How to lose money at a gig: a recap on the Gigdoggy Showcase!

Ok so as some of you may know, we hosted our first Gigdoggy Showcase on Saturday 18th at the Club Lambi in Montreal. I am now going to take the opportunity to do a little recap on the event, how we organized and how it played out.

The context of our Showcase

Before launching our Fanteraction™ platform (which by the way still hasn’t officially launched – we will open it on May first so stay tuned for Friday’s post on the matter), we were working on a gig management platform to help gig-swapping bands coordinate their efforts to set up their shows. This project is on hiatus for now, meaning we have stopped developing it, but you can still set-up an account at www.gigdoggy.com/gigs and use its existing features.

Anyways, the whole idea of the Gigdoggy Showcase originated with this gig-swapping website as we planned to use it to organize the event. It did help a lot as many logistical tasks were discussed and centralized within our showcase profile.

Once we decided to shift our focus on the Fanteraction™ service, we just took advantage of the gig to promote our up-and-coming idea and to deliver a party full of sonic delights.

Finding the bands

Well that wasn’t that hard actually. We found one band through this blog, 2 bands from Montreal via personal acquaintances, and the three other bands through Craigslist. For Craigslist we just posted an add in Montreal saying we were looking for gigs, and in the days to come we had filled our bill.

Finding the Venue

We needed a nice room to rent that could contain more or less 150 to 200 people. We found Club Lambi via one of the bands on the bill, The Angry Parrots that had already played there before. The venue was $350 for the night, for three bands, and $25 for any extra band (sound engineer fees). So basically we were preparing to cash-out $425 just for the room.

Organizing the logistics of the gig

By logistics I’m referring to promotion, pre-sale tickets, handling compensation between bands, setting up the technical rider for the sound-guy, selling merchandise and employing a DJ and some VJs.

Pre-sale tickets:

As mentioned above, we used our gig management platform to deal with some logistical tasks. Everything that deals with tickets sales and ticket pricing is in our showcase profile (http://www.gigdoggy.com/gigs/paisible-2009-02-04-03-52-07 – click on “12 comments” on the top right side of the “Ticket/Presale” section to expand the conversations).

Compensation:

Well we decided to divide everything evenly between bands at the end of the gig. Not much else to add here.

Promotion:

Offline promo:

• We depended a lot on word to mouth to get people attending. We didn’t do the offline flyer routine at all, and I just put up 20 posters near the venue to grab people’s attention, but apart from that, with six bands on the bill we were pretty confident we would have a good turnout.
• We wrote two press releases (one in English and one in French) and sent them out to major media listings. Don’t think it bared much fruit but we did get featured in some concert listings online and offline. You can download the english press release here.
• Thanks to a close friend who had a contact at CBC news, Greg got interviewed in front of the Club Lambi, and the clip was broadcasted on the CBC channel right before the 7pm news. Check out the clip here.

Online promo:

• We made a facebook event just to get the word out, and used it to have an overall idea of who was attending.
• I also wrote a post on the gig on this blog and promoted it via Craigslist.
• We subscribed to a very cool site called ArtistData that automatically updates a band’s gig schedule on all major social networks and calendars.
• Geoff Marshall from the Angry Parrots produced a great video gig flyer for us that we promoted via Facebook ads with a CPM model. We made it run for three days at $20/day (you choose your model and the your threshold price). We got something like 400 000 impressions for a total of 100 click-throughs. Don’t think it’s really worth the money :)
• We also used twitter to get a couple of people to attend.

So all in all, I would say that probably 95% of the people who came were close friends and relatives of the bands that played, and I’m leaving 5% out just to pretend that most of our efforts maybe helped out. The turnout was around 120 people at the peak of the event and felt a little disappointing. Also I would like to add that on that particular night, the frigin’ Montreal Habs were playing and most certainly contributed to a few dozen people not coming. Plus Boston totally owned them that night…

Technical Rider

Now this was a tough one. Having six bands on the bill obviously doesn’t help. All of it was done via email and an excel sheet that you can download here. One thing I thought of doing on the day of the gig was printing the tech rider for the sound guy just in case (I had only sent it by e-mial beforehand), so I had to re-arrange the spreadsheet in order for it to be displayed nicely on A4 sized pages. This may seem like a detail, but its an important one. Only 15 minutes before sound-check had I realized that my beautiful color-noted tech rider was dismantled into twice as many A4 sheets ’cause of this printing issue. In Excel you can of course set your borders as you wish for printing, but for the sake of the sound-guy it’s best to give him something nice with clean normal-sized font letters.

