Jul 30 2009
There are several diverse categories of deals when it comes to booking your band for a show.
1) Door/ Percentage of Door
2) Guarantee
3) Combination of Guarantee + Door
4) 80/20 split
1) When you’re just starting out this is could going to be the the majority common deal you’ll see. You can be wondering why I did not mention FREE. Never is there a reason to performance for free, unless it is for charity or a cause of some kind, in which case the organizer for that show ought to at the least cover all of your costs and rentals that you can need for the show, getting to the show, food and drinks at the show. As an artist playing live you’re trying to get your name out there but more vital ly you’re selling a service. promoters and club owners hire you and your performer members to draw people into their establishment so that they can sell beer, food and other drinks to the patrons. With larger shows the promoter is trying to sell tickets as well as make a cut of the food and drink sales, but we’ll get into that later. For small shows it is could the owner of the club /bar or a promoter that works internally that’s employing you, so their main concern ought to be trying to sell booze and food.
In this case, in my opinion, there should be no reason for them to take a cut of the admission to get into the show. You should be able to mutually agree on a “door price” so that it is not too high that it will drive customers away, but enough that you may justify being there. Every now and then the owner will say that he needs to take a cut of the door to cover some of the costs of the club or for whatever reason. Although I would ofttimes disagree with this but when you’re just starting out and trying to build a fan base every now and then you’ve to accept this kind of thing in order to get some exposure. Once you’ve a dedicated fan base that will show up to your shows ofttimes then you may tell the owner that you’re bound to bring in a certain number of people and that you deserve the entire door or to split the door with the rest of the musicians on the bill. Assuming that the owner is still not willing to relinquish his clutch on the door cover you may want to consider switching club s. It may be a wonderful sign to your fan base that will see the move a step up in your career.
In fact,in this form of negotiation it will be in the owner’s perfect interest to have the entry fee be little or zero as this will allow for passers by to stroll in when they hear the music. If the se possible patrons find out there is a cover to get in they may not want to drop the cash. If the promoter is exceedingly concerned about the cover price being too high you may want to discuss the possibility of a guarantee.
2) Guarantee is where you want to be. When still playing the indie circuit this is the easy st way to book a show. All guarantee means is that the promoter or venue owner guarantees to pay the artist a set amount for the night. In this situation there is never an argument about how much was made at the door, and for the the majority part, never an argument about expenses. The promoter books the band for say $100.00 to play and the rest is up to the band to deal with. This way, as an artist, you know exactly what you’re going to be making and could plan your expenses appropriately. When doing a door show there are a lot of variables including expenses to get to the gig, sound engineer, gear and then the biggest variable, THAT individuals show up ! If nobody shows up to a door gig you do not make any resources and all expenses are out of pocket. When doing a guarantee there are still variables but at least there is no variable of individuals. Either the promoter is counting on individuals walking by to come in and have a drink or is doing their level optimum to sell tickets for the show. All you’ve to worry about in this situation is showing up on time, sounding the optimum you could during the sound check, making a final ing impression on the promoter and doing what you do optimum… blowing the audiences away.
3) The next perfect thing to having a show that pays a guarantee is having a show that pays both a guarantee and a bonus for the amount of people that show up. This is a rare case and may be a excellent deal, but on occasion this doesn’t work to your favor. promoters who are looking to save some resources will try to book performers with a smaller guarantee and a cut of the door or ticket sales. This may not be as wonderful because it doesn’t “guarantee” you an amount, nonetheless if you are expecting a large crowd to this show or are able to get a wonderful buzz going, this may be the way to go.
4) The 80/20 Spl it is a common deal when you have a booking agent and are playing large shows. 80/20 splits are al the majority always booked by an outside promoter or an organizer for an event. The deal is unusually similar to a guarantee, the only difference occurs when the promoter breaks even with his costs. The way it breaks down, the promoter lays out all costs on his part such as security, Club rental, advertising, cost for printing tickets, food and drinks for performer and crew, gear rental, and all other costs for putting on the show. The promoter additionally includes a 10 percent promoter cost to pay himself and a guarantee for the band. Once all of these costs have been met from ticket sales, the remainder is profit and that’s where the split comes in. And can be to your surprise, as it was to mine, it is spilt 80 percent to the musician 20 percent to the promoter. This is al the majority a glorified guarantee and door deal except the musician gets 80 percent of the ticket sales once all costs are covered. All performers hope to get themselves here one day as this is the the majority profitable concert deal, the only downside is by the time you get to this point there are usually multiple other hands in your pot such as musician managers, booking agents and sometimes record businesses. It is difficult when you’re an musician in demand to stay on top of your own affairs, and the more in demand you become the more you will find yourself neglecting other parts of your job as an artist. At this time you should think about giving away a piece of your pie in order to be able to focus on the parts of your career that are the majority important to you. Nonetheless, all of us will get into this at a later point in much more detail.
