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

[Trevoire520]

Promoters should do the promoting. Period. (come on, the clue is in the fucking name!)

Bands are made up of musicians (people who play music) we shouldn't be made to go out selling tickets ffs.

Pay to play or "sell a minimum of "x" tickets to play" is a bullshit strategy brought up by lazy promoters. They hide behind the excuse "no-one wants to play to an empty room" and thats very true, which is why the promoters should get off their ass and get punters into the venue!

 

[greyskull]

pay to play disguised as ticket selling is bullshit.
normally we'll sell a few and if we dont and the promoter asks for money - usually afterwards, we tell them to fuck, off

 

[PhilR]

Around here it's hard to fill anything but the biggest venues hosting the most famous touring acts. Live music ennui is at an all time high. It's a good thing most smaller venues in Nottingham aren't stupid enough to fall into the Pay2Play or ticket pre-sale racket routine because the only bands they would ever get would be teenage kids that bring in friends from school. And that's no good for venues because they're not old enough to drink.

There was a venue in the area that tried it[ticket pre-sale] on with my band a while back and we told them where to stick it. At the end of the day it's not feasible to promote shows that are away from home when you're all grownups working full-time jobs. The internet never really cuts it and expecting bands to transport their own audience is just utter bullshit. Especially when you have dickhead promoters treating gigs as if they're doing bands some kind of massive favour. Paid? Don't be silly!

 

[::XeS::]

Here in Italy it's normal....sometimes you have also to pay lot of money to play (for example 1000€ to open for Aborted!!!) or pay 1000€ and go to carry the whole backline and mount all the shit for all the bands.
Very sad situation.
But the problem is not who ask these things......the problem is that there is always a band of stupid and rich guys, that pay. And the mafia will never end

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I refuse to pay to play, whither that is time or money outside of playing.

Sure I'll throw up some fliers for a local show, but fuck you beyond that.

 

[::XeS::]

I'm with you....but unfortunatelly those things will never end, because there will always be some stupid guys that will pay.
The worst thing is that it should be the venue to pay you because the entertaintment it's you (or you are part of it), not the opposite

 

[nwright]

We don't usually pay to play, but there have been a couple shows lately where we did the ticket selling thing. The promoter who does this is a straight up dude and explained to us why he does it, and I don't mind. We don't get a lot of small and mid level nationals (think Chimaira, DevilDriver, Suicide Silence, etc.) here in Indy, and this guy is finally bringing in good acts and the turnouts are great...But he's the only one willing to take the risk (Indy is a fickle town).

As such, he books supporting acts ONLY if they think they'll draw and sell tickets. He asked us if we thought we could sell 50, but didn't hold us to it...Of the tickets we sell, he only asks for a flat rate per ticket, but advertises the ticket price with an additional 2 or 3 bucks...Which the bands get to keep. Not to shabby in my book. Selling 50 tickets for a national act and pocketing 100 bucks is OK with me. And, with our draw and the nationals draw, selling the tickets was not hard. Heck, I sold some extras just getting to the venue early and selling to people already in line!

 

[smy1]

If you don't like the situation: quit bitching and book your own shows.

1) Find a suitable venue, like a basement, bunker, school, deserted building (if you can't find anything, get a truck and play on the back of it) - cost: 0-200$
2) get a small PA for the singer if you don't have one in the rehearsal room - cost: 30$ (rent)
3) rent a generator - cost: $30 (rent)
4) rent 4 lights - cost: $30
5) print up 5000 fliers and advertise it as a private party where everyone brings their own drinks : - cost $50
6) promote your ass off on all social networking sites on the web
7) don't print tickets, you may get in trouble defending your "private party" announcement to the cops.
8) do get 2 big friends to act as bouncers. Make sure they are REALLY big.
9) play well, have fun, bring CDs that you sell for $3-5

Do that with a rotation of 3 bands so that 2 always play: A/B while C sits out, B/C while A sits out, C/A while B sits out.

This way you set up shows for less than 200 bucks and can build an audience from scratch.

Never underestimate: especially underground music fans and teenagers really appreciate the gritty unusualness of a DIY concert in an old bunker. It's something FOR THEM and not for EVERYONE, like it would be at a regular venue. If you can find a legit place where this can happen every 2-3 months, you can really build a following in your hometown.

Although the times have changed, I recommend watching "American Hardcore". It's an inspiring movie about a time/scene that was completely DIY ...

