Anybody Ever Pay To Play?

[Full Cleveland]

My band is trying to figure out why we are having difficulty getting return club dates, when other bands that are not as good as us keep getting back into these same clubs. We have lots of festival and out door gigs in the Summer but no club gigs in the Winter. The club managers all say they like us. We are wondering if it is customary to grease the club manager's palm after a gig. Has anyone done this? If not, what could we be missing?

[bitzerguy]

This is probably a bit different situation than yours, but yes we do frequently. Not greasing the club manager's palm though.

The clubs here have had a tough year, booking good acts but getting no draw, and no sales. So many have adopted a fixed fee model. Basically the band has to pay a fee to cover the house sound team and overhead. Typically $150 or so. You charge and pocket whatever cover you want. The club will use whatever advertising you provide and will promote the evening. Many clubs will forget about the overhead fee if your band draws a certain percentage of the rooms capacity. In one case here, the room holds 200 and if your band draws 150 you won't get charged the overhead fee.

So you pay for venue expenses and you make whatever money your product can support, and the club owner doesn't lay out a pile of cash for a band that draws 20. It is unfortunate in these parts that many bands expect the clubs to do all the work to build the bands fan base and cough up the bands fee and drinks. The bands expect this.

We have been very fortunate in that we always seem to draw more than 80% capacity, something we work very hard at building outside of the gigs. So for us this is a fine arrangement.

[paologregorio]

My band has a rule; we'll play two gigs a year at a larger venue that requires us to sell tickets, but only if we're opening for a band we like, that's good, and popular enough for us to be able to sell $20 tickets for.

[cassius987]

We are wondering if it is customary to grease the club manager's palm after a gig. Has anyone done this? If not, what could we be missing?

I've been gigging pretty regularly most of the time since I was 17 so that makes almost ten years, and in that entire period of time I have never heard of such a practice. If a venue wants any "grease" (in my experience this is only ever in the form of the band buying out their share of the venue overhead and re-selling tickets) you usually find that out before the first gig.

The thing that has gotten my bands invited back to clubs is if the manager notices we retain and/or draw a crowd that will keep the booze flowing. If a band's skill here starts to wane (in my experience usually due to over-exposure) you're less likely to be brought back, or you'll be sent to a sister venue instead of the original one. The same managers are often in some way connected to the larger venues of a city as well and if you do well enough drawing a crowd elsewhere will put you in one of them opening for someone important.

If anything seems sketchy, including promises made about payment, get it in writing before agreeing to it.

[kennyhowes]

Never, ever pay to play. Playing for free is one thing, but never pay someone else so you can perform. It's completely insulting to the musician.

[DriftSpace]

First, we've got to establish the difference between "paying to play" and splitting the profits with the venue. In most scenarios: the profits will always be split between the venue/promoter and the artists, and there's nothing wrong with this. However, how these profits are split defines "pay-to-play," in my mind; "paying to play" is when the venue charges the artist because they did not recoup a certain amount of money. However, the thing I don't like about this practice is that the band is basically held accountable for the success of that night, when it should be seen as a shared responsibility.

In my opinion, Kenny is (and many others are) right: NEVER pay to play!

(Sorry for the long rant, but sharing my experience will hopefully make this lesson more memorable at the end...)

My most notable experience regarding a "pay-to-pay" situation was at The Roxy. We had been on a multi-state tour and that was on our list of places to stop. We were aware before playing that there was a requirement in the contract that 50 people attend the show or we had to make-up the difference, and we only got paid on-top of that; $10 per ticket, so $500 if nobody showed. We thought this would be cake on a Friday night in downtown L.A. with a 4-band bill, so we signed the paperwork before we left for our tour. Little did we know that the person at the ticket window was asking everybody who purchased a ticket which act they came to see, and then was tabulating the results for the end of the night; although the contract didn't specify whether or not those 50 tickets were for the whole show or each band -- it said: "50 people in attendance, or 50 ticket sales," and one ticket granted admission to see all four bands -- we were still treated like each band was playing a separate show. At the end of the night there had been several hundred people in the venue, but because less-than 50 people specifically said they were there to see us -- and we had no idea whether or not the person in the ticket window was actually asking -- we ended-up having to make-up around half of the $500 fee.

Most promoters are absolutely out to screw musicians and cover their own asses before anything else. In Denver you can play a show at The Bluebird theater, but AEG (the management company) takes $1,250 right of the top for operating costs, and you had better believe they stick the bill with the musicians -- arguably the "workers" with the lowest possible wage that evening -- if they don't make that amount judging by ticket sales alone. (Never mind bar sales, or the fact that they have an obligation to use their channels/connections to advertise, etc.) If you do make it over $1,250: usually other fees pop-up that were never discussed, like "catering" (you know, for that beer-case/handle-of-crummy-liquor "sold" to you at a 400% retail mark-up that nobody ever put back-stage) and "insurance." (If you don't make the $1,250 mark: they'll usually tell you -- while handing you the bill -- that those fees were waived as a "courtesy" to you.)

