Top 10: Promoters Don’t Care About …
The Biz of Music:
TOP 10 THINGS A PROMOTER DOESN’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR BAND
A Day in the Life of a Working Musician:
Trying to come to an understanding on a performance fee with a venue’s talent buyer or a promoter to land that desired live gig?
Here is a list of the most common cases made by performing musical artists in that give and take of negotiating the $ pay as an effort to up-the-ante:
Alert: the buyer/promoter does not care about any of these. Zip. Nada. You’re wasting your time there. Sorry, but…
- “We’re on a label”
- “We have to drive 60 miles each way.”
- “Two of us need to get the night off from our jobs.”
- “We have thousands of dollars in gear invested.”
- “We have thousands of hours in rehearsal time invested.”
- “We shared a stage with ______ (insert famous band name here)”
- “Our drummer goes way back with_____ (insert famous name here)”
- “We’ve been doing this for 25 years”
- “That’s how much we usually get”
- “We will ROCK the place!”
It is much more simpler than all that. Here is what is going thru the minds of the people you are negotiating with:
(and it is always important to understand the motivation of that other party)
- A Venue Talent Buyer: “How much $$ will our place ring up if these guys are playing that is above & beyond what we would have rung up without them playing?”
- A Show Promoter: “How much more $$ above & beyond my show costs will this band bring thru the door in the form of admission/ticket dollars?”
Note there is a slight difference there between the “person that owns the bar” and the one who doesn’t.
But they share this in common: your performance needs to be a portion of those ‘Above & Beyond’ amounts. Otherwise, you are asking for them to reach into their own pockets to pay you. Why would you expect them to do that?
Not all prospective engagements need to be culminated. If the numbers don’t make sense for either party, then that party should just pass on the deal with no hard feelings.
Too often, there are.
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