Live Gigs
Live Gigs and doing your own / touring with Off Axis
Live Music (was before the pandemic obviously) the MOST IMPORTANT income stream for any musician. You were able to build your fanbase, gain more press coverage and develop your career by touring and playing live. The following offers advice on DOING YOUR OWN gigs and TOURING the UK with Off Axis (whenever that might be possible).
There are 3 main types of LIVE gig DEALS >> Guaranteed Fee | Ticket Split & best of all VS Deal (don’t accept PayToPlay gigs in fact TELL us or Musicians Union we’ll name & shame).
Most common Gig offers are ⬇️
1) Guaranteed Fee – It’s not so likely, especially when you are starting out, but you could be offered a small Guaranteed Fee (say £30-£50) ideally + a Ticket Split. This payment is great, but it’s not going to cover your expenses. IF you get a fee and you’re a new band it’s going to be so low that selling product / merchandise is essential. JOIN PRS too you get a share of 4% of the box office (@ BIG festivals & gigs this can be a lot). Also being able to say to a promoter you have 100 email addresses for people in the city is a BIG selling point and helps justify a better fee!
2) Ticket Split – This is the bog standard deal you will encounter. Most promoters will offer you a gig and allow you to keep a percentage % of sales, (ie you sell tickets at £8, promoter gets £5 per ticket back & you keep a mere £3 from each ticket YOU sell). I think that’s quite high in favour of the promoter (another reason we recommend Off Axis) but a promoter will have costs to cover like venue hire, marketing (hopefully). IF a promoter says you NEED to sell 30 tickets or you don’t go onstage that is a Pay-To-Play scenario SAY NO and TELL us or Musicians Union
3) Fee VS Deal – Once you are more established - a good promoter will offer you a guarantee (say £200) VS a percentage % of Profits. This is a decent alternative to doing your own show (but for us it’s still not as beneficial as running your own). The promoter deducts ALL costs for the gig and pays you either the agreed percentage from profits OR the guarantee. The minimum you’ll earn (in this scenario) is the guarantee of £200. BEWARE more established promoters are big companies - they will be VAT registered so you’ll instantly forfeit a fifth / 20% which is going direct to HMRC. It’s also common practice for the promoter to send you a budget clearly listing ALL expenses, you should insist on seeing this BEFORE confirming. Look out for items that aren’t essential (hot towels?) and challenge costs you think are high. Thing is > YOU are paying for EVERYTHING so keep crazy rider requests to a minimum, if you want M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out or a ridiculous amount of booze just remember you’re paying!
*NB > the percentage in favour of YOU the band is (and should be) high = 80% band / 20% promoter*
Please View/Download a complete How To pack on doing your own gigs (including live streaming etc) and types of live gig offers at ➡ http://bit.ly/How-To-Gigs
This pack includes: ➡ 2x Introductory PDFs + folders w/ template ➡ Budgets ➡ Ticketing ➡ Artist Advance ➡ Promo Calendars / Planners ➡ Fan / Subscriber Databases ➡ Off Axis How It Works (ie you keep 100% of box office profits)