Concert Promotion & The Live Music Industry: How to start or grow your own live music business

1. Intro FINAL: Hi everyone. Welcome to my class and thanks for checking it out. My name is JJ, and my class is going to be about how to start or grow your own live music and concert promotion business. This class is going to dive deep into what's involved in doing your own concerts, how to prepare, as well as strategies and the business concepts related to it. I've seen a lot of courses online that help with streaming, recording, licensing music, even how to play instruments. But I have yet to see a course on the business of performing music, concerts and the live music industry itself, which is a really big part of growth and success in the music business. This course is going to pull back the curtain on how music has brought two stages and who is responsible for making it happen. I'm going to explain the strategy and business behind building a successful concert presence for aspiring concert entrepreneurs, musicians trying to understand what to expect from the live music business, even venues hoping to find talent and structure deals. I have 14 years of experience with the world's largest concert promoter. I've negotiated, managed, and promoted over 2000 shows. I've been a talent buyer for shows and festivals of all shapes and sizes. I've managed a few bands. I'd worked with record companies. I've also worked as an independent promoter myself doing my own shows where I saw a need. So I have a wide range of experience and I'm really excited to teach this course and to share some of my knowledge with you all. This course is going to focus on the role of the independent concert promoter. The promoter is someone with really no affiliation to a van, a band, or a venue, but is responsible for organizing and performance by a musician or a band at a venue. They make deals with both parties, but they work as the single person that's responsible for putting the show on and advertising Michelle. It's going to demonstrate that anybody can do it. You don't need to be in a band or work at a venue or large contract company. Anybody can get involved. Anybody can just start to do their own shows. And after you get a few shows under your belt, you just keep growing and you keep building that. And eventually you are in the concert business. It's going to be told from the position of the independent promoter. Because if it's told from that position, anyone from a venue or a band can also get something from that. Even at a venue. Or if you're in a band, you're working as a promoter to some degree, or you're working with promoters. So this is going to help you understand all three parties, the relationship between them all, and how to deal with image. This class is really intended for anyone with an interest in how music is brought to life and the business side of concerts. It's for entrepreneurs who are music fans and want to understand how to get involved. Or if you're in a band already and you want to streamline your business or you've begun getting offers for performances. Maybe you work at a venue or you are affiliated with a venue and you want to start finding musicians to help grow your live music crowd. But you want to make deals that are going to benefit you. It's also can be great for students of the music industry if you're already taking courses or in a program, this is going to give you a different take on everything. Even existing content professionals with some experience or maybe you're in production role or a box-office role. And you want to understand a little bit more about the bookings side. This course is going to shed light on the whole process. The main goal of this course is to help you in whatever position you may be in, built a successful live music business or career. In taking this course, you should understand what to expect and organizing concerts. How to put yourself in the best position to have financial success and brand growth, and how to execute a successful shelf from start to finish. Now there's a lot to go over with this relatively unencumbered subject. Here, the lessons I'll be going over initially in this course. Each lesson is just the tip of the iceberg terms of how complex things can get. But I'm going to begin by setting the stage with the high-level basic concepts to paint the full picture. And later on, I will go back and layer in the more advanced topics that build on the basics we've gone over. You'll hear me say things like we'll get to that later or more on that later. Because I just want to use this one-on-one type course to build the foundation that we can then add in the more advanced topics onto. Now I've never taught a course or spent much time in front of a camera. But I really want to get this out there. So I'm overcoming my fears and anxieties. I hope that video is watchable. I hope the audio is listenable. But this is an extremely exciting field that is happening around you all day. And it's relatively unknown to the general public. But the best part of it is that anyone can do it. Anybody can get involved, anyone can start where you are. This is my favorite subjects to talk about. I really hope you learn a lot and have a lot of fun while doing it. I going to be showing slides to help emphasize the important points and structure of the course out. And I'll be talking over the slides. I'm gonna be using the whiteboard here behind me to help demonstrate some concepts and help, especially budgetary really help, really hammer those in. And I'm going to provide some, combining some examples from my own experience to help bring some things to life. I don't want this class to be interactive. So if you have any questions, need clarity on a topic. Let me to elaborate on something that I've touched on or one another topic covered altogether, please let me know. I want this course to go as far as you-all want to learn. I have this course setup right now is a one-to-one and now I have a 201 coming. But please let me know if I can cater that in any way to what you guys are interested in. It's gonna be a lot of fun and I hope you stick around, and thanks for checking this course out. I hope you have fun learning it because I have been teaching it. 2. Lesson 1: What a concert promoter is and the basics of concerts: Alright, lesson one. We're going to take a step back here and talk about what a concert promoter is and what are the basic areas of concerts that they should be familiar with before they start to want to do their own business. The first topic is going to be about live music industry jobs and the roles involved with them. The job environment is pretty tough and I'll get into a little bit of that. But if you've ever applied to a job or tried to get your foot in the door. It's pretty tough. So this course is designed to show you that you don't have to wait for those jobs. You can do it yourself. We're going to talk about what a concert promoter is and some of the other booking related jobs. Being a promoter will make you better at all these other jobs. And if not better than people who have not been their own promoters. We'll talk about the main roles and responsibilities of a concert promoter. And then we're gonna get into some areas of live music to be familiar with as a concert promoter at a basic level, nothing expertise but things you should know or be familiar with if you want to get into business for yourself and doing concerts. The concert, job environment and different roles. Car coming up here. The jobs in the live music industry are really scarce. There's a lot of people trying to apply two, not a lot of jobs. I can tell you for a fact from personal experience that in most major cities there are usually 10-20, sometimes even five people. But let's just say ten to 20 people who book 90% of the shows that happened in that market. So there's a lot of work being done by very few people. I can tell you in a calendar year. In my office, we did with three people, we did 750 shows one year. And that's just in and around our major city. So the largely the concert you experienced are done by very small amount and people, these positions, especially at the lower levels, are often underpaid and overworked. They know that there's a lot of people wanting to get into them, so they pay accordingly. Unfortunately, it's the job of passion. And with any job of passion, there are a lot of people wanting to get involved and they know that they can pay 20 people potentially less money to do the same work that you're doing. So they pay accordingly. But separating yourself from the pack is huge and this role will help you get a good knowledge that a lot of people just don't have. Mainly as far as hiring goals, they get filled internally or promoted up from assistance or interns, that those people have a knowledge already, they're familiar with it, they've been around it for a little while and they can just kinda continue to run with it. There's not a lot of time to train and to stop. Nothing slows down in the music business in general. So having someone with familiarity is a huge, huge help. And again, this course, and being an independent promoter is going to give you a giant leg up even from assistance and interns. I'm not saying to avoid those positions or to not apply to them. Those positions are great and those companies are fantastic and they take care of their employees and they build great structure and stability. But this course, again, it's just going to really demonstrate that anybody can do it. You don't need to wait for that job to come along if you want to get involved. There are ways, there are plenty of ways to do your own concerts or to get involved in some way. Plus taking initiative and doing your own concerts or being a core promoter or finding advertising avenues will give you a huge leg up on a resume. And after you get a couple of shows done, you start to really turn some heads. And then people come calling for you. Let's talk about some of the different concert roles. And I'm talking here about booking roles specifically, I'm not talking about production or ticketing or operations. This is strictly just the bookings side of things and that's what a concert promoter is. In the early stages, then you'd be kinda become an advertiser as the show starts to move. But these are the jobs that people that want to book shows get into. First one, being independent promoter. That's gonna be you in this course. You're gonna learn all about it. The other one is a talent buyer, and that's kinda the common industry term for making someone that makes deals. A talent buyer usually works for a company and negotiate deals on behalf of the company. The company pays them a flat fee or rate or salary to make good deals. And they usually have a knack for identifying talent, spotting demand, and negotiating really good deals that are profitable. People that are telling buyers are known to make more deals that wind and lose. And so companies will take the profit that they're shows make but pay them a flat fee. So that's another job. Then you have an in-house or a venue talent buyer, which is essentially the venue owners of the company that owns the venue. Also. Buys the talent or makes the deals. It's just all encompassing with the venue profit and the show profit. For instance, a venue has food and beverage sales. They have parking revenue, they have all sorts of things and they can streamline the venue revenue with the show profit and loss as far as ticket sales minus expenses go. Like if a show doesn't sell them any tickets. But the crowd really ate and drank a lot of food and beverages than the venue is gonna make a lot of money, but the shell might not end together. It could be a profitable shells, so it's just kinda important, It's a different way of looking at things. So we're going to talk about what a concert promoter is. And that's going to be this course. And what this course is about, concert promoters main job is to promote a concert. And I know that the title sounds like an advertising gig and a marketing role, which is a lot of what you're gonna be doing. Because a concert promoter is the person that's most at risk here. You have the most need to promote and advertise your show. If a show sells ten tickets or 100 tickets, it's on you. You've also fronted the money to both the venue and the artists to secure their commitments. So you have the most need to make that money back in ticket sales. You also are responsible for paying all the other bills of the show, the production, the advertising costs we'll get into. But there's also a responsibility to take care of the artists well-being and presentation. You want to make sure you