in Austin, TX, and before that, he spent time in Nashville, TN, and also NYC. He said that for the three years while living in Austin he didn’t make a dime playing music. BUT for the past three years living in Saratoga, he had solely lived off the money he made playing music. And while he isn’t living in a big city, he is officially a professional musician and living his dream. (Which is objectively amazing).
I asked him why he thought that was the case. After all it’s counterintuitive to make more money playing music in a small town than in the big city. He said it wasn’t because of his improvement in skill or anything like that, but just simply due to the lack of other musicians in the area. In such a small town, he said there were maybe only 25-30 truly serious/dedicated musicians in the area, and with 2-6 venues on any given night wanting to have live music, “everyone gets to eat”. Compare that to an Austin, TX or a Nashville, or heaven forbid NYC where there are 100s to 1000s (or honestly maybe a 1,000,000+ in NYC) of musicians all looking for gigs every night. And while there may very well be 100s-1000s of venues all wanting live music, the surplus of musicians allows venues (and other musicians) to undercut the price of music. To where if you’re a band that wants $500 to play a show, a venue has no problem finding a band that’ll do it for $50 (or probably even for free), so while everyone may get to play, “no one gets to eat”.
A few days after I had returned to Brooklyn (the opposite of a small market and a city deeply oversaturated with other creatives and artistically inclined people), I was listening to an “I Love Marketing” Podcast (Episode 327), in which they were talking about the idea of being where people aren’t. That if everyone is trying to Market themselves one way, and you try and do it that way too, you can easily be overlooked in a sea of similarity. And that even though it’s scarier, and feels riskier, it’s actually more beneficial to do what others aren’t doing (big fish, small pond type of thing). They even pointed to one actual trend that is occuring in the Marketing world right now. In that marketers are seeing better results from “snail mail” campaigns (i.e. postcards, letters, etc.), than they are from social media and “internet” ads. Due to the oversaturation of people doing social media ad campaigns. The idea behind that being that the best message in the world is useless if you shout it at deaf ears. And that it’s much easier (and more productive) to have a conversation one on one in your home, than it is on a dance floor at a club.
Now, I’m not advocating that everyone should pick up and move to a small town and abandon the internet. That’s ridiculous. I live in Brooklyn, NY afterall, and I have zero intentions right now of picking up and moving my life. But the encounter I had with my fellow musician coupled with that Marketing podcast and the idea of the success of “snail mail” marketing right now, makes me think and wonder where I get to be unique, different, and bold.
So I invite you to do the same. Take a Risk, Be Creative, Be You, and Find your metaphorical Saratoga Springs.
From “Creative Quick Takes” 2019