Bands with no fans.

On two or three occasions recently bands have turned up at my shows and brought no fans with them. They have sold no tickets. Needless to say they didn't get paid. These were not bad bands (musically). I don't book bad bands. But these bands did not do the work of getting people to come down to the venues, to support thier set.

There were several reasons why this happened. The band had committed to playing too many gigs, too frequently.Their fans cannot follow them to so many gigs.

The band didn't bother to push the show with their fans. They were too busy doing other things.

All thier fans were away on the day of the show.

The band was happy to play a gig and were not bothered about being paid.

Unfortunately, a band's lack of fans has an impact on the show overall. It also reduces my income as a promoter. Even though I take a very small proportion of the ticket sale to cover my costs, losing 10 tickets from one band's commitment has a detrimental impact, given that these are very small shows.

My response has been to do two things. Firstly, when I now book a band I will insist that they cannot play a show in the area of the gig within two weeks either side of the booked show.

Secondly, I will make it a condition of booking that the band has a realistic commitment to sell the required quota of tickets. I will test to see if this commitment is genuine. I might consider asking the band to buy their quota of tickets in advance (for resale) in order to get a booking. A lot of other venues and promoters do this.

My view of the live music industry is that it is funded by ticket sales.  This is as true of the unsigned band sector as it is of the big band sector of the market.

There are many bands that just want to play at gigs and are really not bothered about getting paid. Very many bands have said this to me. What they fail to recognise is that all gigs cost money to organise. They show no commitment to supporting  such costs.

I manage bands and I help to develop up and coming new bands. I spend a lot of time working with them on fan base development and on gigs programming. I do not accept that bands should pay to play. All bands should fund their activities through ticket sales (among other things) and should contribute towards the cost of any gig they play through getting fans to buy tickets.

Several bands have said to me "we just want to get out there and play as many gigs as possible".  Fine.  But they either do not or cannot support that policy with ticket sales. In effect, someone else is having to subsidise that band's gigging policy.

I fully accept that capturing, organising and retaining fans is very difficult. It takes up a great deal of time. But without ticket sales, a band is not going anywhere.

A band that draws blanks at gigs starts to get a reputation with the local venues and promoters and if they do it frequently they will find that no one wants to play them.

In my work with bands, I spend a lot of time on techniques and practices for fan  base organisation. I do this because a fan base is where the ticket sales, merchandise sales and music sales mainly comes from. For small unsigned bands, it is both about money but also about growth and development. It's not an optional extra, it comes with the job.


Subject : Bands with no fans and ticketing issues (originally posted on the Get Your Band On Myspace blog.)
Posted Date: 16 Mar 2008, 10:56