don't use the artist's name and a likeness or similarity, they would not be happy with. You want to make sure you're anticipating the needs of the artist as the concert goes and as the day of show comes around. And you also want to work within the venues rules and restrictions and really fully comply with how they operate and what they ask of you. This is going to also help you take care of the artists. If the venue has told you up front they can't do something and the artist is expecting it to be done. You're never going to make that happen and it's going to cause an issue. So make sure you are following the venues roles, communicating, taking care of all the parties involved here. Every is going to be coming to you for solutions or answers or some sort of attentiveness to any issue. So that's also a huge part of the job. Now there's some basic areas of concert knowledge that you should be familiar with before you decide or figure out whether or not you want to start to go into business for yourself as a concert promoter. You want to understand that in any artists or any sort of genre, you can understand the inherent demand. Determine if there's a fan base or an audience out there you can reach. Make sure that you can tell where the fans are and that there are fans out there for any given genre or artists. And seems obvious, but a lot of people think they have. They, they understand the demand that's not being met, that really isn't there. And they can make bad deals or get themselves into very bad situations by fronting money for shows that are just don't make any sense. So just make sure that there is a true fan base and an audience out there and whatever general location you may be looking to do things. Also, this is a really big part of it ties into promotion aspect of it. Make sure that you, yourself have the ways and means to advertise the show. How are you going to get this show in front of people? Do you have a large friend group that are going to just text everybody? Or maybe you have friends that can hand out flyers and other shows. You our social media wiz or you know how to blast things out. So you have a large email database or your friends, or you're a part of some sort of chat group or like Reddit thread. And you feel like you can just knock, knock the show out of the park. Make sure you can get the show to people that might be interested in seeing it. It's not going to sell itself. I would say you need to understand how ticket sales work at a very basic level. Understand that sold times gross equals sold times ticket price equals gross, I should say. Understand that when people check out, they're paying for other things on top of the ticket, that might make them second-guess buying it. Understand how the ticketing websites work. Understand how the digital tickets work. If you've ever gone to a show before, you probably get it. You're gonna be getting daily ticket sales reports that show you the number of tickets sold the previous day plus the existing tickets sold and then the new growth, you're going to be heavily involved with ticket sales patterns. Then from a production standpoint, you just need a basic production knowledge. Stayed size, orientation, height off the ground, speakers, all the sound in the room. Next time you go to a show, or if you've can think of a show in your head, where the speakers are they hanging from the ceiling? Are they hanging out with a standing up off the floor or they along the wall? How many lights do they have? Are they moving? Are they changing colors? Understand that this venue is capable of certain types of shows. If the venue has already hosting touring acts like maybe even national level like big interacts or big acts. They probably have enough in-house to do a show. You're gonna get a lot of information on this in a lot of help on this later, but we'll get to all that later so I wouldn't worry too much about that, but have a basic knowledge that's really less than one. We're gonna be covering everything I just talked about in much more detail throughout this course, but I wanted to take a step back and explain some of the really ground-level things about the concert industry environment. And some areas of knowledge that you should know before getting involved. As a concert promoter, you or someone at the center of bringing an artist to a venue. You've made the deal with both sides and you've committed to the show. And you know that you can advertise the show and generate the most profit. Again, you have no affiliation with the venue or the artist, but you are responsible for bringing it all together. They're gonna be coming to you with issues coming to you to take care of problems. So keep that in mind as a promoter, it's not just an advertising gig, there's a lot of responsibility. So again, some things that a person should generally know before putting themselves in a position to do a concert and take a risk, you don't need to be an expert on these things, but just understand the ticketing side, understand the production side. Understand that ticket sales work in such a way. Understand that the production side of things needs to be up to par with the basic level of a touring artists acceptance. The venue will have some Support for you on this. And the artists themselves knows exactly what they want to play with and they should be familiar with gear so you can make those ends meet. But don't try to put a band on a stage where there's only ever been a DJ. For instance, if you're trying to book an eight piece band and the only DJ with a mic that's not going to work. So just use some common sense. Understand that the sound has been great at most shows and you see you enough equipment there to make you feel comfortable with taking risks and to show up next in lesson two, we're going to start a big, big part of this, which is putting on your own show part one. The first topic is gonna be how you know it's time and why you should go ahead and take the risk. This is by no means and investment show or this is by no means going to guarantee a good return on investment. These are just some things you should think of before you get started in doing your own show. What's needed from you in order to start the process. We'll talk about strategy and preparation. And then we're going to talk about budgets, which is a huge part of this. And I'm going to go over the white board and explain them or after the lesson too. But budgeting is going to help you prevent you from making bad deals or taking unnecessary risks. I'm gonna show you how to balance the budget to make sure that things are within your control and that you've set things up for success. So that's up next and less than two and stick around. 3. Lesson 2: Putting on your own show Part 1: Alright, less than two. Now, this lesson is chunky. I've actually broken up into two parts, and I couldn't think of a smaller way to break it up. So I'm going to serve you less than one first and it's quite a bit. And then I go over to the whiteboard and help demonstrate out what I've discussed here. And then we'll get into the second part, which is not as technical. But these two go together. So the first topic of this part is, when is it time to do your own show? What trends can you observe, what demand you need to feel? We'll talk about what you need before beginning. We talked about it a little bit before, but we'll go into more about preparation and what you need to understand. Then we're gonna get into strategy. Again. You've started the audience, you've understand the demand is there, but pricing a show out and looking at the costs and the marketing involved is a different story. Then we'll talk about budgets, setting budgets, projections, estimates, things like that. And again, that's a really important part of making good deals that fit within your budget. So when should you do your own show? You've studied the crowd and understand the demand is there. And you believe that you can reach that demand or you see a large knee that isn't being met. If you're in a town where all day plays folk music, but you know that people travel to other festivals and cities to see like DJ music. Maybe there's a large demand or larger need for that type of music in your town. Just keep an idea. Just keep that stuff in mind. Understand what the people that are listening to and what they're being given. Maybe on that same note, you have a great idea for talent. You have up-and-coming artists that you've spotted, that you've heard people start to talk about that you've seen some of their trends go up, they've gone viral or just within your circles, people are really buzzing about this person. That's a great opportunity for you to reach out and start to do something. Maybe actually do have connections to a venue or an artist where there's some sort of relationship there you can, you can pull off of. And also the big one is makes sure you are in a position to take financial risk. These shows are risky. This is not an investment show. These are not going to give you all the boxes to check to make sure you make money. So I'm understand. Make sure that you're in a position to make a financial risk and to potentially have worst-case scenario results where you lose all that money. Show could sell five tickets when you think it's gonna do 1,000. It's just the reality of the business. Or maybe you are in a position to do a show with an alleviated risk. You have a venue that will give you the night for free. They want Thursdays to be their local cover band night and you're, have some great need for that. And so they come to you and you want to start to give them some ideas for that. Or you know, an artist that's willing to play for free or cheap or something like that. So at a basic level, I talked about it a little bit before, but you're going to need some capital. Whether it's your money, whether you have investors or partners and you're splitting profit and expenses with them, something like that. You're gonna need a lot of capital. There's gonna be bills and checks you need to write at the early stages of it. We talked about paying the venue and the artists. They both require deposits a lot of times in order to secure their commitments and to alleviate their risk, which I'll get into a lot later. The risk involved alleviate their risk of letting you do the show, especially if you're new. You're going to want to give them money to ease their concerns. You're also gonna need to cover the marketing expenses up front and as the show is on sale. And some of the show expenses need to be paid for in advance, like say they need a special turntable and the Dunya doesn't have it, so you have to go out and rent it. So that'll be a check that you have to write usually ahead of time. We talked about it some basic logistical knowledge. Ticketing, capacity, tickets, scaling the different ticket type sales reports, how tickets work, how Night of show they get turned in, scanned in stuff like that. Then production. You need to understand stayed size, sound lights, the more, the better. But you don't need to be an expert in those things. And also to work hard and have steady nerves. The process can really rattle a lot of people. Have confidence in your ability to do the show and have confidence there was a reason that you did the show. The first couple of times might be trial and error. Make sure that you're making good deals those first couple of times. But once you get a few under your belt, you're going to be so much better at understanding the marketing avenues, understanding that the ticket trends, things like that. But the first couple we're going to test you just have steady nerves. And again, if you've set the budget up at the right place and you have the capital to take the risks, then you should be okay. Throughout the process to not freak out and not panic. When preparing for a show. You want to look at the marketing first. That's gonna be a big one. Talk that goes into demand, it goes into audience that goes into meeting some sort of need that hasn't been met. But makes sure that you can confidently advertise your show even when traditional means fail. And that's important. If you set up things, you think you can set up a social media campaign, it's just going to crush. And it doesn't, what do you do? You don't want to be stuck without options. You want to have backups and backups and backups in different ways to execute a marketing goal. So a multi-layered marketing plan that is executable by you or your team. It's really important. The demand makes sure that demand exists outside of your normal circles. If you know ten people and they all loved this person, that's great. But make sure that there