Selling Merchandise

Before the gig we had set up a big table with all the merch right by the main entrance. Most bands had merchandise, and most of the merchandise were comprised of t-shirst. I don’t think the bands did to well on that front, at least we didn’t although we had a pretty cool design. So yeah, we lost money on with the shirts and we’ve decided to blame the recession.

The DJ and The VJs

We thought that having a DJ perform during downtimes we keep the party going and it did. We got very lucky with the VJs as they accepted to come over the day of the gig! That was cool: they set up their projectors and white panels around the stage and did their thing all night long. It truly added a nice atmosphere to every set.

Conclusions

Well on the party side of thing, the night was a success and everybody seemed to really like the ambiance as well as the bands. Me and Greg spent the whole day more or less managing stuff so it wasn’t really a night out for us, but still we had a blast. Now on the budget side we were in the red. All bands got paid $85 (including us), so if you only consider the venue cost, which originally was $425 but got priced down to $300, we were already loosin’ money. Add to that the cost for the t-shirst ($200), pre-sale tickets ($12), DJ ($40) and VJs ($40) and you realise we are indeed newbies in event organization.

But hey, we weren’t in it for the money and this was our first gig. Take away the Habs game, two bands on the bill (six is a lot…) and level to entry price to 10 buck and we might have broken even. Maybe by selling more shirts we could’ve of made a profit. And besisdes, for a six-band bill, all bands were pretty satisfied with their $85 (although one very big hassle was to know who sold how many pre-sales – this is certainly something we’ll keep in mind for our future shows).

So there you have it. If you have any questions on how to lose money at gigs, give us a hollar. And if you got any suggestions on how to become profitable, please let us know.

A warm mruff to all the bands present at the gig and to all our readers.

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Gig promotion strategies with “Ain’t Yo Mama” (part 1)

Had a little chat John Wilder, guitarist of Ain’t Yo Mama, on his band’s gig-promotion strategies. This is how they do it.

How they deal with concert promotion:

I approach club owners different than most people. I’m not looking for a gig for a hundred bucks in their club. I’m looking for a venue to hold a show in. Most of the time I get the venues for the door. Some resist and I have to eat crow.

1. The first thing I do after getting a date at a venue is come there one Saturday night between 11pm and 1am and see who the party girls are. I get to know them and give them a couple of t-shirts, some stickers, and a cd. I tell them to wear the t-shirts to all the clubs they hang in particularly the venue we are playing in. I go in the men’s restroom and put stickers above all the urinals, and instruct the girls to do the same in the woman’s, and also to put them in any restroom they happen to go to.

2. weeks before the show I go visit the local newspaper and inquire about running some adds for the gig. Then I ask for a free story or writeup in the paper, if you buy a couple of adds they will do whatever you want and papers need special interest stories to fill space.

3. We make up large posters for the show and place them in Wal-Marts, grocery stores, high traffic mall areas and if we can get away with it around other clubs or venues.

4. We are developing an email list, and  everyone I see or meet I mention it to them.

5. I also call the local chamber of commerce office and inform them of what is going on.

6. The weekend before the show I take piles of flyers to my party-girls and have them plaster them on cars that are in the parking lots between 12-1am, I figure this is the peoples cars I need to get at.

You have to take a shotgun approach to getting people. If you are just starting you can count on friends, but over time no matter how good you are they will get tired of going to the shows. I catch a lot of flack about being a sexist on here, but I give 90% of my personal attention to the females to get the word out. Why cause if you can get the hot girls the guys will follow, did everyone read that? Bring the women and the men will follow.

I’m working on a bigger show for later this fall where we will start using radio ads, also I have some friends that own a furniture business that may, and Im keeping my fingers crossed, they may sponsor us and pay for advertising and provide us with a TV or Appliance to give away at the shows. In my case the Band is called Aint Yo Mama, before the last set we are having the AYM “HOT MAMA” contest, we pick 5 of the best looking women in the house get them on stage and judge them by crowd response with our soundman’s db meter. The winner would then draw a ticket out of the bucket for door prizes like the TV or appliance.

