I just saw Pat Metheny. He makes iy by charging $49-$89 a ticket in a venue of just under 2000 seats, This asking price, and audience size, was made possible by years of driving hundreds of miles in a $1500 sh!tbox old van when he was starting out, to play for audiences that barely even qualified as 'crowds' (he mentioned 'six people' in the interview and may not have been exaggerating). I wonder if a lightly talented entity like Taylor Swift ever did that- but some record company exec decided she was The Next Big Thing and she probably makes 20x as much and getx 20x as much backing from her label. And Metheny probably ranks in the top tenth percentile of jazz artists revenue-wise.
I remember a couple songwriters being interviewed on the radio after a song they wrote got ~2M streaming listens. They described the feeling of anticipation as they opened the check. It was for seventeen dollars and change. Don't spend it all in one place.
We're going to see him in Tampa in Feb, same weekend as Florida Audio Expo, hopefully helping to pay the bills
Support live music, nuff said.