are a lot of people out there besides those ten people. You need to also, outside of, we talked about having the ability to put the show in front of people. Understand that no matter what you do, not all of the fans of this artists are going to see the show. But likely they will run into someone who has seen the show or is a fan and they talk about it. So word of mouth is gonna be your best friend. So believed that people will find the shelf on their own without you putting in front of them. And also that people are going to talk about this show happening. Then strategy wise, you want to set up a really strong, understandable budget, which that's what the demonstration will be. We'll get into that a little bit here, but that'll help you prevent you from making bad deals. Going over budgets. It'll help you know where your money is being spent as the show goes. You want to start by carefully crafting a budget that you can handle and understand that the expenses in categories may change over time, but set yourself up from a really conservative estimation of expenses. The major budget CAP budget categories as far as revenues and expenses go, are going to be the venue side of things, which is the syllable tickets, is your revenue. That's the only way you're going to generate revenue on a show is sellable tickets they have. So keep that in mind. The venue is also going to charge you rent. And if your venue watching this show, That's gonna be your actual staffing costs that you're going to plug in when we use our whiteboard for rent demonstrations. There's gonna be a lot of artists cost to, obviously the fee that you're going to pay the artist is the big one. It's negotiable. But try to set a budget that you can manage and that is in line with your level of artists expectations. Try not to go over this budget. They're going to want to negotiate. They're gonna wanna get the most out of you they can. But set yourself up with a good, solid budget and don't go too far outside of that or else you're going to end up making a bad deal. They also might need some production things in advance. We talked about a DJ equipment or they might need a specific type of amplifier that they can't bring with them. You might have to pay for that stuff upfront. Sometimes they might need some travel or hotels, but that's stuff can be negotiated. It's usually included in the fee, usually not paying for the things that are necessary for them to perform. But again, it depends on the type of artists and depends on the level. There also will be some catering or hospitality needs that are gonna come up for the day of the show. They will tell you what they needed advance, but you can work with them on some things, but some things they have to have. So make sure to keep a little budget for. They have show things. And if a ticket sales do really well, and the artist has requested like champagne. And originally you were thinking you can't, you can't afford to give them champagne, but you only do something nice for them. Just keep in mind that that's something that will change. And if there's more money in the backend for something like that, then you could potentially go into that budget increase or decrease it a little bit, but set out a minimum that you think you'll need to spend. The marketing budget is going to be really, really big. That's where you're going to generate your ticket sales. So you want to set up something that's really, really thought out here. We've talked about it a lot before. Break out your preliminary commitments into categories and areas of spin, Social media, print, radio, flyer, newspapers, stuff like that. Think of how much you might need to spend for different avenues. It's going to change over time. If something's working, you might want to take some out of another bucket and put it into that bucket. But try to lay out something upfront. Understanding social media might be the most of it, but it just depends on the crowd you're going for. It depends on what you wanna do. So set your budgets upfront with your preliminary commitments and having that broken out for one show will help you so much into your second show and third shell and forth show because you'll see what worked, what didn't work, where you spent your money most efficiently. It's really important to keep that. Give a log of what you did for each show. Then if you have the budget or the room, I would set aside some for some special pushes. Again, in traditional means fail and you spent all your money and you're still pretty far behind and where you need to be for ticket sales. You want to have a little bit of backup. You can pull upon to get one last push out there to double down on something that seems to be working. So marketing side of things is gonna be really important. We're going to talk about projections and setting realistic projections in the demonstration. But you need to create a realistic forecast of ticket sales minus all the expenses you know about and your budgeted expenses. It's gonna be so important understanding if doing a show is even possible. It's gonna be important in understanding what budget categories you can move or create more. And especially in the artist's fee area, that's going to move a lot and there's going to be negotiations there. We're going to get into the ticket sales a lot. And ticket prices. Take a look at the ticket prices of similar artists and other shows that the venue you're trying to do your show, et cetera, range of prices that you think compares to those things. If a fan is used to paying $16 at a venue, they're not going to pay 25. If a fan is used to paying $18 for this artist or similar artists, they're not going to pay 30. So don't expect that you can price tickets at whatever you want to make. $1. Makes sure that ticket prices fit in line with what fans are used to paying. People are really price sensitive and they will not buy a ticket if it's outside of their comfort zone. The expenses you're usually flat and they're easily protected upfront. The rent is should be flat. The venue should tell you that upfront. Artist's fee, you should know about the range if you need to move that again with negotiations, we can talk about that. Some things might change and you also want to set up some safety reserves like catering and production. You don't know if you're going to eat any or all of that, but set something up for yourself. Advertising expenses are going to change based on what you actually spent, what you need from, from that. So again, with ticket sales, determine a range of ticket prices that you've seen at the venue. With the maximum being what you really think people would top level like to pay and the minimum thinking that most of you could get away with, the least that you can get away with charging it to get the most turnout for the show. But again, people are very sensitive to ticket prices. The higher even $1, $2 more people are a lot more hesitant to buy the tickets. It's not just the ticket sales and the price of the tickets. People have to commit to going to the show. And we'll talk about that in a sec. But create a projection with the number of tickets sold that you think you can sell. Take a look at what your immediate circle will buy and then the circles outside of that and the marketing avenues and keep going. You where you really think you believe that you can sell this many tickets at a minimum. Again, start, don't overestimate, be realistic. Started at a minimum. You can change things as you need to set budgets, but don't go over an area we're comfortable with and make sure that you are within the realm of reality. Don't make that deals because you, you can sell a show out. You're gonna end up paying too much for artists and it's harder than you think to sell a show out, but it happens and it's great. But just set a realistic projection of tickets sold and then have everything else in line Expense wise fall into place within that and then see where you're at. Then we'll ticket sales again. Buying a ticket means traveling to the show, food and beverages at the show. Maybe a babysitter if their parents. So there's a lot that goes into a night out besides just paying for $112 ticket might seem simple enough, but it's not always that simple. So somebody with less than two or putting on your own show part one. When you have demand or great idea or a need that is being met. Maybe it's time to think about doing your own show. You wanna gather up some capital. First and foremost, you can't really do much without securing commitments in the form of deposits or checks being written ahead of time. So make sure you have capital and the ability to lose that capital in a worst-case scenario, the ability to take a risk and potentially have it not work out. Then you want to have a basic working knowledge of how shadows work with ticket sales and production. And just understand how ticket sales work with the ticketing website and how familiar people are with buying a ticket. Understand state psi, sound lights, things like that, Just working level knowledge, strategy. You want to think about a marketing strategy you could come up with for this artist. Think about the avenues you might want to go down as an independent promoter. You can do whatever you want. Really. As long as the artist, it doesn't portray them in a negative way, you can do whatever you want. So think of something creative, think of something that you can bring to the show. And it's gonna be really helpful and actually selling the show. And if the agent or manager sees that you're doing something that no one else is doing. They're going to love you for doing that set of solid and realistic budget. We're gonna get into that huge, but be realistic and take known expenses and be put in every other safety conservative number you can think of for expenses that you could foresee happening. Then put it all together, ticket sales minus those expenses in a projection format, and then figure out whether you're at a profit or a loss and then go from there. Just put it all together and you'll understand whether on the deal is makes sense to do or if you need to revisit your strategy. And I'll demonstrate that in the white board next. And then we'll jump into part two or less than three and you'll get a whole picture and then we'll dive in, I'm sorry. We'll dive into some of the larger concepts on these things later. Ups next and less than three. Part two, which is dates and finding a show date that works for everyone. Something a lot people don't know about. But coordinating dates, it's kinda difficult. We're talking about a date sometime in the future. Artists have schedules laid out, then you'd have previous interests and dates laid out. So finding a date that works can be complicated. We'll talk about how to confirm a show and what that means. We'll talk about the process of going on sale and the lead up process to the announcement. To talk about graphics and fliers were talking about a marketing push and how that works. And when it comes to the announcement of a show. This is a lot to cover, but these two lessons in particular are going to be the root of putting on your own show. 4. Lesson 2: Budget & Projection demonstration: All right, here we have our first little whiteboard session. I'm going to help demonstrate budgeting projections. We've talked a lot about ticket prices, setting a range. We talked a lot about known expenses. We've talked a lot about budget expenses. And we're going to show you how all that flows and to help set projections and creating budgets that don't put you in a position to make a bad deal. Start with things that we know are that we've researched on. I'd like to start with ticket sales. We're going to keep it simple here. This is going to set up to be 200 capacity venue. We're going to have to ticket types. I'm just going to be advanced and day of show. Alright? Ticket type here. Capacity or cap, amount sold here. Price and gross. Now this is a typical tickets scaling that you'll see at any venue or ticket audit as they call it. But this is simple math here. Sold times price equals gross capacity. Just let you know how many are in each inventory. Again, to ticket types here. First one being general admission or ga. And then the second one will just have day of show price. The day of show pressures, it goes up by a couple of dollars. So this is a 200 capacity venue. We'll leave these alone for now. But you've had that then you set up here. Now we've done some research and we remember that this venue in this artist's typically charges between, let's say, $15.18 for ticket prices. So that's gonna be our range that we want to try to stay in here. This venue. Also, as