If you are in the music business somehow you have to separate yourselves from the pack. It doesn’t matter how good you music is or isn’t, what matters is getting attention to your band.

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What type of merchandise should bands sell at gigs?

Disclaimer:
Before we start off on this article, we’d just like to point out that gigdoggy is not as of yet playing gigs and selling tons of merchandise, so any knowledge we are passing on here comes directly from other bands who were gracious enough to share their insight with us (and from our experience as concert-goers who have dropped many-a-10$ on t-shirts and CDs in the past).
Also, we know that a lot of musicians don’t care about making money from their art, and more power to them.  As we see it, merchandising is something that bands that ARE trying to make living from their music should consider, and the following article offers a few ideas that we think would work.
We’d love any comments or feedback that would let us know if we’re on the right track!

In our last article we had fun thinking of ways to market your merchandise to your audience, now we’ll look at what you can sell them once you’ve got them to your merchandise booth.

What can bands sell at shows?

As a consumer and as a fan, I buy merchandise at a show for 2 reasons:

1. The item is original, useful and/or trendy.
2. I am feeling impulsive, and buy the item for it’s souvenir value, even though it may be overpriced.

Concentrate on the impulse buy and try marketing what your audience will relate to.

Let’s assume the band is good…
Merchandise is simple. Make designs (or products) that cater to the bands demographic. Also, if the band isn’t famous the design should be first, rather than the name. People will buy a cool cheap shirt, even if the band is average. Keep them under $15.
Kevin – www.myspace.com/kevinjardine

This applies not only to t-shirts but to everything your demographic might have an interest in. For example if you’re a reggae band you can sell hash pipes. If you’re a classic rock band, try selling zippos . If you’re a heavy metal band look into ash trays with little skulls. Anything your demographic likes having you can try selling.

Design is essential. The poster that you are selling should be able to sell in a store to someone even if they had never even heard of you – and if that means the name of your band isn’t even recognizable, then be it. As long as someone wants to hang it on their wall, that’s what counts. Same applies for shirts.

A problem with t-shirts is you really want people to wear them, and lots of times the gals got shirts for free. You’ve just got to hold the line and not give too much away.T-shirts can be made for around 6$, I think you could charge 20$ for a nice one, also that’s a nice round number for change. We did a outdoor festival and sold 50 of em one time, most gigs you could count on selling 5-10, so it could be an extra 60-200 dollars a show if handled right. We had a merchandise table just like the big shows and we usually hung a couple of shirts over the pa speakers and mentioned them all night long. Local shows cds sell for 10$.
We plan on using our first few gigs money to build some inventory of things to sell. I think the more things you have the better, anything from a dollar for a bumper sticker up to 50$ for some sort of tour jacket. You want something for everyone to buy. We have a sound guy who we may cut in on the profits to entice him to sell stuff and to leave the mix alone.
Like I said just watch the giveaways cause they will kill you on profits, and everyone is your biggest fan when they want merch.
Jw 123 www.bandmix/jw123

Since a lot of fans are musicians themselves, instrument-related merchandise is a sure bet. Knowing that half of the attending people will be guitarists, you could probably sell guitar-picks in addition to giving them away. I buy picks every time I get the chance, especially if they have a cool design (they make me play better a whole lot better). www.intunegp.com sells a bundle of 144 custom picks for only $40. That $0.27 per pick. Very cheap. Sell them at $1 and your making almost a %400 profit. Taking this guitarist idea a bit further, you could team up with an artist that does embroidery and sell guitar straps. Buy a strap and get a pick for free. Better yet, sell a songbook with the chords and lyrics to your songs. The process is time consuming but do it once and you’re set. I’m sure those guitarist fans would respond positively to such a product. I know I would.

Partnering with one or more local artists who create art that is pertinent to your audience (for example, graffiti-type prints if you’re a DJ, watercolor paintings for a more mature crowd etc) could be a good way to “mashup” art-forms and generate sales. See it as outsourcing your business and split the revenues. 

