# The 'ticket sales for bill position' scheme - promoter scam?



## halsinden (Jun 10, 2009)

right, rant time. as usual, anyone with a more informed view is invited to educate me / set me right about any of these points, ill guarantee to consider any well put points

i think its pretty much established that pay to play in principle is a bunch of bollocks, if its at the lower echelon of venues / gigs [footnote 1]. even the logic that i begrudgingly concede to behind charging bands to appear at download (to the tune of a good few thousand quid each) holds a little water due to it apparently funding the booking of the major acts, however i still have a knee-jerk reaction whenever i see how much tickets are sold for (please, please someone give me a better angle on this)

however, here we have the you can have a place on the bill if you sell X amount of tickets deal i keep seeing everywhere. initial thoughts are - great, so the band doesnt have to shell out yet more money, were in. no. i dont get this. i cant defend it.

let me present another angle on it: same promoter pushing the sell my events tickets for me angle a few months later decides (with his cut of the profits) to put on iron maiden at a reputable venue nearby, bruce and his boys say sure, but you have to play the songs for us, well just put our back banner up, cool? look, dont complain, if you want the gig this is what needs to happen, you want live music to thrive, right? well there you go.. sure, hell lap it up.

forgive me if im crucially misguided here, but isnt the dead giveaway in the JOB TITLE of the person arranging this all? promoter. a simple word. i understand it to mean that you promote the event. now, i dont know where it was down the line that roles started getting a little blurred here but i wouldve thought its pretty clear who does what - the sound guy is the one whos paid to do the sound, the door man is paid to man the door, the musician is the one onstage contracted to perform (hell, in most cases probably not getting paid personally, itll be petrol money if that).

having booked a good number of tours, im used to being asked the perfectly reasonable question by a promoter roughly how many people will X artist pull, and thats fair enough. booking on the merit of exposure is, in my mind, one of the better guarantees that an artist can provide a promoter as it shows a chain of people who have been willing / employed to invest their professional time into raising the marquee factor of an act they believe in, it shows commerce and commitment.

now dont get me wrong, there are of course bands who have no active interest in promoting any gig they play, have little understanding of the event booking process and invariably complain to the promoter when they end up playing to 5 people and dont even get a packet of crisps to share between them as payment - they also tend to be the same bands who expect crowds to turn up just because they have. on the flipside, if i had a penny for every venue ive arrived at whose promoter had only that day put up posters or promo wed provided then i could afford to buy my own tourbus by now. similarly, ive had straight-up arguments with promoters who have bitched over poor turnouts, ranting so what about your supposed media profile then, eh? - yeah, its fine thanks, itll be even better if people in the locality are actually TOLD were playing where we are.

ultimately, leaving the sale of an events tickets (operating a half step down from pay-to-play) in my opinion opens up the door for any bugger to secure any place they want on any bill. youll notice that if you go to the post office you cant BUY an artistic licence, you earn it. its my understanding that a headline act headlines because they can, and they should expect to get paid for doing so since theyre providing the business, the main support will bolster the bill and they can hope to get a tad of the pay and the remaining slots are left to local acts who can prove their worth by putting in a solid performance or carrying with them a decent local following, NOT be given the position for being 17 year old ticket touts with guitars round their necks.

thoughts?

[footnote 1] pay-to-play? the costs associated with being a performing musician are, in a relative sense, rising. there are no record sales to gain profit from, merch just doesnt do it that much etc etc but at the same time guitars arent getting any cheaper, nor are rehearsal rooms, record producers, live engineers, van rentals, petrol, guitar strings, drum heads, unpaid leave, advertising, PR agents, silk screening, web design, video production so youre saying these self same musicians should now PAY to play the gigs theyre breaking the banks to travel to? after a while, rather than sorting the wheat from chaff of decent artists versus scrubbed-up wannabes, itll create an elite strata of those with bankrolls or inherited funds large enough to keep them on the road, and would you really want to go to a gig to watch the next bank loan play their dead grandfathers last will & testimony? not me, thanks, id rather watch some musicians.

