I got an e-mail from this random girl asking Sac to open for God Forbid, to which I asked if we had to sell any tickets.

75 tickets at $20

That's $1500

Sorry, but I don't feel like paying a major label band today.

yeah what the fuck....when I was in band in my teens I don't remember being exploited like that, but now that I'm 25 I see all these sharks out there

do your fucking job, promoters. Promote the fucking show.

i'm gonna try to get a national on the next show i book and *GASP* not make the openers pay a damn thing

knowing my luck, said bands won't bring anybody and i'll be fucked

hmm...perhaps if promoters promoted and bands could draw people this wouldn't be such an issue hahaha

I want to be a promoter but only for local shows. My philosophy is that if you want people to be there, have the bands do that part mostly on their own. The promoter tells people about the show by making flyers and all that not by making smaller bands pay out the asshole just to support the bigger band. The bigger band should already be able to sustain themselves.

but that would involve doing stuff...why would any promoter want to work to promote their shows? they got in the business for easy money.

i can even understand, ya know, having to sell 10 to 20 tickets, just to make sure that the bands on the show are doing their part in bringing people to watch the other bands. it's when you start charging locals close to $1000 for a sub-par show that it gets out of hand.

the two headliners on that show(god forbid, goatwhore) probably didn't want more than $2500 combined, and one band is gonna pay for more than half of that?

As a promoter, I've found that its best to pay the opening bands in food and booze and dick over the national acts. That way you don't go into debt when the national band doesn't bring in as much as they should have. If you actually make a profit, share it, but if you are going into the red, fuck those guys and cover your ass.

Also, it costs a hell of a lot of money to book shows and if you have touring bands on the show the break even point is usually around $800. Bring in 100 kids at ten bucks a pop and you only pocket $200 for three months of work and stress. I'm not defending the pay for play assholes, but if you don't do something like that the bands won't promote the show AT ALL. Hell, I've even mailed out flyers for the bands to hand out at shows and they still didn't help with the promotion.

Anyways, booking and promoting shows is fun, but it won't make you any money unless you are willing to be a dick.

drewblood is right

we got that email too. we aren't going to do it.

sacreligion said:

You have to throw in the additional costs (sound, security, rentals, backline, promotion, staff, liscenses, liquor, police detail). If this is at the Palladium, you are looking at $3000 without any band garantees. Thats three large, my friend, up front. Goatwhore will get about 500-750 and God Forbid (the darlings of Ozzfest) could get upwards of $2500. That gives you a MINIMUM of $6000 to put on that show.

However, the other side of booking a show at the Palladium is that you get to charge the bands and the labels that they are on a merchandising fee. I can't verify this, but I've heard that the Palladium double dips on this, meaning that the label will pay the merch fee and then they have the band pay it again. That will knock off about $500 from the cost.

DrewBlood@Work said:


you are totally right that the bands won't promote the show, and you know what? It's not their responsibility to do so. The promoter's job (and it's pretty obvious from the name) is to PROMOTE the event. They are the ones who should be flyering, telling people, alerting various media sources. Why is it up to the bands? If the bands advertise that's a BONUS but it should not be their JOB. Their job is to write and perform music, and to do it well, making them a worthwhile addition to the lineup. It makes the quality of music suffer when bands have to do everyone else's job in the industry themselves.

if bands wanna get paid i think the most fair way to do it is to do checks at the door(a lot of bands hate it, but those are just the ones that don't bring anybody). every band gets a base pay(say $20 for gas or something) and then a couple bucks per head they bring in(that way they can't bitch about not getting paid, it's their fault they didn't bring anybody). If the show doesn't make any money, fuck em, they should've tried harder.

I think a big part of it is finding the right bands to work with. If I were to book a show and say have a decent drawing headliner that would bring in about 75 people by their name alone, I'd contact the bands that I know will come through. That's how bands get noticed, working hard to the point where your name gets around from being on bigger shows, and promoters giving your name out as a reliable band that works hard.(You could say this goes hand-in-hand with pay to play, but my problem with it is the increasing amount of $$ said "promoters" are asking for)

DrewBlood@Work said:

either way, with these shows it always ends up being like 5 or 6 local openers(if all do their jobs, that means the promoter is getting what, anywhere from $7500-$9000?) That's not including the door either. So basically, the bands that sold the tickets are the reason the show happens, and they end up playing to nobody because they're stuck going on at 6 in the afternoon.

that's not including liquor sales, either.