One of the times I played Red Rocks we had signed a contract to be paid $200 for a 30-minute set at a festival; at the end of the night the management company (AEG again) cut us a check for $150, because they needed to recoup $50 for "insurance fees," which we had never heard about until that moment. I told our manager to raise a fit, but the fact is that it's $50, and AEG knows that most of the bands at the festival don't have the resources/patience/interest to fight them for that money. On the other hand: $50 per band times 50 bands is an extra $2,500 in someone's pocket. It wasn't even worth our manager's time to recoup that $50.

In my experience this is just the climate of playing music in a modern metropolitan area, which is why many of the bands with which I play now are renting their own venues (like community centers, churches, etc.) so that we can avoid slimy music promoters. A little more than 10 years ago it was customary for bands to get not only a percentage of the door, but a percentage of the bar as well; the logic was that the band had at least some hand in bringing people who buy drinks, so profits were shared. At some venues I remember being offered 100% of door sales, and a percentage of the bar. This almost doesn't happen anymore; bands are usually treated like a burden and a liability for the venue: not business partners, an asset, or something that could be a success with the right support.

(Of course: none of this applies if you're a well-known national act with a built-in crowd and guaranteed sales, but I guarantee you those people didn't get to where they are by paying to play; they achieved that status via smart business practice and musical appeal.)

My advice (as echoed by others here) is: get everything in-writing before you agree to play. That's why these venue owners are hinting that they like your band and would want you to play at their venue; they want you to agree to something without pre-defined terms. Take this as an opportunity to take the professional initiative: put together a proposal and make your own offer.

This happened all the time in one of my previous bands: we'd get an e-mail that just said: "Would you play (X Venue) at (X Date)?" Most of the time our idiot lead-singer/manager/label-owner would just write back immediately and say "Yeah, we'll totally be there!" He would then wonder why we weren't getting paid afterwards, or why he had to argue with the club manager to get a cut of the profits. (Suffice it to say: I quit that band long ago.) The problem was that he acted like the venue was doing him a favor by asking us to play, so by defining ourselves within that relationship as dependent and subordinate we got exactly what we deserved: nothing. He failed to realize (every time, even when I warned him) that an e-mail saying we would play at a certain venue on a certain date -- with no offer for compensation on the table -- was a legally-binding contract where our band agreed (in-writing) to play for no compensation.

Promoters increasingly act like they are doing musicians favors, and that the opportunity to play the show ("exposure") is either enough compensation, or is worth musicians paying a price. Do not support this dogma!

Musicians are contractors, and professional contractors define their terms (contractually!) before accepting a job; everything is laid-out in-writing between the time when the job was offered, and the time when the job is accepted -- all costs are defined before the contractor arrives on the site.

There's one problem with this, though: promoters are so used to dealing with idiot musicians who don't know how to do business that sometimes a business-savvy group is less appealing than the plethora of musicians who don't know any better; the latter is less of a financial risk for the promoter/venue.

To put it succinctly: professional musicians are much harder to screw.

Regardless: there are some great tools available on-line which can help your band assemble a professional estimate which you can then submit to the promoters/club managers to negotiate your payment before you agree to play at their venue. These tools include mileage costs (outlined by the US Federal Government), hourly wages that include travel-time, loading time, set-up, performance, and tear-down time, equipment rental costs (if applicable), management fees, licensing fees, and whatever other factors might be included in any particular musical performance. They can be as simple or as detailed as you like; the more details: the more professional your act will appear ... and whether that's a good thing or not is your discretion:

http://gigcalc.gehwokka.com/

http://www.gigcalculator.com/

Yes, venues have employees and bills to pay, but if musicians do not establish themselves as a specific part of the business transaction then they can't be expected to have the venue factor those musicians into their nightly costs. So many musicians don't realize this that promoters are actually beginning to expect this, and many see it as an opportunity to run a "leaner" show.

Don't grease any palms; those people are making enough money. What happens when you pay a contractor "on the sly" to do work on your home? They do a half-hearted job that's not up to code. Paying someone to do something that's not on-paper is generally a bad deal for the person doing the paying, because they lose money and have no recourse if they didn't get what they wanted.

Put everything in-writing, and be as professional as you possibly can; act like a professional contractor, because that's what you should be at the end of the day.

(Thanks for reading!)

[DriftSpace]

The clubs here have had a tough year, booking good acts but getting no draw, and no sales. So many have adopted a fixed fee model. Basically the band has to pay a fee to cover the house sound team and overhead.

We all (hopefully) understand that these places are businesses which have operating costs, and that those people are doing fair work which deserves fair pay. However, why is it the band's responsibility to cover the overhead costs in the event of a deficit? Shouldn't the band be just another (hopefully equal) partner in the deal?

