Dudes in band, you guys have to sell tickets to play live?

Sound guy is about your only reasonable argument here.

That is shit they have to deal with whether a band is there or not, and I have done shows where they asked us if we had a buddy that would cover the door for free admission. Security guards (AKA bouncers) are at bars whenever there is going to be an "event", could be disco 80s night, could be Devildriver.

So all that is horseshit.

I brought a 100 people to a bar (a small bar 100 people packed this dive) and they all drank.

They gave us some of the door, roughly $140. They said they were pleased but with all the money we brought in that night in beer sales and door sales it was bullshit. Oh and we brought the sound guy and sound system!

So in my experience 99% of the time it's just some greedy asshole thinking he is doing YOU a favor.:puke:

+1
 
Again, promoting the show should be the PROMOTERS job. That is what he does!

I agree bands need to make their fans aware that the gigs happening, but I'm not dragging my ass around town handing out flyers for nothing, to then have the promoter pocket all the money.

I've ran my own shows before for my band where I've booked the venue, booked the bands, paid the headliners and paid the bands that brought in a decent amount of punters (but that wasn't a requirement, if a band didn't bring in people that that was fine by me as long as they play well and don't give me any hassle) I organized backline (hell I normally supplied half of it!) I printed off and handed out flyers here there and everywhere, going out at night in the cold to tape them to lamp posts and bus stops so that the police don't stop me, and then going out the next night because some chavvy bastards have gone "metulz? thats shit lets rip these off, lolz"

I hired, picked up (with a van that I had to hire), set up, and ran the pa (other than for my bands set obv) used my mic's and cables because the stuff that came with the PA was shit, bought a stage-box because the pa didn't have one, recorded the show, hired a lighting guy, basically did everything, including tidying up at the end of the night and running the pa back the next day!

It generally cost about £300 to put on one of these shows, I've had one bad night where we booked in a decent sized underground band (played Download a couple of times, video on kerrang/scuzz) who to be honest, weren't worth what I paid for them and not a lot of people turned up (about 60-70), the best gig we had about 280 people in a 120 capacity community centre, you couldn't move! every other gig than that bad one has come out in profit, generally £100-£300, all of which goes back into the band for getting t-shirts printed or money to go on tour (its next to impossible to get paid gigs here, not even fuel money)

And with all of this my gigs were about £1-2 cheaper than what local promoters are putting on in the nearest town. I honestly think that the show I put on is one of the best local shows in Scotland, the quality of the sound and lighting is great compared to alot of local venues and the stage is a pretty decent size.

I'm not saying that bands should be lazy. But I am saying that selling tickets is the promoters job, NOT THE BANDS JOB. Sometimes no matter how hard you try to sell tickets no one bites, maybe they don't like the lineup, maybe there's a party somewhere, maybe they don't have any spare cash, whatever. The point is that it's the promoter who comes out with a bulging wallet at the end of the night, so its the promoter who should be putting in the work and taking the risk. Promoters here are lazy selfish twats who blame bands for their own shortcomings and to be honest couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery!

Expecting a band to bring their own audience is bullshit, if we play locally then why the fuck would our LOCAL fans want to travel to Glasgow, or Dundee, or Aberdeen to come see us!? We've put on a minibus to bring fans to gigs away from home and every single time people haven't showed up and we have come out of pocket. Its a ridiculous state of affairs that a venue/promoter expects you to bring people halfway across the country when you're trying to build a fan-base away from home!!!

Here's an idea, let us play there, show the local fans for that venue how we put on a great show and they will come back next time we play! ITS NOT HARD TO UNDERSTAND! There are people who come to see out of town bands at my local venue's all the time because they got given the chance to come and rock out and now every time they come back their local fans turn up. This is a much better plan than expecting every out of town band to bring a bus full of folk every time they want to play, its just not sustainable.





Fuckin hell, it felt good to get that of my chest :)
 
Yeah.....fuck pay to play...but you guys are looking at it wrong. if you're in that situation....you can make money. say they tell you to sell 20 tickets at $7.00, print out 20 cds with three songs of your band. sell the tickets at $10 or more and give them the cd demo, promote your band if you're gonna promote anything. and yeah book your own shows when possible, take the power away from the venues. they make their money on drinks,
 
Yeah.....fuck pay to play...but you guys are looking at it wrong. if you're in that situation....you can make money. say they tell you to sell 20 tickets at $7.00, print out 20 cds with three songs of your band. sell the tickets at $10 or more and give them the cd demo, promote your band if you're gonna promote anything. and yeah book your own shows when possible, take the power away from the venues. they make their money on drinks,

Yeah thats a pretty good idea tbh. As long as its not "you need to sell X amount of tickets to play" then there's no harm in turning the ticket selling opportunity into a cd selling/band promoting opportunity at the same time. Hell I'd be tempted to just sell it at face value and throw in a one track cd for free.
 
Trev, you're right on the money as far as I'm concerned. Have you ever played London? It's bullshit some of the things these promoters expect. Some of them even have the fucking balls to say "don't play any gigs 2 weeks either side of the one you're playing with us" which is just absolute fucking bollocks.

I'm thinking of starting my own anti-promoters night, because I'm bloody sick of it.

It's not all bad; when we played Sheffield, we were actually looked after and respected! Not so in London.
 
Nah only toured within Scotland, we did have a couple of gigs booked for gloucestershire and accrington on our last one but one was cancelled and we couldn't afford to do a 500 mile round trip for other so we cancelled. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we would have been there when all those major floods happened! (it was a couple years back)

Yeah promoters really expect the world and more sometimes, like letting every band of the night use my amp and cab, expecting a band to supply full backline and not get paid, hell half the time at my local venue I get asked to cover the sound for a band or two (I used to do sound there but stopped because I was only getting paid half the time!) Just seems to be the whole "minimum effort for maximum profit" thing when it comes to promoters attitudes. I think some of them don't realize that if they put in a decent amount of effort then they probably wouldn't have to do a second job because their gigs would actually make decent money!

Good to hear that not every gig is a dive though, I'm hoping to get my band on the road again soon so maybe I'll be able to return to this thread one day with tales of a couple of good promoters! lol.
 
My band had to sell 45 tickets for a show we did with A Day To Remember, and we also had to sell like 25 for a show we played with Mychildren Mybride. It really just depends on who's putting on the show and how much money the show has to gross for the promoters to actually make back what they invest in a show.