TTOC:

There is only so much one person can do. Amplify this effort across 20 different individuals (the kids in the bands) and now you've got something. Bands would have to have a pathological desire for their shows to suck if they expect to get a huge draw just by siting in their jam space and writing music. Part of the fun of being in a band, for me at least, is exposing your band, by force if necessary, to new people through self promotion.

sac,

true that. don't ever do pay for play, its a bad deal.

oh, i forgot to mention that this show is probably also funded by endorsements. endorsements are the best way to make money on a show, if you are willing to degrade other people's artwork to the status of corporate shills.

we've toyed with it a few times, luckily for us that dude bernie from NEConcerts is a cool guy and wouldn't decapitate us if we weren't able to sell all the tickets(even offered us a freebie after we got stuck playing early twice, although the last show we did with him was a miserable failure for us and we only sold like 15 tickets so if we do another one we'll probably have to do half the amount, which isn't a bad deal at all depending on who's playing)

endorsements are a good deal, but i feel as if they are useless unless you're doing a huge festival or something(i don't think that anyone would sponsor a 5 band show, since they'd gain virtually nothing from it)

it just seems like there are only a select few that make the effort anymore(if you think about it it isn't really that hard either, i've done a bunch of shows and got em all promoted on harder/faster and in local newspapers and shit, as well as putting up tons of flyers...which all in all was about a day's worth of work)

granted, a couple were flops but sometimes that just happens and there's nothing you can do about it

sac

kinda off topic here, but who is hosting harder faster these days?

i caught some of it a couple weeks ago and it was still hsu

i don't know how the hell he pulls double duty, doing the mid-day show AND going back at 11 to do harder/faster

here's my code of ethics when it comes to booking/promoting/running shows, after dealing with this stuff on both sides of the fence, and even sometimes directly on the fence, for about 8 years.

-first off, if you can't fund a show by yourself bare bones, you're already in trouble and should either a) not book shows at all or b) make sure you know someone that can lend you the money.

-pay to play="good business" to some, huge dick in the ass to everyone else. if you are required to sell 50 tickets or so to open for the new england metal and hardcore festival, or something of that nature, then there is nothing wrong with that. having to sell 50 tickets or so to open for a 7-9 band show that only features 1-2 nationals at an age restricted venue is absolutely absurd. anyone who expects that to work all the time will be sadly let down.

-if a band asks for a high guarantee, make sure they are absolutely worth it before booking the show. lets say the red chord asked for $500 per show in a local environment or otherwise just before "fused together in revolving doors" came out. no one would take them seriously. now, with a humungous fan-base backing them up, $500 is easily done, and i bet they can even justifiably charge almost $1000 in certain areas with no doubts on the promoter's part. even if a band is on a huge label and have ample distribution/advertising, does that ensure the fact that they have a reliable fan-base?

-if you do end up booking nationals, or any band that has a guarantee, even if they don't draw as much as you expected, you still booked them and even if there isn't a contract, it is still fucked up to dick them over. i've suffered through that a lot, even though bands i've been in through the past brought plenty of people to the door. there is nothing worse than driving anywhere from 4-12 hours, playing a show, and then getting handed barely a fraction of what you were told you'd be paid, or nothing at all. there is a lot of hard work, time, and even more money put into touring for most bands these days, so getting dicked over on guarantees is like getting kicked in the nuts 10 times over.

-always have a team of people helping you out. if you have a few people promoting with you, and 1 or 2 people to help with the door and possible mishaps at the show, you shouldn't have to worry about bands promoting. granted, it is stupid as hell for a band to NOT let people know about where they will be performing so they can get put on more and better shows in the future, there are some people that just won't go the extra mile.

i guess i agree the most with good ol' nicky cigs here (ttoc), since he's been in this game for a long ass time and has probably seen many ups and downs. to me, it's pretty simple, but most of the time a lot of "promoters" get in over their heads and end up dicking themselves and other people over to the point where they won't be able to keep up a good business.

If promoters that did pay-to-play put on quality lineups, they wouldn't have to resort to it. But bringing in a national act and getting five or so locals to do all your dirty work is less time-consuming than having a clue about booking, I guess.

I know for a fact that most promoters dont get a dime of the bar sales, usually they have to pay the rent, sound, security, + the nationals guarantees.

I used to do shows and I tried renting Marks before and there expenses were over 2500 for sound, lights, rent, staff, and security. Add a band like Godforbid lets say for 2500 and you have a 5000 nut to cover.

Thats 250 people at $20 each before you make a dime.... I know pay to play sux... but i dont think its unfair to expect bands to draw 40+ people to a show.


Ps That doesnt include any advertising like posters, flyers or radio.. and Waaf is fucking expensive as hell!