Along the south wall of legendary Austin live music hub Hole in the Wall, a mural depicts a young Bob Dylan dropping cue cards. “Don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows,” the cards read. To essentially any student, faculty or passerby who has traversed Guadalupe Street, this is an iconic staple of the city.
The phrase stems from Dylan’s 1965 song, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and it emphasizes that some truths are obvious. When it comes to the live music scene in Austin, the obvious truth is that it’s bustling, vibrant and interwoven into the city’s heart and soul.
“It is a privilege (to work) in Austin because you can walk around and you can find a live event in pretty much any part of the city on any day of the week,” said Tre Pham, the guitarist and vocalist in Blue Tongue Band, an Austin-based funk fusion band. “When I go on the road to places, like in Colorado or Mexico or Arizona, just going to (those areas), it’s harder to find shows for us.”
The city of Austin officially claimed the title of “Live Music Capital of the World” in 1991 after the city was found to have more live music venues per capita than anywhere else in the nation, according to the Austin History Center. Today, Austin is home to more than 250 live music venues and over 9,000 working musicians, based on an estimate from the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians.
While Austin is nationally recognized for its live music, increasing economic and social factors create growing challenges for the artists who sustain it. A less obvious truth is that talent only goes so far, and those who contribute to Austin’s iconic title must push themselves to withstand the city’s demands.
In 2022, the Greater Austin Music Census, a community-led initiative that collected data about the Austin-area music economy to gain a better understanding of the ecosystem’s needs, found that “housing costs are both shrinking the ecosystem and pushing it outside Austin.”
The census was the first comprehensive study of the city’s music scene to be conducted since 2014 and revealed that while 89% of respondents plan to continue pursuing music in the next three years, only 64% said they will remain housed in the greater Austin region.
According to the Texas Real Estate Research Center, the median price of a single-family home in the first half of 2014 was $239,000. This number jumped to a record high of $503,000 in 2022 and has dropped to $497,815 in the past year.
Clayton England, the general manager of Hole in the Wall, said that along with increasing costs, there are other factors that contribute to difficulties surrounding artists’ income.
“A lot of people don’t realize that the ecosystem is all reactionary to each other,” England said. “If rent continues to go up, as far as the bubble in Austin, people have to work more to pay for rent instead of taking time and energy to put into creative endeavors.”
Beyond the cost of living in Austin, England said issues also stem from artists’ eagerness to play shows without negotiating deals.
“They’re so excited about getting the show that they don’t ask what the deal is, or their expectations aren’t met,” England said. “So I try to really mitigate expectations by clear and consistent communication and full transparency.”
Music venues typically pay artists through a guaranteed flat fee or a door split, which is a percentage of the ticket sales. England says that everybody’s margins, venue-wise, are much tighter now because people are less willing to pay for a ticket price, and the culture is shifting.
“(For) a lot of artists — and this is a tough thing to swallow — your music and your performance could be fantastic, but if it’s not the thing that everyone’s into right now, and nobody shows up to the show, well, fuck, I can’t do anything about that,” England said. “Certain bands get popular for certain reasons during certain time frames. … A band like the Black Keys, no one would give a shit about right now, but 15 years ago, that was the thing.”
The City of Austin has taken action to try and implement better pay for live music artists. In 2023, the City Council passed an initiative to raise the hourly rate for musicians from $150 an hour to $200 per hour per musician. However, this is only for city-sponsored events.
For private venues, this rate varies. Pham says when it comes to “built-in events,” where his band is the main draw for the event, he typically asks for a $100 flat fee minimum per person. However, in the case that Blue Tongue is just performing as background music and isn’t the main event, he said he’s willing to go for less.
Jake Farr, a local musician and the curator of UT’s Cactus Cafe located in the Texas Union, has experience in booking live shows in smaller venues, like restaurants and coffee shops. He said for unticketed events, communication with artists is key.
“There really has to be an agreement between the artist and the venue,” Farr said. “A restaurant or a coffee shop or maybe a bar that is not charging a ticket price (has) to decide what is sustainable for them because the restaurants can’t be paying $500 a night on music if they’re not making that much in sales.”
Audrey Price, a sophomore rhetoric and writing major at UT and a local indie folk-rock artist, said that venues don’t intentionally try to cheat their artists.
“I just think that that’s not always their top concern,” Price said. “They’re just doing their thing, and then we’re just happy to play there, you know. I think that it’s as much on the artist as it is on the venue to make sure they’re fairly paid, and kind of standing up for yourself.”
Although the music industry is not often lucrative for local artists, Price said the energy and sacrifice is worth it.
“My fridge is quite empty, but it’s because all my money is going towards recording. (I’m) saving up to record right now. So it’s definitely like I live very frugally,” Price said. “That’s (where) my priorities are, but I don’t really regret that. You know, it’s my choice.”
According to Price, there’s never a time that she’s not thinking about music and her next steps as an artist.
“I also just think that, honestly, if you want to make music your life, you kind of have to be a little crazy about it,” Price said. “You have to put all of yourself into it, and I think that that’s definitely hard for a lot of people. It was hard for me to really reflect and be like, … ‘What is giving everything?’”
Both Pham and Price note that oversaturation has become a contributing factor to artists’ difficulties when it comes to booking gigs. This was the motivation for Farr to start pursuing his own shows and hosting his own events. He encourages others to do the same.
“It can feel pretty depressing whenever you’re emailing all these venues, nobody gets back to you, and you just feel like, ‘Wow, my music must be the scum of the earth,’” Farr said. “But … you can start your own concert, or your own open mic, or songwriters’ night or a jam session, whatever it is that you get other people to start being a part of, and it serves them, too. Then, I think that can become a breeding ground for opportunities.”
