We came across this forum on advice from someone looking after our interests. Although we have been advised to raise a claim for defamation, I thought I would attempt to address some of the issues raised here and see if we can get them ironed out first. My names Sam - I'm the M.D of Redland. I have absolutely no problem addressing every point you've made and also making our finances transparent so that you can see how they work. I hope that you will see that we're not actually a 'rip off' or a 'scam', rather, we're a company, needing to make money to survive, and giving bands opportunities with it. First of all, regarding payment at shows - this is a competition to win prizes.. not a normal gig. We can either pay all bands with no prizes, or not pay bands with prizes. We, or anyone, can't do both. This is quite clear from the outset. However, last year we decided to allow bands payment at the regional finals as an extra benefit to them, if they'd sold 50 tickets or more. This was done at our discretion. Some promoters wont even pay bands at all. Regarding text votes - although text votes are set at 50p per text, we only receive 19p of each text message - the rest goes to the operators and the phone companies. Text votes are not set up for bands to use, and are not set up for people at the gig. They are there to help people who cannot come to the shows to still vote for their favorite band. Texts are weighed financially and for the amount of votes they give a band in order to make it fair. For example, if ticket price is 5 then you would have to send in 10 text votes in order to make up the same amount of votes as a ticket. If a person decides not to come to the show and send a text vote it, you must therefore see that we're loosing 4.50, not making 50p! I would agree with WoodyRATM that the Aberdeen gigs weren't amazing last year. This is because Moshulu is far too large for a handful of local bands to appropriately fill. If an audience is spaced out, then the atmosphere is ruined. In other cities where we used more appropriately sized venues, they were some of the best gigs we've ever been involved in. There seems to be a lot of criticism to our methods of voting, i.e. not having judges throughout. We stand by our methods although this year we have brought judge voting in from round one. If you're an already established band, why are you entering Red Battle? Red Battle does not cater to bands who have already made a mark for themselves musically, it helps young, struggling bands find their feet. Because of this, a lot of the bands who end up in Red Battle, aren't musically as 'good' as some more established bands. What's the point, then, in having judges to vote for bands? There is none! However, we rewarded bands on work ethic and personality initially. First of all, bands who play well will always pick up more votes. Bands who work hard and promote themselves will obviously attract more people, and pick up more votes. Text votes shouldn't really count in this equation as they are for people not attending the gigs, as previously mentioned. However, we agree that bands should also be rewarded on merit, and this is a mistake we made last year. This coming year things have changed in the voting dept... Text votes and crowd votes are the same, who cares what judges think if the public or the bands work-force can't have their say? However, this year a judge at each venue will pick 1 band to go through to the next round based on how well they play. The other bands will go through on votes. The Finals are judged entirely, and so is the national final! The prizes we offer we are subject to the amount of money we make. This is simple logic. If we cant make money, noone gets anything. There are many things we do in order to make sure we have enough money. 1. Only pay bands after X amount of tickets has been sold, 2. Use text votes as an additional revenue, 3.) Promote the shows as much as we can, 4.) Ensure we're using financially relevant venues. OK so our costs... Here's the black and white of what we make. Check it out for yourselves... Income Round1 Last year we did 14 cities, 3 dates in the first round with 7 bands on each date. Tickets were priced at between 3 and 5 (depending on city) and on avarage, each band sells 20 tickets (some sell 50, some sell 3 - it avarages out at pretty much 20). So first round income was therefore 23,520. Round2 Tickets were priced between 5 and 6, 6 bands on each date across 2 dates. Income was therefore 18,480 Round3 Tickets were priced at between 6 and 7, 8 bands on each date across 1 date. Income - 14,560 National final Sold 1497 tickets @ 9 = 13,473 Text votes We received 56,000 text votes amounting to 10,640 Total income = 80,670 Great! Or not... Costs: Venue hire avarages out to 350 for first round per venue, 450 for second round per venue and 500 for the regional finals per venue, + 2000 for the national final. All plus vat = 36,895. PRS @ 3% of net ticket take = 2100.99 Transport for 2 vans @ 110 each per week = 5,940 Transport for 1 extra van used half the time = 1,485 Accomodation for 3 teams in Travelodges @ on avarage 49 per night per team = 17,640 Band payments came to a total of 4971 Expenses which were paid at the national final came to 8606.77 (including band payments for the national final) Tickets Round 1 needed 14,700 tickets Round 2 needed 10,080 tickets Round 3 needed 8,400 tickets National final had 1600 tickets printed (although only 1497 were used) All @ 12p per ticket + vat = 4,903.98 Staff wages (not including mine or the other director) were at NWM @ 41 hours per week for 3 people = 16,914.96 Equipment cost us 3,000 +vat on deal from our sponsors We spent 2917.03 on expenses during the whole