Parasite Small Time Non- Promoters Ripping Off Artists
Just when you thought a label not paying their artist was bad enough, TMV recently came across something just as bad, if not worse, afflicting small time promoters in the UK. As it turns out this disease involves small-time promoters ripping off small artists trying hard to break through the clutter.
The general scenario is this: in London, when it comes to live shows, as an artist you have to pull x amount of people and then you as an artist receive one pound per paying person through the door to see your band only, not any of the other bands. The general rule is that an artist needs to bring a minimum of 25 people before they receive £1 per person and then if you bring 40 or more you receive £2 for every person after the first 40 that you as an artist brought to a show. So if you attract 24 people, which is becoming increasingly difficult, the band receive nothing
Now it gets interesting because most of these venues have capacity limits for health and safety reasons. Yet a lot of these unscrupulous promoters play on the fact that if every band was to bring a large amount of people they would not legally fit into the venue and hence the promoter gets to walk away with everything because most of the bands could not actually get the minimum payers through the door because of the law. So the artist gets nothing and the promoter gets anywhere between £5 – £8 per person.
But is something missing here? The title ‘promoter’ generally refers to someone who promotes music. Instead, these scum insist that the bands to do the promotion, and do not one single thing themselves except demand the artist sell a minimum amount of tickets from their own fan base. Yes, the promoter has some costs associated with booking a sound engineer (generally around £80 – £100 per night), a door person (around £30 – £50) and that is it. Other than perhaps updating their website, they do not print or distribute flyers, posters nadda, zero, and zilch!….
This is a great read for all artists out there! Being one myself and having worked for a promoter, it is sad but true how some of them try to rip you off!
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