Here is a standard breakdown of negotiations. The promoter is going to want something specific from the artist, the majority of the time this to have the performer to play for as little money as possible. The performer furthermore wants something, regularly to play for as much money as possible or for as a lot of people as possible. The way that standard negotiations work is that both get togethers are going to try to get as much as they may of what they want. In order to do so, both get togethers are going to ex vary other points of the deal to trade for things that they want. So your task in order to prep for negotiating with a promoter or a venue owner is to evaluate what you want out of this show in a best world (these are called deal points) and rate each deal point in order of importance to you as an artist/band. If money is the the majority vital thing in this show for you then that’s what you are going to be after and may have to give up other deal points in order to get more of what you want. In a situation where the promoter is willing to give you a set amount say $100.00 for the show and 5 free tickets to invite whomever you want, but you are playing in a city where you do not know anyone, you may ask the promoter to cash those tickets at price back to him. If each ticket is $10.00 then it would be reasonable to ask the promoter for a $150.00 guarantee with no tickets.
For an opposite situation where resources isn’t that necessary to you and exposure in this new town can be a higher priority, you can want to ask the promoter to pay you $50.00 for the night and get 10 tickets, and invite members of the Regional press or can be some record label representatives to attend for free to expose your music to them in hopes you can get on their show or reviewed in their newspaper/magazine.
Decide what you and your band mates find are necessary to you for this specific show and fight for those points. A master negotiator knows how to get everything that they want and giving up uncommonly little of what they have. You’ve to learn what you think will be necessary to the promoter and what isn’t so necessary to you and use those points to trade for what you want. likewise, attitude with negotiations is half the game. If the promoter feels that the deal points you are giving away are not necessary to you, then he/she may not feel it to be an adequate trade for something that they do find necessary to them. You need to give the impression that everything that you are trading away is uncommonly necessary to you. Make a extensive deal. Make them feel prefer they stole it away from you. Another approach is that you make the promoter feel prefer you are doing them a favor. This approach may either work well or back fire and make you feel stupid. If the promoter has any brains he knows what is necessary to you and what’s not. If you try to tell him that you are going to ” endorse him out” or give him the whole “I’lltell you what” line, then you better be giving him something worth his while. Otherwise he will not be fooled and will ask for much more from you then you may be willing to give up.
Understand that in practicing negotiations you are might going to blow a couple of deals. If you push things too far, the promoter might get sick of getting nowhere and book another band. Unfortunately this is going to happen. This is great time to practice another, al most more vital skills when dealing with the music industry, DAMAGE CONTROL. No matter where you are in your career things are going to go wrong, that’s just a fact of life. Issues will arise and you’ll have to recover from mistakes. Being able to fix your issues or at least make the most of a bad situation is a wonderful skill to have and sign of a great business man. In a case when you have pushed a promoter too far you might have to apologize and make up a story of how you had been dicked around by another promoter and has been just being careful. Whatever the excuse can be, there is frequently a way to increase the situation as long as you haven’t burned the bridge completely.
In the same breathe I am going to reiterate something that I said in the final podcast. If you find that you are giving up too much in the deal or the deal is just not sounding as promising as it once was, get out. Yes, on occasion you need to give a little to get a little, but you can’t let promoters step all over you. If you are not getting what you feel that you deserve, make a statement and tell the promoter that you are no longer interested because you are not one to be taken advantage of. Advise the promoter that If they wish to renegotiate they have your number. One of two things will happen, either the promoter will look for another band who will quietly accept what you refused to, or they will come to their senses, give you a call and try to work something new out. Assume they will not call you back.
Well that about does it for booking. If you have any questions or a situation that you can be in that you would like us to comment on, send us a message in our contact section and all of us will either email you back or mention it in the next podcast.