far as expenses goes, we know that this venue costs $500 in rent, so we'll start with that. So that's the big one that we know about. The rest of them are kinda be estimated expenses based on budgets we've created. Let's start with advertising first. Divi, advertising. Let's say we created a $200 advertising budget. We have it broken out on our commitments and we know where we're going to be spending that money. So we had $200 set up ahead of time. That's how much we think we can sell this show for and how much we have to spend on advertising. Let's also think about some production requirements that might come up down the line. Maybe we might foresee that they need a special microphone or a DJ setup. And we looked around, we can set up $200 budget for the production side of things. And the production. And some of these other things they move and they can change or potentially go away completely. But setting yourself up with these cautionary and conservative estimates on budgets is going to help make you not pay too much for an artist or to not get into a situation where you are losing money. So we're set up snake budgets here. Then the last one, as of at a basic level, we'll talk about some hospitality. Maybe we think there's $100. We have to spend on some additional food and drinks for the band that we think we might need to pay for day of show. So just a very, very simple base level thing. We can see here. We have $1,000 right now of known expenses. So going back and looking at the show, we've done the research in the market. We think for $15 ticket, we can sell, let's see, 120 tickets for this artist. That's based on our market research, are conceived, outreach, our belief in our ability to get the show out there. And again, we want to set the price right now to 15 bucks. So we have those two things set up. We're looking at a 1700's dollar gross. With those things. This is our projection right now. And we also have certain negotiations with the artist for, we also know what we would be willing to pay for certain artists that fits in as 200 capacity venue mold. And let's just say we think we can get an artist for the artists for $1,000. So it's $2,000 right there of expenses. Right now are projected Gross is a 1800's. You don't be a math was to tell what we got here right now, $2,000 of expenses, $1,800 and coming in, that's a loss of $200. So let's take a step back, figure out what can change here and what we might think we need to change in order to get the show sold. Maybe $15 is a little bit too low on the ticket price. Maybe we can hit the same amount of people for $16 on the ticket price, maybe that dollar won't change too much. They've paid similar things to other artists, things like that. So let's say we want to take your price up by $1. We think we can still do that and sell the same amount of tickets. So that changes the gross to 1920. So now we have $1,900 in 2019, $1,920 coming in. And we still have those $2,000 of expenses. That still leaves us with an $80 loss. Now again, we don't want to set up a show that we're already going to be lost at our projection. That just doesn't work, it's not good. So what can we do? Maybe we go back to the advertising. Me, rethink a little bit more money in social media might help us push this ticket sales too. 130 people. So we think we can really do that without over projecting, without getting too optimistic. We think that we can put on $150 in the advertising budget. And so 130 tickets at this ticket price. So we run the numbers and come up with about 2080 as our new grows. So 2080 coming in with the advertising budget going up. We now have $2,050 of expenses. Do the math on that, and now we are at a profit of $30. So this is a good projection to set our budgets. Figure out where you can breakeven. Don't, don't assume there's gonna be a huge profit on the backend. Figure out what your projection is at a realistic number and base your budget on that. Don't over project. Don't start moving this artist fee up too much and move your projection just to meet the artists V in the middle. Make sure you really feel like this is the right number of projected tickets sold and determine what your break-even point is. So this is the goal hundred and 30 breaking even on your first show or for second show is a huge win. So keep that in mind. So 130 sold is the goal right now with this advertising plan in place, maybe the production number goes down. Maybe you don't end up spending money on production at all. Maybe the hospitality goes, goes down a little bit. So these things could move, but they're set up now for a safe number two, where if you hit this and these go down, you're making even more money. And then anything over this is just profit to you. So this is the goal with this advertising budget and these things set in place, Don't let the artist negotiate this too high because it's going to make you either move the ticket price up or increase your projections. But if you don't feel comfortable increasingly projections don't do it. And ticket price needs to stay reasonable. So it's a balance here and make sure that these expenses don't get too high and you're not over projecting the show or exit ticket price up to high. Make sure that everything's in line and everything feels like it's balanced to get what your break-even point is. Anything over that number is just profit to you. So this is an example of budgeting projections and how it all works. Set this up and then similarly, break out your advertising costs into much more detail. Commitments, amount spend, amount spent, and potential movements like decreasing certain things, increasing certain things. This advertising budget is going to have a whole life of its own outside of just this. But it's important to lay these things out ahead of time. 5. Lesson 3: Putting on your own show Part 2: Rolling right into lesson three here, which is the second part of the basics of putting on your own show. This lesson is going to be after you've made a deal with the artists based on the budget we just talked about Steve suck within that range of artists fees and you've really found a good deal. That's a sweet spot with your ticket sales projections, things like that. So we're going to talk about how to discuss and coordinate show dates. And the show date discussion kinda goes along with at the same time as the negotiations do. They likely won't talk about dates with you on this. You know that you guys both know that you can come together on a deal. But the artist's date is gonna be the most important and then the venue date you want to make sure that is available to. We'll talk about how to get to show confirmed and what that means. Usually means commitments from you for both sides, the venue and the artists to secure their commitment to that date. But show confirmation happens when the deal gets agreed to and the date gets screened to your confirmed Industry Language for it's going to happen. Then we'll talk about going on sale with the show. What you need to prep for, what you need to get together, graphics flyers, your marketing setup, and the ticketing part of it, which is actually more complicated than it sounds. We'll get into all of that. Start with dates. Think about when your preferred date is. You don't want to reach out and try to get a show done too soon or too far out in advance. The sweet spots generally two to four months. Sometimes with tours and artists, they can be working on those a year or so in advance. But I've seen a show being booked with two weeks lead or four weeks lead. It's really just depends on the level of artists or what they may be working on. You want to see if the artist is available around that timeframe or when they have availability in that timeframe and throw out a big window maybe or just say fall, figure out when they're available around a timeframe. Their availability is gonna be the first priority. Nothing can happen without the artist. The artist may be recording in the entire fall and winter of this year. You just don't know. But if they have touring plans and you reach out, they're available. Say you live in Austin and an artist is working on a tour in the fall and there have something scheduled in San Antonio and something scheduled in Houston. And Austin is right in the middle and you're reaching out at a perfect time. They're putting a tour together. And they would love to come play a show in Austin. It's going to work in your favor. So there's a lot that could be moving in the artist's camp. But by reaching out, you either can luckily land in a time where they're trying to put a tour together or you put your show out there for their consideration. And then when they do put a tour together, they're going to want to come to you and go to that city. So determined when they're available, that's gonna be what your work off point is. If you have a preference on the dates within the artist availabilities, let them know why. Maybe there's a special function going on. Maybe you can align some marketing within the town or city or group of friends within some sort of date. If it's important for the marketing of a show, they likely want to hear it. And then you wanted to go to the venue availability, see if they have anything confirmed or booked. There may be some previous interests reserved on those dates. Will talk a little bit about a hold system in the advanced course, but people reach out and kinda put holds on dates and they get listed in order and the date they were received. But even if you're a fifth down on the list, if you're ready to go with the show, you could just skip all the other ones and get that show down on that date. So if they're available, check with them the venue, and mark their availability and just try to align the two. So again, this second part is going to be assuming that the deal is already done. You've negotiated the artist fees, it fits it up within your budget, you're comfortable with it. And then you just got the date agreed to, then confirmed. The deal is done with both sides, the venue and the artist dates done, you are confirmed. Fantastic. They'll usually follow up with contracts or agreements to get something in writing from you, from an artist side, depending on their level of representation, they might send you a contract or some agreement that they want you to sign, usually involves a deposit. Deposits can be anywhere from 20% to 50%, can be 100%. Sometimes with new promoters or relatively new promoters, you really need to give them 50% deposit or whatever it is they're asking for to earn trust. They're gonna wanna make sure you're serious about the show. Artists get people who aren't serious to reach out all the time and people just hate that. A waste of time. If you're serious about it, you should have the capital we've talked about. You should have the commitments, you should have, the confidence, you should have all these things lined up. And if you're serious about it, you should be able to send a deposit. And that is also works both ways. That's them saying we're taking this money, but we're going to play the show. They can't take the money and not play the show unless there's some sort of contractual thing that isn't being met or happened and whatever else. But the deposit is also them saying we agree to play the show by receiving the deposit. We won't get into too much of the contractual legal East and everything here. But just understand and I'll help you work through it. But just understand that you're not just paying money without commitments on both sides. Um, then you also usually need some sort of good faith deposit in order to reserve that date for you. The venue is taking a risk, just like the artist is taking a risk here and giving you that night in their venue to put on a show when they likely could have other otherwise have had a show and made money from the show. So if you go to a venue and you have a show and a week before something happens, it gets canceled and they don't have a deposit. They can't put another show on. They're going to lose money by not having a show that night. So they take a risk by bringing you on to put on a good show in their room. Just like an artist has risk to, they're going to pay for things upfront. They have travel costs, they have a lot of things. So that deposit you're sending is going to help alleviate their risk too. So once you get the date, confirm the deal, confirm things like that. You want to talk about the announcement and the on sale dates. The artists usually has a first choice of preference. They can sometimes be putting up a tour announcement, kinda like we talked about with the San Antonio, Austin, Houston reference. They