Red Battle (repairs to equipment, etc) Total outgoings = 105,899.73 Oh dear! We've made a loss of around about 20,000. How do we get this back? Through sponsorship. We make our money back from sponsors putting into our deal and matching ticket amounts. This means we received an additional 29,760.94 . This puts us in credit by 4,531.21 That, my friends is not a good take for a 6 month period. I work for around about 50% of minimum wage. Why do I do it? Because I enjoy it. In fact, I'd probably only take a tiny pay cut if I were to sit on the dole. It's not possible to run a project of this size without being very careful about where your money goes. We are also given fantastic prizes in return for advertisement. These prizes are your payment back. It's one thing to run a BOTB in your local town, because you only have a fraction of the above expenses. When you run it nationwide you suddenly have travel, accomodation, etc etc to fit into that and the numbers just dont work out quite like you thought they might have. I'm slightly offended that people would think we're a rip off. Perhaps we need to change the way we work slightly to not give off that impression. However, we have to have guidelines, we want to give away prizes, but we can only do that if we make enough money to keep the sponsors happy! You work hard, you get more prizes. It's simple. As I say, this year we are having judges at every stage, but we will still expect bands to work hard, yes to bring in the people, but not just to bring in revenue, also to make the gigs GOOD! Also, I take a personal annoyance at people who don't think they should promote for a gig, or be required to bring anyone. If you can book a gig or a tour yourselves, then why are you in Red Battle? Go and do it yourselves. We cater for people who dont have the ability to do that. We therefore expect them to bring people to the show. Do you know how hard it is to promote bands who noones heard of? Quite right, you might be able to book your own show and promote it, but you're still only promoting to your own fan-base, friends and family. This is because NOONE CARES about gigs anymore. It's not like when I was 14 and first going to gigs, where people would turn up to a venue regardless just to see live music. Back then, very few people were in bands. Now, every other man and his dog are in a band. Noone wants to see a band, its impossible to promote it, unless you bring your fan-base. Because so many people are in bands the standard of bands has dropped drastically. Therefore, if you had it your way, only the very best bands would be rewarded by being given shows. So what happens to the small, very young bands? They speak to a promoter, who requires them to sell some tickets for their trouble and puts them on a gig. For our local shows (shows that aren't Red Battle or dont have prizes as well), we require bands to sell 30 tickets to get paid. 30 measly tickets! That brings is 120, 30 of which is given to the band, 70 of which goes to the venue and 20 of which goes to us. People dont seem to realise that this isn't actually a bad deal. Promoters have to pay for the venue! So what about getting a gig with just the venue itself? Aren't the venues the ones who would then take your door money AND the money made on the bar? Did you know that venues work on 8 per head for drinks? So if they have 300 people into the venue they make around 2,400 and then pay each band 30 or something? And we're the ones who are ripping people off? Here's an idea... go and open your own venue, start your own promotion company, create your own event. See how hard it is to make money or be stable in this industry and then come back and complain. It would be better if people expressed their views to us directly. We had a disclaimer on our web site regarding those people who thought that we were doing something immoral, or 'rip-off like'. This basically explained that if you had opinions about how band competitions were run, please inform us about them so we can change. We're just 2 people sat in an office, we're not a huge corporate machine churning out the $notes as fast as you can blink. On the same subject, we're all from band backgrounds. We know what it's like being in a band and we certainly know what we would not stand for when we were in bands. Infact, 3 of our part time guys are still in bands! Everything we do or dont do is in our terms. It would help if people actually read our info page on our web site and terms before clicking the button at the bottom of the signup form. This would show you everything we do and how it all works, and perhaps make way for more serious applications. One thing I would like to mention - we were completely wrong in saying that bands must bring 50 people to the national final in order to qualify for judges vote. This wasn't fair and we removed this, and consequently made a loss on the national final. However, 1500 people still showed up and we had a great day. We have also never changed the terms throughout the comp! Most of you never bothered to even read the terms, or our info page, or the letter we send you with the tickets. If you had, you would have read exactly how things were supposed to progress and change through the rounds. This is a forum so I'm sure this will receive the usual forum criticism. Be very careful what you do and don't say though, I've taken a lot of time in going through last years figures and writing this on here when I didn't really need to, we don't appreciate things written about us which are clearly untrue and said in a way in which to harm us. I'd appreciate it if, in future, you have qualms about what we do - you come and speak to us first. Thanks, Sam Redland + The Battle
