Nashville freelancers access gig economy with Moonlighting service

Nashville guitar player and singer Derrick Royer has seen too many in the music profession hang up their dreams when their day jobs keep them from performing or lure them away from their music focus with more consistent incomes.

Determined to maintain their music careers, Royer, 30, and singer-songwriter Peter Matteson formed a home remodeling and landscaping business, Greenwood BAM, that allows them and about four other musicians to complement their unpredictable writing and recording schedules on their own terms.

“Musicians have a hard time finding stable work when they are not making their money playing music, which isn't always reliable,” Royer said. The business “has allowed me to stay home more so I’m not always trying to find income on the road.”

The platform they have used to grow their local business is Moonlighting, a Charlottesville, Va.-based company that connects freelancers from any trade with customers. Each business or freelancer has a profile, providing a more curated version of Craigslist.

Royer and Greenwood BAM (Beautification and Maintenance) are part of the Nashville tech-supported freelance economy that offers an array of choices beyond driving for Uber and Lyft or delivering meals. The local gig workers are dog walkers, handymen, furniture movers, hairstylists, manicurists, software developers, lawn teams and accountants, each stitching together their incomes — either out of choice or necessity.

Moonlighting helped Greenwood BAM find initial jobs, which have led to other gigs by word of mouth. With its profiles and payment processes, it provided a new, secure way to get in front of new customers, without the fees that similar sites charged, Royer said.

While several new apps have offered gig services for particular niches, Moonlighting has put a range of services under one umbrella, creating a broader marketplace for freelancers and those looking to hire for specific projects and tasks. The company, launched in 2014, includes 230,000 freelancers nationally and about 100 people in Nashville.

“We’ve opened that door up, and we’ve not only made it easy for people that come in and freelance, but we've also made it really easy for you to find freelancers very quickly," Moonlighting founder Jeff Tennery said.

Moonlighting gigs range from fire juggling to accounting to data science. While the service was created with moonlighters with full-time jobs in mind, many users rely on it to put together several gigs in place of a full-time job. The site is popular among millennials building a career, Gen Xers choosing to freelance and baby boomers looking for income opportunities after they retire, Tennery said.

The service is free for users, and those seeking jobs have the option of paying $10 a month for special promoting on the platform and on Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites.

Freelancing is nothing new, but technology has made it easier to line up jobs. Wage stagnation has prompted more individuals to pursue independent or extra work, and they want jobs that align with their schedule and interests, Tennery said. Uber and Lyft have made additional work more mainstream, and services such as Moonlighting provide paths other than driving.

“There is a lot of opportunities that have opened up in the last few years that have never been there before,” Royer said. "Nashville is a fortunate city for that."

The Nashville market stands out as an early adopter of the gig economy, according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution. The report found that freelance activity in the ground transportation industry, which includes Uber and Lyft, doubled between 2012 and 2014.

Gig economy takes off in Nashville, Brookings report says

Especially in Nashville, where so many in the music industry rely on secondary jobs, the range of moonlighting opportunities can help support them in their chosen path.

“I’ve seen too many come that have all this talent and they start to realize they are just scraping by," Royer said. "They just get sucked in and are glad to have money again and they kind of lose focus on really what they wanted to do.”

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Reach Jamie McGee at 615-259-8071 and on Twitter @JamieMcGee_.