might want to get your San Antonio de or your Austin date locked in before they announced the tour. So they say, Please don't announce yet, Let's get these things locked up and they might have a tour fly or they want to update or something. So yeah, determine the announcement of a show and let the artist's guide you on that. If they say you can go up whenever you want with it, great. But give yourself a few days to prepare. Don't try to put it up for sale tomorrow. There's a lot that needs to be done before it goes on sale as we'll get into here. And usually they're on sale or the announcement and the onset or a few days apart, you generate some buzz in-between the two dates. It can be same day if you really are excited to put it out there, but usually you put an announcement up and then people talk about it and then it goes on sale, then people buy tickets that day. But we'll talk about all of that and strategy. So as far as the advertising material and the graphics used for the show, you want to only use the artists supplied material when you get to show confirm and you're talking about the announcement of a show. Ask them for any approved Advertising assets, marketing material they have, they'll send you either like a electronic file or everything you need to create your own flyers, your own videos, your own graphics. So you want to take that using only on what they provided. Take that and add your own information about the show location, date-time, how to buy tickets, where things like that, but don't do too much of the flyer. Don't add another person in the background. Don't change the color, leave it as is, just add the information that's important. If you want to add some support bands, that's maybe okay, but make sure their words and the font aligns with what the artists use. Either way, you're going to have to get your version of proved by the artist as well. So you can try and slide by whatever you want in it, but I can tell you it, keep it simple. Keep it clean. Make sure you're honoring whatever the artists sent you and its true form, and then send it back to them for approval. They have to approve whatever it is you use to market the show. This is a part of taking care of the artists than them trusting you to market the show respectful way. If an artist doesn't drink and you create some sort of GIF where they're drinking a beer, they're gonna, they're gonna probably cancel the show. It's very important that you're honoring whatever the artists images and likenesses are that they give you. If you want to use something, get their approval first. Don't just start using things or start writing quotes for them or start putting things out there. Make sure that you are transparent with the artists in any of the marketing material you use, especially the actual show flyer, that's gonna be really important. They have some approved artwork or they've worked really hard on this presentation of an image for this tour show. So just work with them. Be transparent. Go with what they give you. While you're working with that, with the graphics and all the marketing material, keep the venue aware of the dates. And you want, because the venue is going to be building the event within their ticketing website and their actual venue website. This is really important. You have to get a ticket link that comes from the venue event. Build a webpage. This ticket link is the digital ticket link that you're going to be putting on everything that you market the show with. So keep the venue up-to-date on all the important announcement and on sale dates and the times. Usually doesn't move too much once you guys determine what it is, let the venue No. The venue is going to send you a ticket link after you've told them what the the announcement and on sale dates are, what the announcement on cell times are and what you've given them, all of the approved flyers and marketing material. The venue will send you a ticket link. Again that you're going to use with all of your online and digital advertising. Ticket links. Very important. The artists also needs the ticket link to, because they want to put that ticket link on all of their online. Let's do then you want to set up all of your own marketing materials using those approved flyers and graphics. This is outside of what the venue has built and what started outside of what the artist is going to push out to their people, print fliers, scheduled posts, do anything that you think might help between the announcement of the show and the on sale. If you want to start a little bit of advertising money in that timeframe, great. Whatever you wanna do, just prep for some sort of cool announcement or buzzy on sale or, or try to roll it out in a really, really fun way. Again, ticket links can be important here. Anything digital, put the link in there. Make it as simple as possible for people to buy tickets to the show. And then as you are getting close to these on sale dates, even at the on sale, document, all your strategies and your execution dates with your marketing. I can't stress enough how important an advertising plan and a documented commitment schedule is for the advertisement of a single show, but also all your future shows. Two, if you spent $500 on them on sale campaign and it didn't do anything. You want to know that it didn't go well, don't do that again. Write it down, keep some sort of spreadsheet with dates and the wording you used and everything. A part of announcement non sales marketing starts as soon as the show gets announced and it doesn't stop until the show plays. So just keep in mind the marketing strategy we talked about and the commitments that we broke out. So got the date confirmed. The deal has been agreed to. Everybody has the flyers and graphics. The venue has the ticket link to you. The artist is ticket link. The show got announced and it went on sale. Very first show. Maybe not, but let's just say it's your very first show. Congratulations, that's the process. But the hard work starts. Managing your show. It can be difficult. We'll get into that later. But you did it somewhere less than three. Get the dates from the artists first after you've made the deal. Or at the same time, artists dates of the most important thing. Without them, there's no show and maybe they're just not available. Maybe they're busy, maybe they broke up. I don't know, but it'll it'll determine things pretty early on whether or not you're going to have a show or whether our show is possible or whether it shows gonna be next year. And maybe it's time to look for a different show to do near term artists dates and most important. After you've confirmed the deal and found the date you've worked on the announcement and the onset date. You've got graphics and the artist asset materials all set up with your venue, name, your time, your ticket buying location, all set up on all your flyers. You have the ticket link and all your digital advertisement. It's in your websites and your Facebook events. And you've set up all your promotional sites and avenues for the announcement with your social media or whether it's radio or anything like that, you've set it all up and you've had a really good announcement and on sale. Up next in lesson four, we're going to take a step back and talk about risk. Risk is a really important concept and understanding why this business operates the way that it does. Now as the independent promoter, you have a lot of risk, but so does the venue and so does the artist. And I'll explain those risks and I'll explain how, what you can do to help alleviate those risks and he's their concerns. But also what you can ask from them to help alleviate your risk to risk is the reason for each way, each for the way each transaction between the venue artists, promoter operates the way that it does. And everybody works together to alleviate risk. And it will help you understand why people are asking things of you and also help you get ahead of potential future concerns. Just understanding the risk involved by each side. You can take care of their concerns before they even become a problem. 6. Lesson 4: RISK: Alright, lets him for this lesson is about risk. And I'm not talking about the board game. I devoted a whole lesson to risk because it's the primary driver of why everybody interacts the way that they do. This business is risky and until the show plays off and it's done, everybody is at risk. First, we'll talk about the promoter risk. That's gonna be you in this scenario. Obviously the financial risk for you is pretty big. You've put out capitals, everybody. You've paid for expenses ahead of time. You've put money into marketing. There's a lot of financial risk here. There's also reputational risk and that's the same for everybody here. If you start to do a show and you completely screw somebody over, you will likely not be able to do a show with that venue or a promoter, or sorry, the agent or the band again, or potentially other agents or other bands. You want to make sure you're careful with managing concerns here. That's the name of the game is risk equals concern. Manage their concerns about the artists risk too. So you can understand why you're getting asked to do things and what the artist might be risking as far as showing up at the venue. And it'll help you understand what they need to know. The artists also as risking their reputation and their presentation. They're very, very careful about how they present themselves to their fans and the interactions between fans and their shows. The promoter needs to take care of that. Then we'll talk about venue risk. Mainly financial here, but the venue also wants to keep a reputation of having good, good crowd experiences, good shows, successful knights, smooth operations. So the venue has a reputational risk as well. Promote a risk is a big one and that's the main focus of this course. Taking on the responsibility of a show is a risk. Again, you are at the center of everything here. The venues coming to you with their problems and concerns. The artist is coming to you with their concerns to the center of it. You've also put up a lot of money for the show and you have expenses that you're continuing to pay for as the show goes on, you are financially at-risk the most in this scenario likely. But as long as you've budgeted well and you have the capital to take the risk, those financial concerns shouldn't be a problem. And you should focus on alleviating the concerns over the other parties. That should be your main goal. And once the show gets put on sale, it's getting ahead of concerns. Understanding why people are asking this of you. Going from there. You're going to do full commitment to alleviate and address any concern of heightened risks from either the venue or the artist. Aka, make sure they don't have a reason to get worried or concerned that something isn't being addressed. It's okay to not think of everything upfront. But if a concern is brought to you, make sure you're handling it with proper attention. You also add the most to gain likely in profit. We're not talking about an arena show or someone's making $1 million a night. We're talking about a smaller scale up and coming show. Those artists are usually just make it enough to cover their expenses and to play show and gain their, their fanbase. They usually make more money off the merch table, to be honest with you. So if a show sells out, you certainly likely will gain the most profit good for you. You put a lot of work in. But your reputation here as a professional and hard-working will go very far. Just the same as if it goes really badly. You might not be able to do a show in that venue, or the artist or the agency or any agency ever again, if it goes well, things are going to start rolling for you. Then he's going to want you back, the agent and their roster of bands or the agency. Or you can use that shows an example to take to another artist at a different agency and say this show was great. Didn't explain how well it went and they would want to come to you to play their show. They'll give you preference over other promoters to. If you are competing against another promoter or a venue has an in-house talent buyer that they're trying to get the shelf from you, but you've done a show just recently with one of their other bands or a similar band, you could get preference because of how well you took care of the show and how well the show did. So in terms of the venue side, we've talked about a little bit before, but they likely are ideally, then you would have a show every night of the week that makes money. The venue pays for their lights, they pay for everything, and with their clothes, they're just losing