Ah, it looks like there are some issues that need addressing here!
OK so in order of query...
I'm Sam, I run this event and the promotions company Redland Promotions. One of our events is The Red Festival. You can get more info on us at
www.myspace.com/redlandpromotions or
www.myspace.com/theredfestival .
We will need a decent PA yes but we have spent years perfecting this event in various cities and know exactly how much we can spend on expenses like that based on the venue hire fee, the ticket price and how many bands are playing. We pay for everything, the risk is on our shoulders, we pay the bands, we pay for the venue. We have our own engineers. I wouldn't worry about costs, that is for us to work out. All you have to do is turn up and play!
Tickets are £5. There are 48 bands booked for this event, so paying customers pay around 10p to see each band. This is an ongoing event and once you play or attend it you will see how much fun it is. We use decent venues because we want to give bands the chance to play at bigger places. Of course we could not afford to put any local band on there, unless there was a considerable amount of bands playing. So in answer to the question "what happens if you don't sell any"? ... Short answer is, nothing. BUT we will not rebook bands that do not have a good work ethic and it's not often in a young bands career that the chance arrises to play to this amount of people.
We ask bands to work with us, sell the tickets and create a decent event. I cannot see why a band would not work hard to sell their tickets, unless they were happy playing to an empty room.
We are not ripping off local bands - if you don't like the deal we have offered then you're free to not play. If you're feel you're big enough to turn down this gig then that is fine.
And yes, you are right, in order to recoup the high costs involved with this, we need bands who will bring people, ie with lots of local fans / friends. That is just commen sense. There is however, little to no chance you'll be playing to noone, and from our experience we exceed capacity with people coming and going all day.
The comment that you might sell the tickets for a fiver and then run away with the money makes no sense at all. What band would rip off their own fans? In order to police this, we ask for the money BEFORE the band plays. And of course, if you did decide to do that it would be stealing and I'm sure I don't need to go down that explanatory route!
We are not cashing in on local bands who dont get the chance to play venues like The Empire, we are providing an oportunity for bands to play venues like The Empire.
The deal with the tickets is as follows: bands are expected to sell 25(ish) tickets, we pay the bands back £1 for each ticket sold. That means we make £4 from each ticket. If each band sells 25 tickets our income is £4,800. If you were to do your research, that barely covers our costs. With venue hire fee of litterally thousands, staffing costs, equipment hire costs, travel costs. WE DO NOT MAKE A LOT OF MONEY FROM THESE SHOWS. They are set up to provide bands with an oportunity to play to big crowds, in decent venues.
Things are not done by how many MySpace friends a band has. Slots are booked up as and when a band is contacted. Later slots are reserved for bands we feel deserve them more, based on their music. The booking begins 3/4 of the way up the times and we work backwards. It has nothing to do with MySpace.
We are not a charity, we are a UK promotions company, and we do not work for nothing!
I'm sorry if it's been unclear as to who's running it. We have contacted the majority of the bands via MySpace, so we thought it would have been quite clear.
Agreed, some of The Barfly's are 'horrible places', but a few of them have multiple stages, with decent capacity rooms - that is what we're looking for in a venue (although they are generally over priced in terms of hirefee!).
Yes, everyone's getting paid (unless you don't sell the tickets we've asked of you - then we litterally cannot afford to pay bands). This will all be in your contract which is just 1 page long and simply says "we will pay you X amount once X amount of tickets have been sold". There's no jargon, no fancy worded clauses. There is some stuff about respecting the venue and the majority of it is details of what time we expect you to arrive, set up and play.
The event probably is 'wierd' at first glance. The reason noone runs events like this is because it takes a team of 11 of us, working day in day out to make things happen, with a lot of risk. It has taken us years of hard work to get to a stage where we can confidently run events like this. Many freelance promoters quit or join a larger company because the income is generally bad. We however have paddled through even loss to get to this stage. That is why you do not see events like this. HOWEVER you are missing the point that this is a festival! If you exclude all the things you cannot do in doors (like camp!!) then we have the basics of a festival - several stages, full of bands. The difference with this is, they are local bands, not established bands which means YOU get a chance to play it.
Lets look at the costing for a massive festival with 100,000 attendeed all paying £150 to go. That is a gross income of £15million . You pay an avarage established band around £15,000 to play. There is on avarage around 50 bands who will be paid that kind of money, that is a total of £750,000 cost for bands. At a large festival the costs of fences, toilets and all other neccaseries are covered by fast food vans and fairs renting space with you. Staffing is paid for by you and is around £12 per hour for 1 staff per 75 people which equals 2000 staff each working around 50 hours which equals £1.2million. Staging and PA has a total cost of around £600,000 per day for 3 stages. Sound engineers are brought in by the bands. So such a festival would take home net profi of £11.25million,
However, we, making a few hundred measley pounds on a local gig, are the ones who are ripping people off? We would have hoped that bands would sell their tickets in earnest in order to create a really decent event which they are a part of, rather than complain they aren't getting paid enough.
If you wanna know any more, you can contact me personally on 07841700619, email me on
sam@red-land.co.uk or feel free to add me on MSN Messenger, again using -
sam@red-land.co.ukI hope that's answered your questions! We are not a money grabbing business machine. We are a promotions company, ran by a team of just 11 people and we have done something a bit different giving bands a chance to play a big festival type show. Feel free to give me a shout any time! Sean is booking Middlesbrough so if you have questions about the stages, etc please direct them to him -
sean@redfestival.co.uk .
Cheers!
Sam
Redland Promotions
www.red-land.co.uk
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