Might not be a completely popular position, but here it goes.
Cover bands suck anyways. Either make your own awesome music or get out of the way for people that do! I will straight leave a “music venue” that has a cover band playing. That’s fine when your learning to play as a kid, but grown ass men playing horrible renditions of another grown ass mans music is just sad and pathetic IMO. They’re one step down from tribute bands.
Bad cover bands suck big time, but good ones create a vibe for the audience that's miles ahead of some dude playing music from his iPod ( refuse to call them DJ's).
Thing is though, 99.9% of all the bands that play original music will just not make it. That doesn't mean they are bad musicians, probably far from it. Of all the bands that I had to mix as a sound engineer I'd say that at worst only 1/4 were really bad musicians, 1/4 really good and 2/4 in the average musicians range. And playing skills have no relation to music writing skills, because really good musicians can make terrible music and really bad musicians can make good music. U2 for example aren't exactly the most technically gifted musicians, but they do know how to write and perform good music.
Of those bands I had to mix I'd say that 1/4 made terrible music, 1/4 made really good music and 2/4 average music. Does that mean that playing good music means you get to have success?
- Your band may fall apart at a critical moment (seen it happen, had it happen to me)
- Your band may lack the networking and business skills to get the kind of success that takes you out of the small bar circuit (had that happen to me as well). If you have a band member who is good at that but not so good at playing his or her instrument, KEEP THEM!!! They are worth their weight in gold.
- Your band could be making music that's just either ahead of its time, or really out of this time.
- Audiences just don't go to see original rock music any more. Gone are the days when people's idea of a night out was to go see a live band. Original music does not draw in any audiences, unless you manage to create a buzz that gets you noticed or manage to mobilize your friends and social media network. Be prepared to spend countless more hours on social media and making youtube vids then you will be on your music.
- Unless you have l33t networking skills or are guaranteed to draw in an audience, you will not progress beyond playing small bars and clubs, as the bigger venues will not take a risk with you. 'Sure, your music sounds awesome. Really cool, we loved listening to it. But we won't book you because judging by your social media presence we don't think you will bring in a crowd.'
So unless you manage to create a storm, as in bring in a guaranteed crowd, it doesn't matter how good your original music band is, you will not enjoy any success. And thus, for most musicians, their dreams of becoming a rock star die. They either move on in life, jobs, family, house, kids, divorce, those sorts of things. And others accept that their dreams of becoming a rock star become less and less a reality as they get older, but they can still have fun during the weekends playing covers in a bar, entertaining others. Because its still about playing music with friends, which is what gets most of us started. They can still do the thing they love. And what is wrong with that? Unless the cover band is really bad its still miles ahead of some guy playing music from his iPod and pretending he's an artist.
So if cover bands aren't your thing go to those soulless places that have guys playing music from their iPods. And convince yourself that one day you will become a rock star. And who knows, one day you even might be. But the statistics are against you and chances are one day you too will come to the realization that that dream will not happen. And then your only options are give up music altogether, become a bedroom player (I'm not sure if that's any better then giving up music altogether, but hey, if you like it, go for it!) , or join a cover or tribute band. And chances are you will discover it will even be more lucrative in a short period then playing original music ever was. Because unlike with original music people really like the familiar.