H


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## DaveCarter (Jun 10, 2009)

You read my mind dude, I was just on my way here to post a new thread ranting about this absolute fucking scam. Its from 'Band Quest' and offers bands the chance to play at festivals including Bloodstock:

"*How to enter

From today onwards we are asking bands to &#8216;BID&#8217; for how many tickets you are willing to pay for in advance. The bid is a closed/private bid. The face value of tickets is £4 (£5 on the day) Bands will pay £3 in advance for each ticket upon collection and can request more tickets before the closing date for bids on Saturday 20th June. At this point winning bids will be informed and payment due. The highest bidder will be offered the time slot they desire between 1 and 10pm. There are 10 slots throughout the day and guest bands on other stages.*

Followed by:

*Bands can see this as pay to play or in its truer sense Pave the Way To Play!*



What a pile of shit, openly giving the best slots to the highest bidders. As an artist I wouldnt want to have anything to do with it, but as someone looking to go in to booking/promoting/organising events...it is a good way to make money. Cant really complain since its very good business to exploit bands like this, it just sucks when you're on the receiving end of it


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## op1e (Jun 11, 2009)

This is why I'm not in a hurry to get back to Cleveland. We did a Powerman 5000 opener there and had to sell our ass off. We sold $1000 worth of $14 dollar tickets. We sold everything, then went back and got more and sold all those. Well some dumbass in the office didnt make notation of us coming back for more tickets. We were supposed to have prime slot and go on right before Powerman. Hell, the manager said we sold more tickets than them. Instead, I find out in my hotel an hour before we go on that we were bumped down one slot and it was too late to fix the issue. Some dumb cookie monster band got our slot after I handed the club a grand in ticket sales. Ya I got to play in front of a thousand people, but I had to do all that footwork jockying tickets, get a $100 room, drive all the way up there, rush rush hurry hurry to get 25 minutes on stage. Ten of that was setup. I worked my ass off, performed, made them 10 Benjamins, and got to play 6 songs. I think the whole system is garbage, and its taking advantage of people. I'd rather do regional headliners and play 2 hours and have people open for me. Take however long we need to set up, not have to stand elbow to elbow with people in the crowd while you're double checking the tuning on your instrument. Mowing people down with your cabinet trying to get it through the staging area. Every show's an effing festival with like 12 bands and shit. Why is that? So they have even more people to WHORE OUT and make money off of.


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## ryzorzen (Jun 20, 2009)

it's a super competitive business, and the more clout you have the easier it comes. i think everyone has been super ripped from pay-to-play instances, but it's a grim right of passage haha.


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## Meldville (Jul 8, 2009)

ryzorzen said:


> it's a super competitive business, and the more clout you have the easier it comes. i think everyone has been super ripped from pay-to-play instances, but it's a grim right of passage haha.



Not at all; we've never agreed to do it, and never will  Plenty of bands know how to go about getting good shows w/o that garbage. Will you get to open for KoRn/whoever? Probably not. But is it really worth whoring yourself out like that only to play a 45 minute set for free? Not for me, buddy


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## op1e (Jul 9, 2009)

Agreed. Thats why we're headlining the shit out of every place in Ohio. Not to mention, we get money and Booze!!! Beats the hell out of schlepping our gear an hour away and playing for 15 minutes in front of whatever regional band is in town that nite. We'll still do it twice a year for big bands, but thats about it. Other than that, good marketing, giving away cd's, myspace, youtube, facebook and all that will pull more wait than being one of 8 bands that opens for [BLANK] in Cleveland.


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## ryzorzen (Jul 19, 2009)

i think it's worth doing sometimes, but you really have to pick your battles. We got offered a pay-to-play with Despised Icon, Ion Dissonance, and Beneath the Massacre and we had to sell 20 tickets. We ended up selling 50 and made a gross amount of money, and most of the tickets were sold at previous shows from our merch table. 

i only deal with these situations if we get tickets in physical form and don't have to pay more than 48 hours prior to the show. again, know how to pick your battles so you can go after the right opportunities. if the deal you have worked out makes it impossible for you to make any money off of tickets no matter what, then it is not worth your time (for concerct/club gigs). 

being able to say we played with Despised Icon and Ion and BtM really is something worth the $200 we gave to the promoter out of the $500 we sold. being able to play a wicked concert hall is awesome too and really inspiring. totally worth it!


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## JeffFromMtl (Jul 20, 2009)

I've sold tickets to my own shows before and I'm never doing it again. I've been fucked so hard by promoters, there are some guys I refuse to even play shows for anymore. There was one instance in which there was a "competition" of sorts, and whichever band sold the most tickets would play just before the headlining band (I think it was Straight Reads the Line) and gets the opening slot at a show with Emmure, Ion Dissonance, Arise and Ruin and one more band I forget, and a $300 cash prize. 

Anyway, I busted my ass and sold 59 tickets. That's $590 at ten dollars per ticket. The rest of my band, the lazy douchebags, sold for a total of 8 tickets. We lost the competition by 2 tickets to a band of 17 year-old highschool kids who had a crowd of about 20 people. It was obvious that their parents showered them with money to hand over the promoter, as well as purchase their instruments because their gear was ridiculous. It probably would have made more sense to print the names of the bands on the tickets so that the promoter knows who sold the tickets, and how many of the ticket buyers actually showed up. Instead, he decided all that mattered was how much money each band was willing to hand over. Not only that, but the band who did end up "winning" ended up getting screwed too, because the Emmure/Ion Dissonance show fell through and never ended up happening because the bill had never even been confirmed when he told us that the opening slot was up for grabs.

