Sunday, November 22, 2009

Piping recession?


I read a post earlier this morning questioning whether or not piping was in a recession. Asking if the "Brave heart effect" is wearing off. I guess I was oblivious to the Brave Heart effect! Still it is a valid question in general. If "Paying the Piper" is an option, are we doing more or less than before the crash? In areas like funeral piping where cost is not usually a determining factor how are you doing? Wedding piping is a little more discretionary but still the cost of the piper is not a large percentage of the total cost (usually). Parties and special events may be impacted? And how are receipts from the ever popular pub crawling (not that we would ever cut back on the most fun item!), up or down? I've posted a a little questionnaire and hopefully we can all get some feedback.

Slainte

4 comments:

Dave said...

Hey Pops,
The Heathens have had a significant cut in bookings this year and the bar crawl scratch went down as well. Last Saturday was the first good bar crawl we’ve had in months.

LG said...

I've actually noticed pipes are continuing to gain steam.

Anyway, to answer your questions, my Master's will be in applied mathematics with emphasis on numerical analysis, and will be pursuing the PhD in numerical analysis after that.

Dave said...

I don’t think that my lack of gigs has anything to do with popularity of the instrument declining. It’s probably partly an economy issue and partly dumb luck.

Mike (AKA Pops) said...

I think LG is right. Pipes actually seem to be becoming more popular. However, no one can argue that discretionary income isn't at a new low. (Like it a lot, can't pay for it). I tried running a little survey to get a broader sampling of data. Based on the responses received I can only assume that either Pipers are WAY too busy to respond, or they can no longer afford their internet! :-)