Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash@TMB
The costs involved in hosting original live music are very high when compared with the alternatives. Any venue will tell you that they would do much better to put on a DJ, a karaoke, show football, or even no entertainment whatsoever. Many venues use their clubnights to subsidise their live music.
In our case we also supply the musicians with cost price drink all night, so there are no bar profits from their presence.
So can playing a gig really be classed as supporting the venue???
Most people will have experienced the nightmare scenario where there are 4 bands booked to play. The only people that show up are 3 of the bands and a handful of mates. After each band plays it departs along with it's mates. Eventually the 'headliners', usually an out of town band, take the stage and play to nobody. Of course everyone wants paid, so venue foots the bill for that along with the sound engineer, extra bar staff, door staff, ticket hatch person, and heat, light, power. OUCH!
If everyone's support extended only to playing a gig for money, then very quickly there would be no venues left. Geddit?
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Well, yeah it still is supporting the venue, really, as they are there. In the venue. They could easily be somewhere else, and I'm sure it's a lot better to have someone in a place drinking cost price drinks than having nobody there at all, especially for passers by (who wants to go to an empty pub where there are bands playing? Talk about awkward).
As for the bands leaving after their set et al, I find that this nearly always happens with thrown-together bills, as opposed to well thought out and promoted nights. I struggle to think of the last gig I went to, where the other bands playing left before the headliner, whether the show was busy or not. Also, with most venues, paying the bands is the promoter's responsibility rather than the venue. Sure, it's very nice of you to do so (I'm assuming that you do this considering you are using it as an example), but it's not like you're expected to (I'd be surprised if it happened to me), so as it's the exception rather than the rule, it doesn't really count in this argument. Same goes for the cost price drinks, in fact - if you are playing at a venue with an outside promoter in, and are buying drinks from the bar, you're putting money into the venue.
(Obviously I'm not complaining that bars/venues do pay out of their pocket in cases).