I am glad these agreements are working for your group, but let me ask you this: if a local bar is not selling a sufficient amount of drinks -- having a "tough year," as you said -- is it prudent for that bar to require their bartenders to meet a drink-sale quota?

For example, is it fair to say: "Hey, Dean, you didn't sell 100 beers tonight as we agreed you would; you only sold 10 beers, so instead of writing you a paycheck for the hours you worked I'm going to need you to buy the other 90 beers before you leave"? Would you continue to work at such a place? Does the bar have absolutely no responsibility to bring-in customers? If it was a Wednesday afternoon and you had never seen 100 people in the bar at that time of day, and/or the kind of beer you were serving was a new beer about which nobody had ever heard: would you not feel like you were being treated unfairly, or that you were bearing the brunt of a responsibility which was not entirely yours to bear?

I personally think this is a deplorable and irresponsible business model, which only serves the purpose of absolving the "promoter" of responsibility at the expense of someone else ... and that "someone else" seems to be a person not wholly responsible for the situation.

[Hotzenplotz]

Are You serious?

Pay to play?!?!? - O.K., other countries, other habits. For me this is an absolutely absurd question. (No offense against You!!!)

Here a bar asking for that would be burned down in seconds. It is like spitting in the musician's face. I practised for years, bought the equipment and brought it into the bar. Then I have to pay for playing? Strange!!!

Do I have to pay when I play on the street?! Surely not! (Or do I in Your country?!) People GIVE me money for that, even if I am singing like a dying dog.

Maybe the bar/ visitors do not like my music/ skills. That's o.k.. Then it would be the last gig there. Better for both sides.

BUT: If there is good music the bar is crowded. The bar makes a lot of money caused in the musicians work. (I was working in a bar and know exactly what I am talking about.)
If they pick the wrong ones, their problem. The good ones are completely booked out here - THAT is the market.
I know bars here pay sometimes a lot of money for a good band.

Does Robbie Williams now have to pay when the bar turns on the radio? (Some wish that, I know.)

Wow, still completely shocked!!!

[Badanovski]

I live in the San Francisco bay area. Here there is a surplus of musicians. It seems like there are about 10 bands for every club using live bands. A club can get a DJ for far less than it can get a band. Young people seem to prefer DJ's & old farts live bands. Young people will go to see original music. When I used to work regularly,I worked in 3 pc. bands so we could still make decent money. The bottom line for a club is how many drinks can you sell. I've seen some terrible bands that were great with crowds got drinking games going & were social butterfly's, the club owners just loved. In fact 1 band I knew were told they could only play 15 min. in an hour ( you couldn't dance to them ) & 45 min.s getting the crowd going. Can you sell drinks? For original music with multiple bands on a night It seems to be the you have to sell x number of tickets model. My current band opened at the Filmore but that was because our drummer had connections. Still by the time we paid the road crew ( The drummer insisted we have to look pro ) we made no money. With expenses through the roof can you actually tour & make enough to eat these days?

[jps]

Are You serious?

Pay to play?!?!? - O.K., other countries, other habits. For me this is an absolutely absurd question. (No offense against You!!!)

Here a bar asking for that would be burned down in seconds. It is like spitting in the musician's face. I practised for years, bought the equipment and brought it into the bar. Then I have to pay for playing? Strange!!!

Unlike most of the civilized world, it seems, at least in the Cleveland and surrounding areas, that musicians rank far below janitors in respect among club/bar owners/managers. We are worth a ¢/dozen, here, apparently.

[Hotzenplotz]

I am still surprised.

I thought I knew some things around the world - this was completely new for me.

When I lived in Brazil it was the same like here. The company I am still working for has a bar over there. If there was a band, able to play good and a repertoire of 20% Beatles songs, 30 % brazilian music and 50% all that other stuff the roof of the bar blew away.
In the morning, still after paying the band, the bar manager left the building with a grin - the band, too.

I never thought that are places where it can be so different. What a pity to all good musicians.

[JakeK]

I've played for free, but can't say I've agreed to pay to play. When that's happened, I usually turn them down.

[Full Cleveland]

Let me emphasize; no one has asked us to pay to play. It's just that we have had what we thought were successful gigs, where there were plenty of customers and they liked us, and the managers said they liked us, but when we asked for more bookings they gave us the "We'll see." I just wondered if there was a secret handshake or something we were missing. It would seem that maybe we aren't getting the customers to stay late and drink enough.

[jps]

It would seem that maybe we aren't getting the customers to stay late and drink enough.

This is the crux of the matter. I don't know what it is about the climate around here, but nobody seems to want to hang past 11:00-11:30, for the most part, as if they're going to turn into newts or something if they stay out past midnight.

[Hotzenplotz]

At the weekend?!