A first for my band, but I'm suspicious...

[rjblaskiewicz]

So, I'm a member of a faculty and staff band at a university near Atlantic City. We formed about two years ago and play strictly covers, everything pop and rock from Beatles until now. We meet weekly and have dozens of songs in our repertoire now. We play at school functions and had our first show on campus scheduled before we had a drummer. So, there's always something to do. It's my first band (I wanted to call it the Institute for the Study of Gettin' Down, but the others weren't having it) and the first band for most of the other folks. A few weeks ago, one of the members was with a colleague downtown and they ran into a friend of that colleague who owns a venue. The guy said he was interested in having us if we could get 50 people there at $10 a pop to pay for the bartender and sound guy. We'd keep any extra (honestly, it'd go to the university scholarship fund). This strikes me as, you know, potentially fun, but is this how it's done? It feels like renting a venue for a private party (and charging friends to get in). I figure the guy plans to make his money off the bar reciepts. I'd have thought that the venue costs would have come primarily from alchohol sales. But I've literally never done this before, so what do I know?

 

[Deeve]

This arrangement is known as pay to play

Popular in the LA clubs, back in the day, where hair-metal bands were hoping to be seen & discovered.
The work of getting fifty friends to come to your gig - seriously under-estimated.
The contract will likely say something about owing the club if you can't follow through and deliver the drinkers.

 

[Swirling Snow]

It sounds like you're renting a venue. Pay for a bartender? No, we'll bring our own.

 

[FenderGyrl]

This arrangement is known as pay to play

Popular in the LA clubs, back in the day, where hair-metal bands were hoping to be seen & discovered.
The work of getting fifty friends to come to your gig - seriously under-estimated.
The contract will likely say something about owing the club if you can't follow through and deliver the drinkers.

Ah Yes, the Pay To Play. My Hair Metal band was based in 1980s San Francisco. And while we could P2P there, we could never get our foot in the door when it came to the L.A. Clubs. It was extremely clickish. Cookie Cutter Bands, which we were not. Those were the dayz...

I had two Peavey Butcher Double Stacks and a Kahler Gibson Explorer with three P90s !!!

 

[goonie]

You guys bring him a crowd and cover his overheads ... pretty much risk-free for the venue.

 

[Swirling Snow]

How many people do the fire laws allow? This could still work out in your favor with proper promotion.

 

[rjblaskiewicz]

Looks like... seating for 650 people. So, we could bill the show as "unlikely to be a fire hazard." I'm thinking this is going to be on a night which would otherwise not be booked with an actual show. (They do seem to land bands I've heard of.) I would not mind sharing the stage with student bands and making it a university-themed night. That could be a thing.

 

[rjblaskiewicz]

Looks like... seating for 650 people. So, we could bill the show as "unlikely to be a fire hazard." I'm thinking this is going to be on a night which would otherwise not be booked with an actual show. (They do seem to land bands I've heard of.) I would not mind sharing the stage with student bands and making it a university-themed night. That could be a thing.

Extra credit. I could offer extra credit to students who get their hands stamped.

 

[ndcaster]

students turn out for their friends

 

[tfarny]

While it illustrates the extreme difficulty in making a living as a performing musician, it could be a lot of fun if you don't much care about making money in your for-fun band. YES the venue owner is well set up to profit from it - is that new, surprising, or devious?

Bill it as a charity event, facebook the heck out of it and if y'all have a bunch of friends and colleagues between you, 50 people won't be hard for a one-off, especially if you book with one or more student bands. Getting 50 people to see you every weekend - that's tough! But for one night only it's not too hard.

 

[rjblaskiewicz]

While it illustrates the extreme difficulty in making a living as a performing musician, it could be a lot of fun if you don't much care about making money in your for-fun band. YES the venue owner is well set up to profit from it - is that new, surprising, or devious?

Bill it as a charity event, facebook the heck out of it and if y'all have a bunch of friends and colleagues between you, 50 people won't be hard for a one-off, especially if you book with one or more student bands. Getting 50 people to see you every weekend - that's tough! But for one night only it's not too hard.

Oh, it's always a hoot to play. I'l float these ideas to the other folks and see if we can come up with a strategy to appear more popular than we in fact are. LOL

 

[toanhunter]

don't do the gig, you're being ripped off, pay to play will never work out for you, honestly in 2025 you're better off creating a youtube channel for your band and investing in making high quality videos, that's my opinion.

