Playing for Free? Why Musicians Should Be Paid For Their Work

There’s just no room in the budget. You’ll get great exposure. People want to download free music. No matter the reasoning behind the request, being asked to play for free stinks.
But why does it happen so often to talented musicians? There seems to be some unspoken assumption that musicians will play for free because they love what they do and they want to share their music. And yes, it’s true that we do love it. But many of us who love creating music so much also do it for a living … because we love it so much.
Naturally, those that make a living off of music won’t want to give it up for free. We all have to deal with this on some level. This applies to all musicians, from big-names stars to local performers.  
Famous musicians currently deal with streaming music services and fans wanting to download music for free. Taylor Swift has addressed the problem, telling Wall Street Journal:
In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace. Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently.
Perhaps it's the up-and-coming musicians that have to deal with this the most, with people using the possibility of exposure as leverage. Event planners, club owners and other venues will often ask you to play at an event for little to no compensation. They make it sound like such a great arrangement, you getting to play for a large audience where hundreds of people will get to hear your music. While this type of exposure is good, if the audience isn’t your targeted audience, this “exposure” will be useless for your career.
Unfortunately, many people just don't understand the dedication and hours of practice involved in perfecting your musical talent. According to Swift, “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s our opinion that music should not be free.”