Local shows always suck because they want to pay you in drink tickets and exposure while you waste several billable hours at the venue waiting to drill through your 25-minute set. You know the story. Load-in is at 3:00 p.m. You get screamed at by management for showing up five minutes late because thereâs nowhere to park. Then you wait. And wait. Twiddling your thumbs, doomscrolling through your feed of music marketing gurus trying to explain why nobody comes to local shows.
Here at Net Worthless, we have the perfect solution that solves two problems at once: become your own ride-share service.
Not only will you probably make more money than youâve ever earned playing music, you can just bring everybody requesting a ride back to the venue. Thatâs what the promoters call a âdraw.â
Think about how genius this is. You load your gear in, and now itâs the waiting game. Your set doesnât start for another three hours, parking is absolute dogshit, and thereâs nothing productive you can do without risking your spot. So the morning of the show, hang flyers around all the trendy sidewalk cafĂ©s advertising your personal ride-share service. Cut out the middleman. Your cell number is the app now.
They donât need to know your 1994 Toyota Camry hasnât been detailed, let alone washed, in the last 75,000 miles. They donât need to know your license has been âtemporarily suspendedâ over those âreckless endangermentâ charges that definitely werenât your fault, but the judge got hung up on technicalities. They only need to know if you can pick them up and drop them off.
Donât make small talk because youâll immediately start talking about your band, and nobody wants to hear about that. If they did, youâd have people coming to your shows instead of spending your afternoon burning gas so you can afford more gas. Youâre a hamster on a wheel. Youâre Sisyphus pushing the boulder uphill. Youâre an entrepreneur in the sense that youâre extracting money from strangers without creating anything of value for society.
By our estimation, if you keep your routes hyper-local, you can knock out about a dozen rides before the sound guy shows up and starts screaming at the cables he got covered in Red Dog and tobacco spit the night before. He doesnât remember he was the one who made the mess, but heâs still furious that somebody has to clean it up.
Once you get into a rhythm, you can branch out into food delivery, but this is where you need to be careful. Without a payment platform, youâre relying on complete strangers to reimburse you. A smarter move is to raid your pantry before heading to the venue and turn your glove compartment into a cash-only convenience store.
Handful of Cheez-Its? Five bucks.
Half-smoked Pall Mall sitting in the ashtray thatâs somehow also wet? Twenty-five cents a drag.
You have to monetize every square inch of the vehicle.
If you really want to maximize your earning potential, book your solo acoustic project as the opener for your full band. The promoter only has to text one musician to exploit twice, and now your ride-share customers can enjoy two opportunities to ignore your music. Thatâs synergy.
If you play your cards right and book the gig on dollar draft night, youâll clean up after your set because everybodyâs going to need a ride home. Collect payment up front, roll through their apartment complex, and gently encourage each passenger to exit while the vehicle is still in motion.
Sure, operating an unlicensed ride-share service out of a 30-year-old Camry might eventually attract the attention of local authorities. But until those fines start rolling in, youâll finally know what it feels like to leave a local show with 50 dollars in your pocket.