 

[Heartbreaker_Esq]

Pay-to-play of various kinds is still pretty common. In my (limited) experience, it's more a thing that original bands do, because cover bands are more in demand, and more likely to get paid. But since nobody cares about original bands, venues will often not book them without some kind of guarantee like this.

I'm of two minds about this kind of thing. On the one hand, I don't play music to make money. I play to have fun. And it IS fun to play live, so who cares if all the members have to kick in $40 or whatever to have a fun night? There is a also a practical reason to tolerate pay-to-play for your first gig or two: it allows you to get on a stage and get some photos and videos of your band playing live. You can use that content to post on social media and show it to other potential venues. A lot of venues won't want to book (and pay) a band that's never played before, so if you can manage to get footage of you playing, it could help you book better gigs in the future. So that first pay-to-play gig could be a loss leader for you.

On the other side of the coin, there are a lot of musicians I respect who say that nobody should ever do pay-to-play, or even free gigs, because of the overall negative effect on the live music scene. Basically, the bands that participate in pay-to-play are devaluing live music and making it harder for all local bands to get paid to work. I am sympathetic to this viewpoint, and it makes a lot of sense to me, but I don't feel strongly about it. I've done one pay-to-play gig, and a couple of free ones, just because it can be hard getting out there as a new band.

 

[THX1139]

This arrangement is known as pay to play

Popular in the LA clubs, back in the day, where hair-metal bands were hoping to be seen & discovered.
The work of getting fifty friends to come to your gig - seriously under-estimated.
The contract will likely say something about owing the club if you can't follow through and deliver the drinkers.

Not just LA. Sleezy club owners grifting bands desperate for exposure. In the case of just doing it for fun I'm still not crazy about the pay to play concept.

 

[Jakedog]

The sound man is getting maybe $150. The bartender is working for MAYBE $5/hr plus tips. He’s taking advantage of you.

I’ve seen this scenario a million times. You’re basically renting the club out. These kinds of businesses exist in some cities because the bands tolerate it, or don’t know any better.

 

[Telegnosis]

Basically the club owners want that a band they allow to play the venue has a DRAW and will bring in drinking customers. This is understandable. In the same token, it should not be expected that the bar funds your band experiment, paying for utilities and crew while they get this:

 

[Harmonic]

You can't find a space in the university someplace?

 

[PigBoy]

Ah Yes, the Pay To Play. My Hair Metal band was based in 1980s San Francisco. And while we could P2P there, we could never get our foot in the door when it came to the L.A. Clubs. It was extremely clickish. Cookie Cutter Bands, which we were not. Those were the dayz...

I had two Peavey Butcher Double Stacks and a Kahler Gibson Explorer with three P90s !!!

I was in San Francisco back then, what band were you in?

 

[Telekat 100]

OK. Maybe I'm sounding old...

But what happened to the old punk rock days where, if you're going to scrounge up 50 people to hear you play regardless, just find a place that barely has electricity and is a fire hazard (old warehouse, etc.), charge $5/head and forgo the club where some guy is using you to bring him drinking business?

 

[regularslinky]

But I've literally never done this before, so what do I know?

This is what you should know. What you describe is "pay to play." You are renting the venue, the bartender and the sound guy for $500. You may recoup your money from the door, but you are providing free entertainment to the venue and assuming the risk of a slow night. It's bad business.

The rest of this might sound a bit confrontational. No offense is intended, but I'm trying to make a point that is important to me.

I assume your university job is your livelihood. How would you feel if the professional musicians in your area were able and willing to do your university job for free? The university would love it and the students wouldn't care, but I suspect you and your colleagues would be upset, with good reason.

I've been a professional musician, and I still gig occasionally with professional musicians who play for a living. I really admire the people who find a way to make music their livelihood. It's not easy. The money is worse than ever and gigs are scarce, so every single gig is important. They get no vacation days, no sick days, no health insurance, no 401k. They make barely enough money to live, but venue owners still screw them over every chance they get.

I don't need the little bit of money I earn playing music. I play gigs because it's fun and because I like the people I play with, but I will never play a gig for free. Doing that takes work and money away from professionals who need it to live. Even if a given venue doesn't hire professionals, when you play for free you are drawing customers away from venues that do.

Music is cool. That's why we're drawn to it. Playing music for free is not cool. It undermines the professional musicians in your community - people who are already struggling. I know that's not your intention, but it is the reality.