 

[drew_drummer]

Promoters make shitloads of money compared to the bands. Check this... we played a gig at The Dublin Castle in Camden, London... ooohh I dunno, a few months ago. Anyway, we bought about 20 people, which for a Sunday night is a good amount. We got £20. Promoter got £70. All those people spent money at the bar too. Lets say people had two drinks the whole night (which in England is a VERY conservative amount!!) ... one drink is probably about £3.50. So, right there is another £70.

So... promoter get £70, bar gets £70 .... band gets £20.

In my eyes, that's pretty much financial rape. The band even bought some drinks too (you don't get free drinks in most places; and honestly, I wouldn't expect to) which makes our £20 turn in £10.... then petrol for the car .... our £10 turns into zero, and probably even puts us in debt.

 

[PhilR]

If you don't like the situation: quit bitching and book your own shows.

1) Find a suitable venue, like a basement, bunker, school, deserted building (if you can't find anything, get a truck and play on the back of it) - cost: 0-200$
2) get a small PA for the singer if you don't have one in the rehearsal room - cost: 30$ (rent)
3) rent a generator - cost: $30 (rent)
4) rent 4 lights - cost: $30
5) print up 5000 fliers and advertise it as a private party where everyone brings their own drinks : - cost $50
6) promote your ass off on all social networking sites on the web
7) don't print tickets, you may get in trouble defending your "private party" announcement to the cops.
8) do get 2 big friends to act as bouncers. Make sure they are REALLY big.
9) play well, have fun, bring CDs that you sell for $3-5

Do that with a rotation of 3 bands so that 2 always play: A/B while C sits out, B/C while A sits out, C/A while B sits out.

This way you set up shows for less than 200 bucks and can build an audience from scratch.

Never underestimate: especially underground music fans and teenagers really appreciate the gritty unusualness of a DIY concert in an old bunker. It's something FOR THEM and not for EVERYONE, like it would be at a regular venue. If you can find a legit place where this can happen every 2-3 months, you can really build a following in your hometown.

Although the times have changed, I recommend watching "American Hardcore". It's an inspiring movie about a time/scene that was completely DIY ...

+1

My own band are looking to do something similar soon. Book the local DIY HC venue, shove the drums in the middle of the floor and have a good time.

It's ironic that in LoG's "Set To Fail" video they do exactly this yet I have NEVER been to a metal gig set up that way. Most metal bands need to have the ego trip of being on a stage so they can pretend they're rock stars. Balls to it.

I may have pissed off the soundguy at our last gig. I spent about 10 minutes making him tweak my monitor mix, then when we went on I spent the entire set stood out in the crowd!

 

[Lowberg]

Alright, I hear people whining and complaining all the time about selling tickets. I used to play out alot with my old band and depending on the circumstance, I have different views about it:

I think requiring opening bands on a national show to sell tickets is good.

1. Selling tickets is NOT "paying to play", it's an insurance policy for the venue that there will be people there. Usually the "pre-sale" tickets you sell are sold to fans at a discount.

2. The venue isn't going to pick local openers for a national show that cant draw some local fans. why the fuck would they do that!?Thats how venues pick local opener's for national shows in my town, they offer you the slot but require you to sell x amount of tickets.

3. If you cant draw 20 people to a show YOU PROBABLY SHOULDNT BE PLAYING SHOWS (thats like 4 or 5 tickets a person to sell between 4 or 5 band members!) Thats cake guys!


I dont really agree with forcing bands to sell tickets for LOCAL shows. But selling tickets is a great thing from a band's point of view as long as you arent requitred to sell a certain amount.


And the sad reality of it is that, alot of smaller venues dont make enough money, especially on local shows. Think about how many time's your band has played a local metal show to find that all the other bands are a bunch of 40 year old skinhead guys trying to play music that sounds like a really boring version of chimaira and hatebreed (no offense 40 yr old skin heads who like chimaira ) or nowadays instead of that its a bunch of kids trying to play crabcore.

So there ends up being like 40 people max coming to the local show, paying 5 bucks, thats $250. Add some bar money in (I'm being generious with the bar money assuming 30 out of the 40 kids arent some 16 year old scene emocore kids, which you know they will be)= Yay the venue made 300 dollars total!

Now they have to pay for rent, beer, electriity, sound guy, door guy, bartender, security guards, other expenses! Sounds like a great business!