money. They want to have a show every night if they could. They are letting you use there room for a show that they expect to make money from you are giving them deposit and paying their rent to help alleviate that risk. But that's what they need from you to alleviate their risk of not having a show on that night. The venue also pays for their costs upfront. They have a lot of costs. They pay for production staff, they pay for catering, ticketing. They are all paid for by the venue until the final amount or whatever amount over and above the rent you paid a deposit and you paid, gets paid back to them. Consider their risk during every interaction. Also, the crowd experience at the venue is really important to them. They want everybody that walks through their doors to have a good positive time. And if the band or somebody at the show or another artists that you've put on the lineup treats a fan poorly. They're going to assume it's the venue. They don't they don't know. They're just going to equate not having a good time with that venue. Venue doesn't want that. So they expect you to be professional, attentive, caring, thoughtful, and taking care of the venue, standpoint, fan experience. The artists risk here is a little bit more complicated and nuanced. I guess. They are putting their show and their lived experience from the fan perspective in your hands. Especially as a new or unestablished promoter. They don't know what type of show you put on. They don't know how you present shows. They don't know what you know about venues. They expect that you will take care of their concerns and treat their fans like they would. People are very, very artists are very, very particular in their fan experience. If the ticket price or someone tries to sell them a ticket off the street, that's 50 bucks. The artist is gonna be like, How did this happen that my fans won't pay, that, they shouldn't pay that this doesn't make sense. So just be aware of that. It's weird. But even though they're really big level, artists listened to their fans, whether it's like social media comments or e-mails or things like that. Somehow fan experiences always get back to artists and they get extremely upset when their fans go through some sort of trouble. Then again, financially speaking, just like the venues and the promoter, the artists will pay for their own expenses leading up to the show. You've given them a deposit that helps them a little bit. But there's likely a lot of travel involved. There's other band members, there's gear rentals, there's a new guitar strings. There's a lot of expenses being on the road and even ended up becoming level, especially there's not a lot of profit to be made. They're just trying to build their audience so they have a financial risk for the show not happening or showing up and the show not happening because they've already spent all that money. So keep that in mind. And this is a big point to if because of their reputational risk, if something contractually is not met, that's a really large thing, a deal breaker, than they can back out of a show for breach of contract and get paid. So make sure again, contract stuff is important. We'll get into a lot of that later, but they are very particular about how they're presented and how their show goes. It doesn't happen often is not a, not a huge concern as long as you're paying attention to the major parts of the contract. But either way, just give them no reason to be concerned. That's the name of the game here. Get ahead of any potential risk areas or areas of concern are things that you might foresee us problems. Be transparent, be upfront with both the venue and the artists is things that you might not see that they can meet. Yeah, it's the best thing you can do and people really appreciate your, your upfront NUS about it. That's a little bit about risk. Just wanted to touch on that to help you understand why you may be answering all these questions that seem unimportant. You're gonna get a lot of things because there's just concern on both sides. You have concern too, and you have the ability to get your risk alleviated by both parties to as the promoter, you're in charge of managing the venue and the artists concerns, you do have the most financial risk likely at this point because you are spending money to alleviate their risk financially. But money and reputation is what you stand to gain. And in this business, reputation is the biggest currency. Getting a couple of goods shows under your belt, successful shows will be huge and growth. Show that you can be a trustworthy partner in the market with that venue, with that agency, with that type of band. Each show builds you trust, and that'll get you really, really far in this business. Your name is probably one of the most important things you can have in this business. Showing that you're a hard worker and honest and transparent, and caring is just a really big part of it. So just keep that in mind when we're talking about risk, do your best to alleviate the concerns of everybody else. And it's gonna be a great night. Up next in lesson five, we're going to talk about finding the right artist and understanding the deal. Let's talk about how to reach out to an agency or representative. What to look out for. We'll go a little bit into that negotiation side of things. We'll talk about how to proceed when sending an offer will talk about the different fee structures and the guarantee breakdowns not at a really advanced level. Again, we're just talking basics here. Let's talk about artists, writers, things they send you in advance after show gets confirmed saying we need these things to happen at our shows. They can send them to you before the show gets confirmed. If there are potential costs included in those things. But just show requirements in general, hospitality and production wise. And then we'll talk a little bit about filling out a lineup. Other artists on the bill, other things going on that night. So we'll talk about the artist's side of the show. 7. Lesson 5: Finding an artist and making a deal: Alright, let's dive into less than five. Less than five, we're going to be talking about how to find an artist and making a deal and some other important show considerations. First topic will be contacting an artist or their representative through whatever means you can. The next topics can be a little bit more about the artist fees and the guarantees and the offers. Those are what the differences are. A little bit more about those. Then we'll talk about what the artists sends along after the deal is accepted. And I'll get into detail on their riders or their show requirements technical writer and their full writer. And then we'll go cover other lineup issues and show running. We'll talk about how to fill up, fill out a line up, some things, some strategies involved with that. So you can typically find an artist contact through their socials are websites. If you look hard enough, there's some sort of person or mailing address that you can send an email to. Start there. If you follow up enough times or if you've seem serious enough, they will forward it to where it needs to go or someone will see it eventually. Don't get your hopes down or lose hope if things don't get replied to quickly. A lot of times they takes a while to change hands. But when you reach out, let them know that you're interested in doing a show. And be professional, be polite, be respectful. Let them know that you want to be a partner in the market. You are a huge fan and you believe they have a bright future. Expressed excitement, excitement and confidence in yourself and your show and your ability to put on a great show for them. But don't lie or over-promise. Make sure you're being genuine. You don't want to lose credibility by making over the top statements or promises. In this business, people can smell lies or disingenuous and they won't take you seriously if you throw out crazy claims. So just make sure you're being honest and being realistic about what you wanna do. But expressed excitement, express confident, it's expressed some great ideas you have. Any fandom will go a long way as well. But be persistent and make sure you follow up with very polite checking in on this kind of follow-ups. You'll get through some redirects and stuff, but eventually hopefully you'll get to the right person. Keep in mind that if you're new or you don't have a reputation or history, they may just go fishing or seem dismissive. They like dealing with people who are proven or who they know or who they can trust. It's just a muscle memory thing. And if you're new, you might need to fight through some of this dismissively and some of the shoeing away. But to keep in mind that they're not likely to take a chance or risk on something that they don't know what it is. But your follow-ups and your emails will be really important to let them know how serious you are and how legitimate urine to take this. When searching for an artist and talking to an agent or manager or the band themselves. They're gonna look for how serious you are. That's something they can gauge from your professionalism, from your experience in doing this. And hopefully by taking this course, you can know what you're talking about. They ultimately are interested in how much money you, you'd offer. Keep in mind that as a new promoter, it might take a little bit more than an established promoter on your end, a little bit more of an offer or money to start a reputation and to build trust. But don't throw out an exorbitant amount of money just to get a show, they likely will take that as a sign of you don't know what you're doing as far as you don't understand the market and what the span is typically used to getting paid. And if you are willing to pay that much money for the band, you must not know a lot about how to how this industry all works. The bad knows what size venue they are typically playing out. They know what sort of fees they can expect by touring. Take a look at the ticket sales of their previous shows with the ticket prices that are previous shows, the sizes of those venues, can take a look at your budget again, understand how that those finances might fit in. You can get a pretty good range of how much people get paid by just taking a look at some of the old, the old shows they do. Now when starting a conversation with an artist, you're either talking to an agent. An agency might be talking to management, which can be a Gmail address, or it can be an actual management company, or it's the artists themselves. And either way you want to approach the conversation in the same way. Be professional, be genuine, be excited. Don't over-promise. Understand that there is an expectation out there and how big they are and the size of the venues and be realistic with them. But express confidence in your ability to do the show. Let them know you have some exciting marketing thing is it's all the same kind of conversation. Sometimes when you're talking to them and they don't yet have plans, but they want to work with you when they do, they might just cut to the chase and asked for an offer with a venue that you had in mind. We call these mutually agreeable offers. And that means you send them an offer to be determined on a mutually agreeable date. Um, a lot of times the way they work is they have a filing cabinet with cities listed or markets listed. And if you send them an offer with a date That's TBD in your market, they'll put you in that file. And when they go to tool or go to look at doing shows, they'll pull all the offers they had in that market and they might contact you again when they're ready to tour. So that's also okay to send just as kind of intention to work with them at some point, the offer can change and maybe they're bigger by the time they go tour and they need a new offer or something different, but at least they let you let you let them know that you're serious. And if they choose to come, you're willing to pay them this much money. So when we talk about the offer or the guarantees are the fees are all really the same thing, just different terms and it kinda refer to the different payment structures. These are usually a flat fee. Can just be a, I'll pay you this much money to come play a show. Don't worry about expenses or ticket sales. Just here's here's the amount of money I'll pay you. Guarantees can include some other earnings as in I guarantee that you'll make at least this much money. However, there might be some additional money to be earned. An offer as a full breakdown of earnings and show expenses. You don't need Show need to show show expenses on any sort of deal sheet. But if you do, that means that you're