Here's another hot-potato issue (no, Big Mick, not you...). It ties in with "Is Making Your Own CD Becoming Too Easy?"

Several friends have told my husband and I that we should make a CD. I have severe qualms about this. We enjoy singing, and we enjoy performing at the small festivals and coffeehouses that we attend. We've never done a paying gig. Both of us have serious day jobs, and wouldn't even THINK of trying to make our living doing music. We enjoy what we do, we think our friends enjoy listening to us, and we're pretty happy.

My issue is "When do you start charging people to listen to your music?" To me, this is a big step. By charging money, you seem to be saying "I am better than the rest of you at what I'm doing, and you should pay to hear me perform." When your social group is a bunch of fellow musicians of varying skill levels and musical abilities, this can be a source of divisiveness, envy and hurt feelings.

My personal feeling is that you should be very good at what you do and willing to invest your time, energy and enthusiasm in practicing for public performance before you can start asking people to pay money to hear you. I know too many examples of musicians that just whip out a recording to have something to sell, which is getting easier and easier to do as recording costs go down. I know old pros who stop bothering to practice, or get up on stage drunk, and just expect folks to spend money to hear them because their egos say "I'm so good I don't need to work at this..." (Is this more common in the popular and folk music field? You wouldn't catch Itschak Perlman or Yo Yo Ma saying "I'm good enough, I don't need to rehearse!")

Both my husband and I are musical perfectionists (he more so than me, even though I'm the Virgo). We think we're pretty good when we practice enough, but don't know if we want to invest the time and work to do more than the few festival gigs we do for free. We like performing, but I get in a real tangle about the money issue. How have other 'Catters considered this? What should you have to offer musically before you ask people to pay to hear you?