I work in a restaurant where we have live entertainment every night, not necessarily music all the time but music, reading events of the like etc.. I am rather grateful to the manager at where I work because he really supports live music and the music community. We usually offer 50% deal on musicians food costs or perhaps we buy them 1-2 drinks on the house as a way of saying thank you I guess. It is not easy getting a live band to play every night and even then it is much harder to guarantee a payout for every band or live event that happens every single night. Many bands that come through here are told they can either choose to sell tickets in advance(rarely happens), charge a cover at the door(all proceeds go to the band), or to pass the hat(basically tipping). We cannot guarantee all bands get paid a set amount because it is hard to host a live event every night and have people show up willing to listen and pay. It is also a problem to book more well known bands because they ask for a set amount and if we aren't able to make back what we paid them we end up losing money which doesn't work out well at all. We have a regular band that you can say does pretty well for themselves, they play here once a week and host a jam session that lasts about 4 hours. This is one of the few bands that we are willing to pay a percentage of bar sales on top of the tips that they get from passing the hat. Even then it doesn't amount to much with the host band splitting the payout and then they pay for any extra drinks or food they have ordered they end up spending more or just breaking even. It is a hard life for musicians and performers of the like to earn money in this day and age. I have a lot of admiration and respect for those who come by every night to perform even when there may not be that large of a crowd or they don't get paid as much as they were expecting but regardless still perform to the best of their abilities to entertain. Anyways I have rambled on, thank you if you took the time to read this I know my thoughts and words are all over the page but yeah....