Let’s not forget the music

However you make ends meet, whats important is getting your music through to the people. Display the album of course, but don’t forget one or two sets of singles (considering they bought a ticket to see you play plus a couple of drinks, fans will prefer spending $4 on your 3 best songs then $12 for the whole album). Why not sell one or two songs with all separate tracks so your audio savvy fans can have fun remixing your tunes?

Merchandise links

By googling you can find everything you need (we went ahead and did that), and to save you some time here are a couple of links you can look into:

• weneedmerch.com: Custom t-shirts

• bandwear.com: t-shirts, posters, business cards, buttons

• curlyandspike.com. Good screen-printing prices here – check them out

• shirtsforbands.com: Custom merch with a cool editor.

• StickerGuy.com: Specialized in sticker printing. More or less $25 for 250 stickers (2.75″ x 2.75″)

• BusyBeaver.net: Great place to order buttons and pins. 100 colored pins for $100.

• Intunegp.com: As cited above, this online site specializes in production of guitar picks.

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How bands can market their merchandise at live shows

Selling merchandise: are bands barking up the wrong tree?

For bands that don’t have a steady fan-base, selling merchandise at gigs may seem presumptuous.”Who the hell wants to buy a t-shirt with the name of some random band that they’ve heard for the first time” is probably the reasoning that leads most bands to keep pushing off this activity. Add to that all the logistics (the cost of production, shipping and handling) and bands will wait until they “get bigger”. So are unestablished bands right to not jump head-first in the water? If they focus on portraying their name and logo above all they are. Fans are a picky (and often poor) crowd, but they WILL buy products that for some reason (either aesthetic or emotional) strike a chord in them – and that’s what indie bands should try to capitalize on. Focus on selling products that people will genuinely want, regardless of whether they are fans of your music or not.

Ways to present your merchandise

At the risk of sounding overly capitalistic, the goal here is to make money, and you shouldn’t be afraid to dissociate the products you are selling from your music – view the gig as an opportunity for you to make a sales-pitch to dozens of potential customers.

One way to do this without sounding desperate or like a salesperson is to present your merchandising efforts as a fund-raising activity, whether it be to record an album, go on tour, or pay for your doggie’s veterinary bill. People are more willing to spend money on a specific cause than on the band’s beer money, and will probably relate to your poor-musicians-that-need-to-make-some-extra-cash-to-pay-for-studio-time situation.

A good way to get people interested in your merchandise is to follow this band’s advice:

One of the best things we have done is to get one of our band mates hot girlfriends to work the merch table. Semi-buzzed guys can’t seem to say no to a babe asking him to buy a t-shirt. We also send that hottie out to get names on our mailing list…that stuff works great. If you don’t have a band mate with a killer looking girlfriend work it hard yourself. Be relentless and disciplined in working the mailing list. Make sure after every set either you or one of your band mates cruises around the club saying hi, talking to the patrons and asking them to sign the mailing list. While you are doing that, you tell the patrons to check out your merch table on the way out cause you have some really nice t-shirt designs and your CD is there as well. Make sure at least one of your band mates is parked at that Merch table. Merch is vital but that mailing list is key. I would say that 30 names on a mailing list is better than a $10 t-shirt because of the law of large numbers. Right now, we are averaging a consistent showing of about 5% of our mailing list at any given show. If I can make that a solid 5% of 20,000 names as opposed to 2,000 names, we win. We win because we can play in about any room we wish and it is there we get to sell more merch. So, sell your merch but more importantly sell yourself and your live show.
Cool Days End – www.myspace.com/CoolDaysEnd

Give them an incentive to visit the merchandise booth in the first place: have a hot charismatic bitch (calm down there, we’re doggies remember ?:) manning the booth, give out some guitar-picks with your logo on them, or set up a laptop and tell people with USB sticks to come and get MP3 versions of your songs for free. While they’re uploading your music they can check out the merch. Also, set up a few of the posters that you are selling around the venue, with an indication that they could be purchased at the merchandise booth – if they look cool, this will certainly attract people.

