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.
Hey it was Ill Got’n Gain that played there before not the Parrots. I would never have recommended L’Ambi since I strongly disagree with their pay-to-play policy. Next time try Ray at Trois-Minots. I.M.H.O. a much nicer club, a bit smaller but way better ambiance and it-don’t-cost-a-dime why should it? The liquor selection and presentation is far below par at L’ambi. Scarce selection, plastic glasses. I don’t mean to diss them unfairly, but that’s not how I would run a venue.
You might still have lost on the shirts. I can get you better deals on those as well. I would have only made $100 worth for the gig, had hot pink ones and not put the word “bitches” on it so someone”s mom might actually buy it ;> But I’m a bit prudish that way.
Besides that, fantastic job and with a few tweaks many more profitable ones for you! Fantastic software and thanks so much for a great gig.
Seriously, who gives a fuck what other people are wniareg? Just because someone wears a t-shirt doesn’t mean they support a band any more or less than the next person, or more importantly it doesn’t mean they think they are better fans than anyone else!Sure there are dicks out there that think they are bigger fans than other people but until I see a list of tool fans starting from 1 to 1,000,000 (or whatever) i’ll just categorize people as fans or not, no matter what they wear!If you wear a t-shirt fine, good on you for supporting the band, if not who cares, enjoy the show. The only dicks in a tool crowd are the ones who are there to judge other fans and not to watch their favorite band!
Hey Geoff!
ooops, yea thats right. Sorry to have associated you to the Club Lambi. :)
And thanks for the plug. Actually, at the risk of thanking to the point you feel we have a crush on you, thanks for everything you did for that gig.
Its success is thanks to you and your band for sure.
See you later dude.
Hi Guys – thanks for the recap. Great info! Sorry it didn’t work out financially.
Question: did you sell all tickets for $5? Pre-sales and at the door?
Wednesday night, May 25 2011, the kid from Garner North Carolina, Scotty McCreery won the American Idol contest in Los Angeles aagsnit a contestant from Rossville Georgia. An interesting musical event, because the RBC center in Raleigh, a major sports arena facility was packed with fans from across the state that watched the finale in L.A. on big screens. THe News and Observer in Raleigh and WRAL-TV channel 5 for yestrday and today have extensive coverage of the American Idol finale and Scotty McCreery’s victory. THese two media sources are on the internet. And thus relate an unusual pop music phenomena that has developed over the past ten years in America. A Kate Bush night during one of the weeks of a future American Idol season would be rather interesting, because a lot of the singers on the show are young and not familiar with her music and could learn of her music; Whereas as to date they most likely had never heard of her. In fact the runner up female contestant was not even born when one of the later 1993 Kate Bush album came out. Anyway, its an interesting music phenomena, that could be an avenue for further promoting Kate Bush’s music in the future perhaps. Someone pull some strings on this avenue in the seasons ahead for the show, over 122 milion viewers tuned in on last night’s results.
It’s interesting to see the details on how everything works out on a gig like this. Sorry you lost money, though.
I’m curious — did the bands split the cost of the venue, so everyone lost money? Or was it just you guys? It seems to me that either the bands should have split the cost of renting the place, or you guys should have gotten a larger share of the money to help pay the rent.
you and i have the same sleeping plrobem. it occurs to me only from time to time. i have always want to watch the sunrise, i did once on a dirt bike trip, whenever i woke up too early. but i was never able to do that for my bed is way too comfy.
Hey guys – this was a fantastic write-up, and reminds me of a rant I posted awhile back in response to clubs not paying bands. I have mixed feelings about making vs. losing money at gigs (and I have done both).
For most of the bands I’ve played with, we were doing it as a hobby, and playing out was just a chance to share our hobby with our friends. It was always (and is again in my current band) a bonus to get paid, let alone to break even. We play a lot of places where the payout after paying the sound and door guys is between $50-$100. For those places, we NEVER pay to play. The reason is that we already pay a ton of money just to have the hobby in the first place, and if you look at band expenditures, like gas, strings, cymbals, etc., we probably break even. If you factor in time, we’re WAY in the red. I worked it out that for our last show, from studio to club to studio, we made $3/hour each. This doesn’t include practices leading up to the show or our other expenses of being musicians in general (rent, instruments, etc.).
All of that said, I now do it for the love of playing music live and in front of people. I basically look at live shows as a band expenditure, and that we will lose money. I guess the idea is that we’ll gain fans, but honestly, when playing for our friends and families, I don’t know how we’ll do that without a serious marketing budget.
At any rate, good write up, as usual!