How does this work then?

[Pebble Communications]

A friend of mine has an ambition to run a live music night, Soul music to be precise, in a venue with maybe some food as well as drinks. He was thinking of trying to set up a completely independent venue but I suggested that he link up with an existing one and just run a 'night' there. (sort of like a club promoter). How does this work though? Would he pay the venue? would the venue pay him? Does nobody pay anybody but the venue keep all drink/food revenue and he keeps the door money? Or should he ask for a cut of the drink etc revenue as well as he would be bringing them more customers? What about marketing costs - shared or just down to him? I know there are probably many different ways of approaching this but it would be useful if anyone knows what is the usual basic agreement. Thanks.

 

[DuaneJackson]

Not sure onthe usual basic agreement,

But in the past I've known it to work as

promoter (ie, your friend) pays the club for the use of the venue, and he keeps door money and can often negotiate a cut of the bar.

 

[alexlowe]

I have no experience of this personally... but i think it is all negotiable depending on the venue, night of the week, potential earnings etc, etc.

I knew someone who did a mid-week thing and they kept the door money and the club had the bar. I would be surprised if the club will pay for promotion though (but i don't know).

tip: pad the place out with friends and enthusiasts (put them on the guest list) so that there is some atmosphere and the night gets a reputation.

There are books about the music industry which cover this kind of thing. I would be interested to know how it works out...

 

[Astaroth]

I used to run live music nights when I was a student.

There seemed to be 2 different ways of doing it depending on how much "risk" you wanted to take on with many venues offering both options.

1) Pay the venue for the night - you pay them for their bar staff, for using the facility and either using their equipment or you hire it in yourself. You are responsible for all promotion of the event and arragements, get to keep all the ticket money and often a cut of the bar sales.

2) Pay nothing for the venue, the place organises equipment bar staff etc and included your night on their regular flyers etc. With some you got a cut of the nights takings and could pay for your own additional marketing - how much of a cut depended on things like if you were providing the sound engineer for the PA or if you were using theirs.

When I was doing it we were sponsored by an online mp3 site for unsigned artists but our main purpose of running the events were to showcase the bands we had (normally including at least one which I managed) and not for direct profit so normally went for option 2.

 

[Real World Hypnotherapy]

I used to run a music promotions company in Manchester called NMB. We used to have club nights with and with our bands.

Unless you have about 250-500k you can not set up a venue. Plus if you have no experience in running clubs it is very likely to go bust. My advise is to run a night at an existing club and use their current clientele.

Doing a band night is harder but along way, but if you get the right bands then you have a ready made crowd.

One thing that people always fail to realise is that no one likes going to see unsigned live music, only mates of the band come. I would do a club night instead but only if there is a market for it in the area. Just because you like a certain type of music doesn't mean that anyone else does.

There are lots of ways to get people into clubs, we finally cracked it and we used to make upto £600-700 per night cash! This however took a long time to achieve.

I could literally write pages on this subject because I have worked in many clubs and there are different systems in each one. The most basic is that the promoter pays for flyers staff, DJ and advertising, the venue keeps the bar and the promoter keep the door.

If you want to get your friend to give me a call on 0161 248 5474 and I talk to him about what he wants to do and how he can do it. In my experience 9 out of 10 promoters never make it past their 5 gig/event. To date I have run over 200 and I only lost money at 2.

Matt, MK Printing

 

[webster]

setup a nice flash attrative website and market it
and put up nice babes (j/k!).. adverts in papers etc.

some stuff that will help market.

 

[Pebble Communications]

Thanks so much for all the advice and I'll pass it on.