going to need to prove those show expenses are real, especially if they're additional earnings are based on a profit split after those expenses. I'll give you an example. If you send them an offer and how shallow expenses of production equipment for $500. When you get to the show. And their payment is based on the ticket sales minus the show expenses and they get 30% of that profit. They're going to wonder where that $500 you said you're going to spend went. You need to have invoices that back that up or else they're going to say that that expense doesn't need to be here. Let's work on the profit without that expensive. But if you did spend that money, you're going to want to take that money back before you start splitting up profit. So keep that in mind if you're, if you're gonna put show expenses on an offer and their money is contingent upon those show expenses being deducted, then you're gonna need to prove all of those show expensive and that's true for advertising, rent, catering, and production. So keep that in mind. Now, I'll quickly talk about the amount of money that an artist can make and the types of deals you can expect. There's flat deals that should the easiest, as I mentioned there before, but the fees, just straight flat. There's profits and earning splits. That's kinda based on some after expenses things. You can sometimes deduct a $1,000 in total expenses and then you split the profit from that point. After they get paid, some sort of guaranteed. There are bonuses that you can add in. Say they hit a bonus after 100 tickets sold, they get another $500 or $2 per ticket sold. Bonus incentivizes the artist to want tickets to be sold. And I think you can do that incentivizes them without breaking the bank and the budget category is really good. It gives them vested interests in the shows performance and it helps you out. It's also door deals. That's really just splitting the ticket sales. 60405050, something like that. That's usually involves a zero money up front, but a 5050 split them and ticket sales. Sometimes it can be a little bit of a fee and then a split on ticket sales, 70, 30, something like that. Again, you have your budget setup, you have your projections, you know what kind of deal you can make. But keep in mind that artists generally do not share in any risk or loss or downside. They won't show loses money if the expenses and being more than ticket sales, they won't take less money. It's not how the deal works for the artist or the venue. The they get promised a certain amount of money because they put up expenses to play the show or to put the show on. So keep that in mind. But again, as you're making these deals and determining splits and profitability and incentivizing the artist and ticket sales and bonuses. If it gets to be too much risk or the projections in the budget's just don't make sense anymore. Don't be afraid to walk away from the show. Live to fight another day. Don't go outside your comfort zone as far as risk goes. And truthfully, walking away from Michelle is the biggest leverage you have. If they feel like you're going to keep giving them money when they ask and going up on your offer, they're just gonna keep going. There's been a lot of times where I said I wouldn't grow up on an offer and Ali will pass them to show or say, I'm not interested in going up. I understand. If you choose not to go in different direction or go in a different direction. And then a couple of days later, they'll call me wanting to do my show. They're gonna negotiate like they have a ton of other offers and they're going to keep bidding you up, but don't be afraid to walk away. Finding another show and contributing or putting your money in a different bucket that seems less risky, is much better than taking a huge risk and losing all of the money you had to start with. So keep that in mind. Don't be afraid to walk away. It's a long game here. You want to get a couple of shows under your belt, but make good deals while you do them. After you get the deal done and the show is confirmed and you have the contracts and things like that. We're going to talk about the artists, writers and some of their requirements. The first one is the technical rider. That is their production requirements. And with that comes, the first and most important thing is they're Stage Plot. The stage plot is an aerial shot of the stage. And it has where each band member or musician is located in the instrument they're playing and the equipment they need to set it up. It'll say, here's Mike on lead guitar. He's got his pedal board in front of him. He needs three auxiliary inputs for his station, and it goes that way across the whole band. In addition to the stage plot, there's an input list that should be accompanying that. It explains how many auxiliary ports seem to come on the stage. That's just a baseline of what's important. 8. Lesson 5: Finding an artist and making a deal part 2: They're also going to lay out kind of a wishlist for their preferred sound system. And there are minimum requirements. It might sound like this is something they must have, but this is, again, just a wishlist. This band has played in plenty of venues before. They've played with sound systems that aren't their ideal. You'll have the venue specs in hand as well. We'll talk about that in the next section, but the venue will send you what they do have in house and then use pudding on regional bands or national bands. Likely what they have in house is just fine. But there's a way you can double-check that you can send the the venue technical aspects to the band or the band wrap or the agent. And they'll make sure that that's okay for them. But keep in mind, this is a wishlist by no means a deal breaker pro tip. As a food as it goes with food, there's usually a buyout option that kind of explains what each band and crew member needs per person and a monetary figure to take care of their meals for the day. That way you don't have to deal with it. Getting meals for everybody's gonna be a problem and then who doesn't have it in house or you just a lot of logistics to figure out, go with the bad option. It's going to make your life a lot easier when it comes to running the show. Again, this is all a wishlist, too sparse or drink requirements go. They might want five bottles of liquor. I don't know, but if it's just doesn't make sense for the size of the artists and the venue itself. Just say not in the budget. We can talk about some contractual management and some of the contract language. But you have the ability to negotiate that stuff. You can strike through or explain. There's no budget for this. You want them to have a good time. You want them to be comfortable, but at the same time, make sure whatever you're giving to them is reasonable and fits the venue and fits where they are as a band. Sometimes the venue just cannot accommodate certain requests. Like I said, with the shower situation, a lot of the smaller venues just don't have showers. So yeah, just keep that in mind. Just be upfront. Make sure communicating what the venue can do to what the artists and the band is expecting. That way there no surprises they have shown. If they're expecting things and they're not there, they're going to be surprised and it might just cause some uncomfortableness with you as a promoter. So some of the things to think about when you're putting together a show. You typically are negotiating for just the headliner. And if they're touring, maybe they have support at touring with them. They might need a little bit of money from you to pay for the support act that they're touring with. And you can work that into your budget, determine how many more ticket sales that might generate for you. But if they aren't and you need to supply local bands or some sort of acts to fill out the night. Make sure you keep it simple. Don't do too much with opening acts. Don't put an eight piece band on that has some sort of violinist. Make sure you're keeping with the energy and the spirit of the headliner. Make sure they're self-sufficient. Make sure that they can break their own stuff down, set their own stuff up. They're going to stay clear of the green room. They won't bother the headline or too much. They're gonna be professional with the venue staff and especially the headlining band staff. And most importantly, thanks for that the headliner or their representative approves them. It's their show. That's what you really are paying for. So make sure you get everything approved. And so everybody is aware of what's happening that day. Also, local bands or support acts can be a really useful marketing tool. If there's a local band that wants to play the show and then do it for free. Fantastic, Great, Fine. Find a way to get them on, try to get them approved. And as long as you feel like they fit the show. If there's a local band that you might need to pay a little bit of money for, but they had sold 100 tickets to a different shows on their own. That's really big. Maybe you can find some budget for that. Take a look at projections, determine how much they add to the show. See if there's some money that you can pay for them for that. But they can be really useful marketing tool to get out there. So that was the summary of lesson, that was lesson five. Funding into contact with the artists. Just scour their websites, social media, start with whatever you can find. They might forward, you redirect, you. Just be persistent and be professional. Be honest, straightforward. I'm excited but not overconfident or lying. Deemed to build trust as new promoter. Expressed confidence in what you're doing and having dialogue that is realistic about the bands current state and what their long-term goals are really important for bands. Agents, managers, make sure you are being realistic about it. Again. If you start making ridiculous claims, are going to lose credibility. Invest in being a long-term partner with the band. They're going to want that sort of spirit. It's a long game for bands to. They want to play the market, sell out, show, find the next bigger than you sell that out. They want to keep touring and growing slowly. Maybe it happens overnight and they get huge, it happens. But for a lot of bands, it's a long game and they want you to be a partner. They want to know that you can market their show and then they'll call you the next time they come and want to play bigger. But being a partner with them is a big key attitude to have. We talked about artists fees. What's your budget? Are you able to add a bonus? Is there a fee structure? Is there some profitability? We talked about show expenses and making sure that if you're including them in the profit splits at the end, that you can prove all these show expenses and that you're willing to show receipts basically be willing to walk away if the show is becoming too risky or if they're asking for too much money, you have your projections. You're not going too far out of that. And if it just becomes too much, just walk away or put your foot down and say this is the most I can offer. As I said, a lot of times what happens is they call you a couple of days later wanting to do the show. Work with them within reason, but don't go too far out of your comfort zone. Talked about some riders. We've talked about production rider, travel writer, hospitality rider, and show requirements. Review them all very thoroughly and communicate what cannot be done. Sometimes the venue just cannot do it. Sometimes it's not in the budget or just makes no sense for the size and type of show you're trying to do. But communicate what can't be done, so they know what to expect when they arrive. Then any additional lineup considerations should be carefully considered. Don't create a headache for yourself. Don't overdo it with the number of bands. Make sure that anything you are doing gets approved by the headliner before you put any flyers out or tell bands or local bands to go ahead and announce that they're on the show. Local bands are great for these types of shows. If we're talking about small-scale stuff, they have a lot of grassroots marketing as long as they are fit a similar crowd to what you're trying to do as the headliner, they should be a huge marketing asset if you can find them in less than six, we're going to flip it all into the venue. If you're an independent promoter, this is important. If you're a musician, this is important because you might make deals directly with venues. And if you're a venue, this is important because this is what you're going to need to sell yourself on to those people as well. Important venue aspect. We've talked about capacity a lot, stage aspects and in-house