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Sunday, November 04, 2007 Big Time Entertainment Why pay for something when you can get it for free? Even better, why pay musicians when you can get them to pay you in order to play? In order to book a show through Big Time Entertainment, you have to guarantee that you'll bring 25 people into a show. Your payment as an artist is based on how many tickets you pre-sell. Big Time is counting on every band on the bill to pre-sell tickets, and they won't promote the show themselves. Here's their cost breakdown. Click over there and read how ridiculous this is--while trying to look "reasonable." The site looks fancy, but it's deliberately misleading. According to this, the venue gets over 65% of each ticket purchased through this program. Big Time Entertainment gets over 11%, and you, the artist, get 23%. That is, if you manage to sell over 73 tickets. But wait, Big Time isn't giving the venue a cut of the sales. (OK, that's not entirely true--they rent out the venue, so they're paying the venue whatever they've agreed upon as rental for a couple of hours.) So really, the "promoter" is taking a whopping 76% of the ticket sales. And doing nothing: no promotion, no publicity, just renting out a space that provides sound, lights, etc. and convincing a few naive musicians to get on the bill. Big Time certainly isn't paying for venue upgrades or a sound system or almost anything else that they're listing as costs on their end---the venue itself takes care of those. Out of your percentage as a musician, you need to cover: gas/travel, food, and promotion (press releases, postcards, flyers, websites, emails, etc.)--not to mention that if you're not a solo act, you're splitting your portion amongst various people. Each band is paid based on their actual draw for the night, according to BigTime's sliding payment schedule. 0-34 is $1 per ticket, 35-49 is $1.50 per ticket, 50+ is $2 per ticket, 73+ is $2.50 per ticket, 86+ is $3.50 per ticket, and 100+ is $4 per ticket. Since ticket prices for BigTime events range from $7-10 (depending on the market and venue) and every band that plays a BigTime show is paid according to the above schedule, bands are never paid less than 10 cents on every dollar that their fans spend purchasing tickets and in some cases are paid as much as 57.1 cents on every dollar of their fans ticket purchases. Again, 23.4 cents on the dollar is the average band payment from the ticket sales that a band generates. Let's say you pre-sell 50 tickets at $7 a pop (if you could pre-sell that many tickets at that price, you probably wouldn't be interested in talking to Big Time Entertainment, talking instead to the venue itself or a reputable booking agent, but we'll leave that aside for now). You, the artist, would get $100 to cover all your expenses and split your take amongst your band. Say you have four band members: you're each getting $25 a piece minus promotional, food, and travel costs. You've spent time promoting the show and practicing, and spent money on flyers and such. Big Time would get $250 for giving you the privilege of playing. Remember, without the bands at each show there would be no audience (because Big Time certainly isn't trying to get people to come to the concert) and no act. Which leaves you with an empty room. In comparison, the Heartland Cafe (a great venue, by the way) charges a cover but doesn't take a cut for themselves--they make money when fans buy drinks and food. So each cover charge goes to the artist: if you brought in 50 people at $7 each, you'd make $350 there for the night, as opposed to $100. I'm tired of people who prey on unsuspecting musicians. Labels: music industry, scams ^ Top | 6:14 PM | | | 
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