Tremendous "Opportunity" for Session Players!

[John Mohan]

I get spam-ish emails for job opportunities, usually related to healthcare, but sometimes there are music industry jobs in the offerings.

This one caught my eye:

"Trumpeter at Musiversal"

https://musiversal.applytojob.com/apply/WJ0EvldyWe/Trumpeter?source=INDE&~

The "opportunity" is they will pay session musicians a whopping $13.86 per hour (salaried at $500 per month to work for them for 8 hours and 20 minutes per week), to perform as a session musician on their "world's first online recording studio".

Note that they are "not currently hiring in North America, Western, Central and Northern Europe" (places where professional musicians would command around ten times what they are planning on paying).

Seriously, it is an interesting concept, and I hope it goes well for them and those who choose to participate.

[Tony Scodwell]

John, why would you wish this venture success? When the greatest trumpet player in the LA studios went an entire year without a recording date should be an indication of the direction the studio business is headed. When I asked what had happened all he said was "Bratislava". The formally Eastern block musicians were working for $20 a day and the recordings were sent back to LA electronically to be mastered. Give away your expertise and that will be the value you are worth.

Tony Scodwell
www.scodwellusa.com

[John Mohan]

I was being a gentleman (or trying to be anyway).

One of the production companies (Wolfgang Bocksch) I worked for in Europe actually at one time before I started working for them, fired an entire pit orchestra composed of Americans, British and Western Europeans (pay rate was over $1000 per week and everyone got their own hotel room) in the middle of a tour and replaced them with musicians out of Poland who were willing to work for the equivalent of a couple hundred bucks a week and go four to a hotel room. For meals they'd boil potatoes on a hotplate in their hotel rooms and STILL send money home to their families. Fortunately, they couldn't swing and they couldn't rock, so the producer came to his senses and rehired Western musicians again and continued to after that.

Regarding the idea of cheap labor from less developed countries putting people from richer countries out of work, I feel sorry for the established players whose livelihoods are negatively effected. But those players living in poverty stricken countries are humans, too.

As I think about it, it's really the players who might now have opportunities to play and earn that they didn't have before that I wish well, not so much the company doing this, especially if what they pay isn't really a fair amount when what they make is taken into account.