But seriously! I cant tell you how many shows I got on where there was bands like that who brought NOONEEEEEE, It's fucking sad and embarrasing to even be on a show where the only people there are your fans and they dont stick around for the other bands.

 

[HeadCrusher]

A little off topic but not much: A few years ago a more or less large metal band at that time (I think it was Dew-scented but don't quote me on that. Also I don't know if their name is written like that) was in town. However their show got canceled when they where already there because of bad pre-sales. So they started walking around town looking for long-haired guys and asked them if they knew somebody who could setup a show for them that day. Well, somebody knew somebody who eventually organized something and they played a show in one of said DIY-venues that night. Of course tickets were dirt cheap but from what I've heard they didn't care much about the money as long as they had a show.

 

[Lowberg]

If you don't like the situation: quit bitching and book your own shows.

yeah man, I used to play in like the hardcore punk scene when I was 14, and they would just pay 80 bucks and rent a park lodge for a day and go nuts.
Bands like Skeletonwitch and Municipal Waste would come, I saw Skeletonwitch in someone's fucking living room once. And Municipal Waste would show up in their shitty blue van every summer to our park lodge and they played fucking Wacken so I guess they made out alright

 

[Charlie E.]

Promoters make shitloads of money compared to the bands. Check this... we played a gig at The Dublin Castle in Camden, London... ooohh I dunno, a few months ago. Anyway, we bought about 20 people, which for a Sunday night is a good amount. We got £20. Promoter got £70. All those people spent money at the bar too. Lets say people had two drinks the whole night (which in England is a VERY conservative amount!!) ... one drink is probably about £3.50. So, right there is another £70.

So... promoter get £70, bar gets £70 .... band gets £20.

In my eyes, that's pretty much financial rape. The band even bought some drinks too (you don't get free drinks in most places; and honestly, I wouldn't expect to) which makes our £20 turn in £10.... then petrol for the car .... our £10 turns into zero, and probably even puts us in debt.

Debt is pretty normal for most bands though
Don't forget the venue has to pay rent, electricity, and sometimes sound and security too. And those drinks didn't come out of thin air either.

My band has done the ticket thing twice and we've decided to never do it again. As long as there are venues NOT doing it, we will continue to avoid the pay to play bs.

 

[arv_foh]

The venue I do FOH work for is about 800 capacity, and we require ticket sales. Usually it's 50 tickets at $6 and we let the bands keep $1 for tickets up to 50, and after 50 they keep all the ticket $ they sell.

When you've got a venue like ours, and lazy ass bands that think it's ok to only bring their girlfriends and a couple friends to a show, which half the time are underage and don't drink, you would never make any money if you counted on the bands to bring people out of good faith. There are a few bands in this town that will bring in a few hundred people (the bands that actually work and promote their shows), but the majority of them bring 10-30 people I'd say.

Now for overhead, we have to pay sound, lights, security, and PA rental. That's quite a nut to crack. Don't blame the venues, blame the lazy ass bands that only promote through Myspace and don't even flyer the city any more. If the bands work and bring people, they'll make some money. But most of them don't.

 

[JonWormwood]

Thanks for all the responses guys, means alot to me.

I guess since I slept on it and after reading your posts, 20 tickets isn't bad at all.

Thanks again

 

[drew_drummer]

Don't forget the venue has to pay rent, electricity, and sometimes sound and security too. And those drinks didn't come out of thin air either.

It's not unique to venues though; everyone has to pay rent, electricity, taxes, etc...

I see no reason why a band shouldn't get a better share of the money made. It's very biased and one-sided towards the promoters, who very rarely do any kind of real promoting.

 

[Kazrog]

Backmask has never done a pay-for-play gig. Never will. Fuck that shit.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Now they have to pay for rent, beer, electriity, sound guy, door guy, bartender, security guards, other expenses! Sounds like a great business!

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.uke:

 

[Skyweaver]

Here in Italy it's normal....sometimes you have also to pay lot of money to play (for example 1000€ to open for Aborted!!!) or pay 1000€ and go to carry the whole backline and mount all the shit for all the bands.
Very sad situation.
But the problem is not who ask these things......the problem is that there is always a band of stupid and rich guys, that pay. And the mafia will never end

wow thats truly fucked.....it's a wonder any music is made these days, when people are always looking for a new way to fuck a band in the arse.....downloading, pay to play, insurance, distro, promo - lmao - why wasnt I addicted to crack it would have been cheaper !