production. We've also touched on that quite a bit. We're going to talk about the artists experience at the venue. Making sure the artist is going to have a good experience. And it's smooth day. We're going to talk about rent costs. What is included in rent costs, and what you can look for that might not be included. And we'll talk about additional services that have venue might be able to offer. Again, if your venue, this is helpful. But you can be a partner with the venue in the show. They could be a helpful resource for you as well. So up next and less than six. 9. Lesson 6: Finding a venue and making a deal: Lesson six here. And this lesson is going to be about finding a venue and understanding the deal. Now when you're looking for a venue, There's important venue aspects to consider. First one being capacity, how big it is. We'll get into that and talk about stage aspects and the in-house production that they have to talk about the artists experience at the venue. Make sure it's going to be a good show and they're going to enjoy themselves. They're talking about rent costs, what is included, what isn't included, and any additional services, if any, might offer that might save you some money or ease some of your advertising pushes. Capacities, a big one. The larger the venue is, the higher the capacity, however, that's also the higher the rent. Syllable capacity is the only way to earn revenue. There's a strategy involved here where you don't want to overshoot the capacity and assume you can sell 1,000 tickets to abandoned. Never sold more than 150 or 200 tickets. You want to try to find the biggest venue you can find. That will get you to sell out a show. Don't overdo it with the capacity and pay a lot in rent. I'm assuming that you can do something huge for the show if they settled a small venue, Great. Take the wind. Move on to a bigger venue next time they come around, don't assume that you have the secret sauce that's going to sell out a venue and put yourself in a position to take a big risk on a huge venue with a high rent cost. But the same time syllable, capacity is your only source of income. So find a sweet spot. If a band is used to selling 250 tickets, they might not want to play and take a risk playing to a room of venue that holds 800 people. If they sell 250 tickets, that room is going to look empty. They don't want to play to that room. So they might want to stick to 200 and just sell that out. So keep that in mind to it. Don't try to sell them on a larger venue because it's going to look empty. Bands don't like playing to empty rooms. We'll talk about the venue ticketing, the ticketing platform, that ticketing outlet they use. Is it something that is easily workable from people trying to buy tickets online? Do they provide printed tickets? Have you been to a show there where there has been an issue with the ticketing, does it all seemed legitimate to you? Is it an outlet that you're familiar with, Ticketmaster Eventbrite? Just things to consider. Also, a big one is ticket prices. We've talked about a budget ranges research. You should know by this point what a venue typically charges and what do fans pay for similar shows? Find out what the venue typically charges if it's a seeded venue, for instance, they might charge more for their tickets. That's gonna help price your fans for this show. You probably don't want to do your show there unless it's a seated type show and that works. But keep that in mind. People are very sensitive to prices. You want to charge what you think people will pay without going too high. The less you charge, the more tickets you're going to sell, the more you add onto that, the more hesitant people will be there. Super sensitive to ticket prices, even $1.02 dollars could put people off the fence, so to speak. You also want to dive into what's included in the ticket prices. Go to checkout for a show, for instance, and see what sort of fees they're charging you on top or what's included then ticket prices, taxes, any sort of facility fee. Sometimes venue charges charges a facility fee which is a two-dollar, sometimes two, sometimes less fee that comes off the ticket price that goes straight to the venue to cover their lights and Electric and things like that. So keep in mind what you're getting. You don't want to assume that you've priced ticket at $20 when you're actually only getting $17.20 of that 20 because there's taxes and there's facility fees. So take a look at that. Don't get surprised by that you can lose a lot of money there. We've talked about the venue and their production stuff. You've been in this venue before, you know, lower the stage is how high it is, you know, where it's located. You know that the stage is appropriate for what you're trying to do. You don't want to put a six piece band on a stage where there's only ever been a DJ and a microphone, make sure that the venue is appropriate stagewise and arrangement wise. You've looked at their sound and lights. Maybe you have the specs in front of you and you determine that the sound and lights are really good quality. But you've also been to a show and you've seen them in action and it's really great. It's a fun experience. Sound is fantastic. They have mesophiles, they have repeaters, they know what they're doing with sound. The venue should have a full technical breakdown of their equipment and fear of venue watching this. Get that together, it's going to help sell your venue on promoters wanting to pay you rent. But the venue should have a list of the stuff they have in-house. I'm there lighting rigs and how many of them move and things like that. Familiarize yourself with this as much as you can, but you don't need to be an expert. Just kind of keep in mind what they listed that they do have. And if you're working with the band and that works for them and they loved the equipment. Keep that in mind. Say okay, this man love this equipment. Maybe this is good equipment. I'll try. I trust this to go for other shows. Artists experienced that the venue is really important. This ties into the artist taking a risk by coming to the venue and playing the show. This ties into taking care of the artist. This ties into building trust with the artist and the agency. Think about their experience parking. Think about how their entrances to the venue. If I've had it happened, but I knew about it ahead of time. But their van and trailer have to park on this day at the double parked on a busy street, walk inside a bar, go up the stairs and through a hallway to get to the stage. And that's how they had to load in all their gear. They knew about it upfront. I told them we talked about it and they were fine with it. But because I talked about it upfront, don't let them be surprised by a really difficult Logan situation. Make sure that they're okay with how the sound check is gonna be run the time of the sound check, and make sure that the green room and their accommodations are good enough for them. Again, this is all negotiable. As far as the artist goes. Not everybody's at superstar level. They understand that these venues don't have the best green room sometimes. And their accommodations are just okay. But at the beginning stages, they need to be okay with that because they're growing and they're gonna get there. But think about the artists experience and make sure that your belief that it's up to par. Any issues that you might foresee, you just communicate that with the artist and make sure it's okay. Just try to think ahead about all scenarios for the artist and their crew. Parking, everything. So then you rent. Your rent should cover at a minimum. The venue and the in-house equipment. Use my venue. I mean, the front door, the ticketing hallway, the use of all their floor space and everything. In-house equipment is the things that are fixed to the venue, the speakers, the lights, all the equipment that's there. It does not cover anything they don't have in-house. If you, if the artist is used to playing on a certain thing and can only play on a certain type of equipment or a DJ Rig. Let's just say they have to have that, then you don't likely have DJ rigs in house. And you have to pay for that, you have to rent that because the vendor doesn't have it in house. Anything they don't have in-house is gonna be your cost. Then you can probably find you a pretty good deal on equipment, but you'll have to pay that bill. Then you rent also includes any additional show staff, box office security, general manager, things like that. That stuff is all included with opening the doors of the venue and the rent that you paid, also included as their use of their ticketing platform. And we talked about this. You understand that ticketing platform. So you're going to be included in the everywhere that they list shows from their ticketing platform, also their ticketing website, things like that. This rolls into the extra venue services that can be on top of that for free marketing, then you should include you in all of their regular show marketing. Their e-mail blasts, their website listings, their social media posts about their shows coming up this month. You should be included in all of that stuff. That's free marketing to you, included in rent. Sometimes they have some additional marketing packages where they can push out your show for you for a flat fee. Maybe they hit more people, maybe they hit the right people, but have that discussion with them. Sometimes there's some catering and hospitality items included in rent. I've done shows that a venue where they have a standard meal tickets in 20 drink tickets, they give out two bands when that's included in rent as well. Sometimes venues have an in-house kitchen when they can give a band a menu, and everything that the bond order is, employee discounts say half off, that saves you a lot of money. So consider that. Sometimes then you can actually do like snack trays and water for free or can do a lot of sandwich trays are just standard offerings and water or some non-alcoholic drinks for free. And make sure you know that upfront so you don't have to go and provide that. So that's less than six. What to expect from a venue, what to look for, and what to expect. We want to consider venue capacity. Again, don't overshoot it. Don't put yourself in a position to pay a lot of rent money on a show that might not sell. A third of the tickets to that room, find the smallest venue that you can sell out. That's the goal. Ticketing wise. Make sure that their platforms usable, its functionality is tested. Make sure that you know what's included in ticket prices. You make sure you know that there's taxes in a facility fee on included then ticket price. And so you might need to adjust your ticket prices accordingly. Just something to look for when you're shopping around for venues. Make sure you understand the venues production there, stave size, orientation, how high it is, how low it is, how wide it is. Also their sound in their lights. We've gone over this a bunch, but just make sure that you're familiar with it and you're comfortable with them being able to put on a great show. Think about the artists experience from their point of view. This is gonna be really helpful in getting ahead of any issues. Walk yourself through the artist's day and think of anything that they might want to know. It's pretty simple, but it goes a long way and it builds trust as a promoter. Then finally, what should be included in rent? We've talked about all staff, all in-house production, nothing they don't have in-house. We talked about use of their ticketing platform, things like that. Are there any extras? Do they have any marketing features that they're giving to you for free? Makes sure utilizing that. Also any meal tickets or meal discounts or standard offerings that they might offer a band that might help ease some costs and catering. So that's really it for the one-on-one courses. I have less than seven setup as finding or putting on a show as an artist. This is going to talk about how to find shows as a band. How you position yourself to field offers, how to get yourself supporting a large headliner, for instance. But as I said, I want to know what you guys want to learn. I've talked about a lot here and if there's something that I feel I get a lot of feedback on or if P lot of people reach out and they're dealing with the certain issue, I can bumble all these courses up to the front. So the rest of it, I want you guys to steer. I have something set up and I'll continue to roll them out. But please let me know what you're dealing with and I will structure a course around that. I hope you learned a lot. Standby for 201 and thanks so much for joining me.