Booking and Negotiating Your Band

There are a few varying categories of deals when it comes to booking your performer for a show.

1) Door/ Percentage of Door

2) Guarantee

3) Combination of Guarantee + Door

4) 80/20 split

1) When you are just starting out this is probably going to be the the majority common deal you will see. You may be wondering why I did not mention FREE. Never is there a reason to play for free, unless it’s for charity or a cause of some kind, in which case the organizer for that show should at the least cover all of your expenses and rentals that you may need for the show, getting to the show, food and drinks at the show. As an musician playing live you are trying to get your name out there but more necessary ly you are selling a service.  promoters and venue owners hire you and your performer members to draw people into their establishment so that they may 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’s probably the owner of the venue /bar or a  promoter that works internally that is hiring you, so their main concern should 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 can justify being there. Sometimes the owner will say that he needs to take a cut of the door to cover some of the expenses of the club or for whatever reason. Although I would a number of times disagree with this but when you are just starting out and trying to build a fan base at times you’ve to accept this type of thing in order to get some exposure. Once you’ve a dedicated fan base that will attend to your shows a number of times then you can tell the owner that you are 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 performers on the bill. Assuming that the owner is still not willing to relinquish his clutch on the door cover you can want to think about switching club s. It can be a wonderful sign to your fan base that will see the move a step up in your career.

Obviously,in this form of negotiation it will be in the owner’s best 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 might not want to drop the cash. If the  promoter is uncommonly concerned about the cover price being too high you might 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 simple st way to book a show. All guarantee means is that the  promoter or club owner guarantees to pay the musician a session amount for the night. In this situation there is never an argument about how much was made at the door, and for the most part, never an argument about expenses. The  promoter books the performer for say $100.00 to performance and the rest is up to the performer to deal with. This way, as an artist, you know exactly what you are going to be making and might plan your expenses appropriately. When doing a door show there are many variables including expenses to get to the gig, sound engineer, gear and then the biggest variable, THAT people attend ! If nobody shows up to a door concert 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 people. Either the  promoter is counting on people walking by to come in and have a drink or is doing their level optimum to sell tickets for the show. All you have to worry about in this situation is showing up on time, sounding the optimum you might 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 attend. This is a rare case and can be a wonderful deal, but at times this does not work to your favor.  promoters who are looking to save some money will try to book musicians with a smaller guarantee and a cut of the door or ticket sales. This might not be as good because it does not “guarantee” you an amount, still if you’re expecting a large crowd to this show or are able to get a good buzz going, this might be the way to go.

4) The 80/20 Spl it’s a common deal when you have a booking agent and are playing large shows. 80/20 splits are al most always booked by an outside  promoter or an organizer for an event. The deal is remarkably 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, Venue rental, advertising, cost for printing tickets, food and drinks for band and crew, gear rental, and all other costs for putting on the show. The  promoter likewise includes a 10 %  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 is where the split comes in. And could be to your surprise, as it has been to mine, it’s spilt 80 % to the musician 20 % to the  promoter. This is al most a glorified guarantee and door deal except the musician gets 80 % of the ticket sales once all costs are covered. All artists hope to get themselves here one day as this is the most profitable performance deal, the only downside is by the time you get to this point there are regularly multiple other hands in your pot such as musician managers, booking agents and every now and then record organizations. It’s 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’ll find yourself neglecting other parts of your job as an artist. At this time you ought to think about giving away a piece of your pie in order to be able to focus on the parts of your career that are most vital to you. Nonetheless, we 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 resources as possible. The performer furthermore wants something, often to play for as much resources as possible or for as a lot of individuals as possible. The way that standard negotiations work is that both gatherings are going to try to get as much as they may of what they want. In order to do so, both gatherings are going to ex change 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 optimum world (these are called deal points) and rate each deal point in order of importance to you as an artist/band. If resources is the the majority vital thing in this show for you then that is what you’re going to be following 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 session amount say $100.00 for the show and 5 free tickets to invite whomever you want, but you’re 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 money is not that vital to you and exposure in this new town can be a higher priority, you might want to ask the  promoter to pay you $50.00 for the night and get 10 tickets, and invite members of the Local press or might be some record label representatives to attend for free to expose your music to them in hopes you might get on their show or reviewed in their newspaper/magazine.

Decide what you and your performer 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 wonderfully little of what they have. You have 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. also, attitude with negotiations is half the game. Assuming that the  promoter feels that the deal points you’re giving away are not necessary to you, then he/she can 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’re trading away is wonderfully necessary to you. Make a ample deal. Make them feel prefer they stole it away from you. Still another approach is that you make the  promoter feel prefer you’re doing them a favor. This approach can either work well or back fire and make you feel stupid. Assuming that the  promoter has any brains he knows what’s necessary to you and what’s not. If you try to tell him that you’re going to ” help him out” or give him the whole “I willtell you what” line, then you better be giving him something worth his while. Otherwise he won’t be fooled and will ask for much more from you then you can be willing to give up.

Understand that in practicing negotiations you are could going to blow a couple of deals. If you push things too far, the  promoter may get sick of getting nowhere and book another band. Unfortunately this is going to happen. This is wonderful time to practice another, al most more vital skills when dealing with the music business, 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 will have to recover from mistakes. Being able to fix your issues or at least make the most of a bad situation is a nice skill to have and sign of a wonderful business man. In a case when you have pushed a  promoter too far you may have to apologize and make up a story of how you had been dicked around by another  promoter and was just being careful. Whatever the excuse can be, there is usually a way to boost the situation as long as you haven’t burned the bridge completely.

In the same breathe I’m going to reiterate something that I said in the last 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, every now and then you need to give a little to get a little, but you cannot 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 performer 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 won’t 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 prefer 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.