Sales at merchandise tables are an impulse buy, so the answer lies within this question:”What could make someone impulsive enough to buy merchandise at a show?“
A few factors come into play here:
1. Know your audience.
Does your audience spend money? Do they pay your cover charge and do they spend money at the bar?
This is important. If your guest list at each show contains more names than the phone book, you’re in trouble. By constantly guest-listing folks, they are going to expect freebies from you at every turn. Once you’ve established that your price is ZERO DOLLARS, you are never going to be able to raise your prices. Who would pay for something that they are getting for free?
2. Give your audience a reason to buy your merch.
To be blunt, be a good band. Write good songs. Play in tune. Sing in key. Have a drummer that plays for the song and not his own ego. This applies equally to guitar players, bassists, keyboard players….everyone in the band. Don’t be drunk or stoned when you play live. Practice, practice, practice and be tight when you play live. Make your audience want to buy your merchandise. Arcade Fire is a great example of this; hard work and good songs will sell your merch for you.
3. Be gracious with your fans. If they buy merch, they like you. Don’t disappoint them by acting like a douchebag rockstar simply because you’ve just played a show. Anybody can get a show. Thank them for their patronage and be genuine.Tim Van Den Ven – www.timvandeven.com

Of course none of this will bring in any money if the products you are selling are not hot.
Don’t forget that most items bought at shows are impulse purchases, and the more original, useful and/or trendy your item, the more fans will be willing to buy it and justify it through its souvenir value.
In our next post on merchandising we will suggest what to sell at shows.

Woof to the Mruff !

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Why it’s hard for bands to get fans to come back to their shows

“Because of a phenomenon in business called saturation of market. It happens the same way to the guy selling fish or oranges up and down the street. People in a small demographic area can only eat fish so often. The answer is multifaceted. Change or better still diversity must be instilled. Example: If you play country in the coffee shop, your fan base comes and becomes saturated. You rotate out of the demographic area by playing elsewhere or not playing at all and your friend who plays folk or rock plays that region / coffee shop. Street vendors have known since the dark ages to rotate goods or areas with other vendors. Seek out three or four other musicians of variety in your area whom are interested in doing a cooperative you might even use a magician or other form of entertainment. Work those small venues as a group. You may find you have more work than you can handle”.
(Noisy Kung-Fu – www.myspace.com/noisykungfu)

“Unless you have two or three hundred very close friends who are wild about you, you’re going to have these problems for a long time. Part of the problem is that the economy is bad, so people aren’t going out as much. ($3+/drink vs $3+/gal of gas…sheesh! While I only have a few drinks, I use a LOT of gas!) Add to that our current over-policing with an emphasis on “zero tolerance” for everything from DUI’s to people just trying to have a good time & gather together. Add to that the competition with karaoke & DJ’s.Top it off with bar owner apathy & refusal to advertise anywhere except their marquees (if they even HAVE a marquee).The end result is a huge problem for a band trying to get started. Stop playing bars. Go with venues where the audience is guaranteed, like town festivals, fairs, company picnics, weddings etc. You’ll sell more CD’s & T-shirts, & possibly get to the point that you DO have a loyal following who would like to see you in a bar sometime. You may have fewer gigs overall, but at least the people will be there. Or, you could find a really good manager &/or agent. Never tried that, myself, but I’ve heard it can give good results, with the right person/agency. Good luck. We’re all in the same boat on this issue”.
(Monkey Wench – www.bandmix.com/philbymon)

“I used to book our band for the door at clubs. I would then line up 2-3 other new bands to get on the bill with us and charge their fans and keep the money. Hopefully some of the bands fans will rub off and stay with you. It takes 2-3 years to build up a consistent fan base. Your group name has to get familiar. Our name did and we eventually were just payed to play to whoever showed up, which thankfully for a couple of years we did draw well. The only problem was that we started off original and then started adding our fans favorite cover songs to the sets, over time we became a cover band and thats all we were known for. If you cant keep people coming more than 1 or 2 times you might need to evaluate your material and maybe tweak it to suit the crowd. We used to come up with little contest to spice up the night, you know loudest (drunk) table, best(biggest hooters) looking gal, anything to get the audience involved in what you are doing. Somehow you have to make yourself an event that people just cant stand to miss. When we ran the door we would let unescorted women in free, this would in turn bring in more guys. Remember the customer is king and really doesn’t owe you anything, don’t piss them off in any way”.
(Jw123 – www.bandmix.com/jw123)

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