The Business of Playing Guitar
Turn your guitar playing into a viable, sustainable livelihood. Learn how to price and book performances, manage unpredictable musician cash flow, and build long-term wealth from your craft.
Like Duolingo, but for The Business of Playing Guitar. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 11 levels across 2 sections, about 22 minutes end to end, roughly 4 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Monetizing Your Guitar Skills and Managing and Multiplying Musician Cash. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in The Business of Playing Guitar
- Hourly rates anchor clients to cheap commodity pricing for raw stage minutes
- Bundling ceremony processional guitar music with a cocktail hour ambient set frames your service as a complete event package
- Package pricing justifies a much higher flat fee by solving multiple entertainment needs in one booking
- A two-hour performance actually requires hours of unpaid travel, loading guitar gear, soundchecking, and song preparation
- A minimum acceptable gig fee must cover portal-to-portal time and transport expenses, not just the minutes spent strumming
- Accepting offers below your baseline floor consumes calendar space while operating at a net loss
- A gig is only confirmed on your booking calendar once a non-refundable 50% deposit clears
- Verbal agreements leave the guitarist vulnerable to unpaid last-minute cancellations after turning down other paid gigs
- Renting out a portable PA and vocal microphone for client speeches adds gear-rental income
- Charging a custom arrangement fee to learn and adapt a special song on solo guitar creates high-margin revenue
- Selling recorded albums or custom guitar chord charts on-site extracts extra revenue from attendees without extra travel
- Mixing gig income with personal money makes it hard to see true music profit and complicates tax reporting
- A dedicated music business account keeps performance revenue cleanly separated from household rent and groceries
- Consumables like strings, picks, and repair maintenance on amps qualify directly as working expenses
- Travel mileage driven specifically to paid gigs and rehearsals is tax-deductible
- Everyday personal clothing cannot be written off even if you wear it on stage
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives The Business of Playing Guitar the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
A couple asks for wedding music. How can you present your playing as a complete event package?
Get it right to open this lesson and 10 more in the app.
Where The Business of Playing Guitar takes you
- 1
Monetizing Your Guitar Skills
- Pricing and Booking Your Guitar Gigs
- Operating Your Guitar Freelance Business
- 2
Managing and Multiplying Musician Cash
- Mastering the Musician Cash Flow Cycle
- Building Long-Term Wealth as an Independent Guitarist
2 sections · 4 units · 11 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
The Business of Playing Guitar is taught in the Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start The Business of Playing Guitar today.
Download Tomo, search The Business of Playing Guitar, and play your first lesson in under a minute.