Jason Nelson always loved playing music — he just didn’t realize he could do it for a living.
The 30-year-old New Jersey native started playing piano and saxophone when he was a kid and ended up doing impromptu performances for friends during college. He remembers playing during a friend’s 20th birthday. “She had no idea that I was going to be bringing my saxophone,” he says, “but I show up with my friend and I played happy birthday.” He was a hit.
After college, while working full time in marketing, Nelson got a request to play at a friend’s sister’s wedding, and he realized there was a possible career in playing live at events. He began booking other wedding gigs and eventually quit his job in marketing in September 2020 to play saxophone and piano full time.
These days, Nelson plays “an average of 80 events a year,” he says, most of them weddings but some also bar and bat mitzvahs and birthday parties. Though his prices vary, he makes “around $750” per hour, he says. In 2023 alone, he brought in more than $176,000.
Here’s Nelson’s advice for anyone who wants to follow suit with their own live music career.
Find your music niche
First, Nelson would recommend people lean into playing the music they really like.
For him, “it’s been mainstream dance music and house music remixes and mash-ups with popular songs,” he says. He listens to these types of music frequently and tries to figure out how to best play along with them at weddings.
Other people might prefer R&B or funk, for example, he says. “People have reached out to me for events and have said, ‘Hey, we want someone to play jazz during our cocktail [hour].” He’s declined and recommended other musicians instead.
Playing music that’s in demand but not necessarily your style “is a recipe for being burned out in the long run,” he says, “because you’re eventually not going to enjoy it as much.”
Make friends, not just a network
Nelson recommends you network to create real relationships, not just work connections.
It’s easy to find a fellow entertainer online and shoot them a message asking for advice — but that’s a pretty transactional and impersonal request. Instead, reach out to people you genuinely want to get to know. Say something like, “Hey, what you’re doing is really cool,” he suggests. “I would love to learn more about that, and hopefully we can play an event together.”
Ideally, this leads to coffee or dinners and the establishment of actual friendships. And those lead to job opportunities. “When couples or other friends ask me for recommendations on other vendors,” Nelson says, “I want to recommend my friends.”
And they do exactly the same thing for him.
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