Anyway, that all caused a huge shit storm. We never saw a single cent of our $670 in sales and I refused to ever do any promotion for the band whatsoever until the rest of the guys started pulling their weight. Needless to say, we never played another show out of town and started gigging locally less and less until I left the band. About 3 weeks after I left, the band broke up. the most fucked up part about the whole ordeal is that the promoter was a friend of mine. I've known him for about 5 years, and I guess he just valued money over my friendship and my band.


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## op1e (Jul 24, 2009)

The biggest problem is broke bandmates with bad habits spending the money as they sell the tickets and promising to repay the till before the show. If one guy paints himself in a corner monetarily and cant recoup, it paints the whole band as unreliable. 3 guys who are no longer with us did this for the Peabody's show. We made one go out and sell his Desert Eagle to make good so we were'nt blacklisted.


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## Rayne Mann (Aug 12, 2009)

op1e said:


> This is why I'm not in a hurry to get back to Cleveland. We did a Powerman 5000 opener there and had to sell our ass off. We sold $1000 worth of $14 dollar tickets. We sold everything, then went back and got more and sold all those. Well some dumbass in the office didnt make notation of us coming back for more tickets. We were supposed to have prime slot and go on right before Powerman. Hell, the manager said we sold more tickets than them. Instead, I find out in my hotel an hour before we go on that we were bumped down one slot and it was too late to fix the issue. Some dumb cookie monster band got our slot after I handed the club a grand in ticket sales. Ya I got to play in front of a thousand people, but I had to do all that footwork jockying tickets, get a $100 room, drive all the way up there, rush rush hurry hurry to get 25 minutes on stage. Ten of that was setup. I worked my ass off, performed, made them 10 Benjamins, and got to play 6 songs. I think the whole system is garbage, and its taking advantage of people. I'd rather do regional headliners and play 2 hours and have people open for me. Take however long we need to set up, not have to stand elbow to elbow with people in the crowd while you're double checking the tuning on your instrument. Mowing people down with your cabinet trying to get it through the staging area. Every show's an effing festival with like 12 bands and shit. Why is that? So they have even more people to WHORE OUT and make money off of.



Let me guess... Peabody's?


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## phaeded0ut (Aug 13, 2009)

Ugh! I can't disagree with any of the complaints, if any one here has had to deal with Ticketmaster or Tickets.com you have my empathy, too (they're yet another level of nastiness for folks at all levels). Had one such kindly promoter take my money and merchandise and then skip the country (I wasn't the only sucker apparently). After that, I've stuck to the occasional "Elegance Gathering" (Chinese folk music, art, poetry), restaurants and coffee shops. In my case, I'm more of a hobbyist than someone doing this semi-professionally or professionally.

Another issue that has popped up in the DC area, besides the "fun" of dealing with the union folk in DC and MD, themselves, is that "larger" named folks are playing at smaller and smaller venues, and thus edging out the less known (regional/local) talent, especially as more venues within MD and VA become pay-to-play with lots of extra hands... 

In avoiding this, and thankfully one spate of good luck has been different restaurants in the area that have opened up their doors to local musicians and have been relatively decent in how they operate. The good news on this is that you get a few sets, food (and drink) and time to talk to the audience between sets. 

Again, I understand that for some types of music this won't help, but for others out there, it may.


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## Cancer (Aug 13, 2009)

ryzorzen said:


> i think it's worth doing sometimes, but you really have to pick your battles. We got offered a pay-to-play with Despised Icon, Ion Dissonance, and Beneath the Massacre and we had to sell 20 tickets. We ended up selling 50 and made a gross amount of money, and most of the tickets were sold at previous shows from our merch table.
> 
> i only deal with these situations if we get tickets in physical form and don't have to pay more than 48 hours prior to the show. again, know how to pick your battles so you can go after the right opportunities. if the deal you have worked out makes it impossible for you to make any money off of tickets no matter what, then it is not worth your time (for concerct/club gigs).



 This is the best way to do it. My thing is, I don't mind doing the work, but it has to be win/win for everyone involved, and that includes my band. The problem is you have bands that don't think it out, they don't look at the pros and cons, simply put they're not treating it as a business.


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## op1e (Aug 13, 2009)

Rayne Mann said:


> Let me guess... Peabody's?



Yes.


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