The Sunset Recorder

A promoter booking a room that holds two hundred people is running a small manufacturing operation with one product and one shift. The night either covers its costs or it does not, and the decision that determines which mostly happens weeks earlier, when the offer is written. Three structures cover nearly everything an agent sees at that level: a flat guarantee, a door deal, and a versus deal that combines the two.

A guarantee is a fixed sum owed to the artist whether eleven people or two hundred walk in. It moves the risk onto the promoter, which is why promoters are conservative with acts that have no local history. A door deal pays the artist a share of ticket income, usually after the promoter recoups a stated show cost. It sounds generous and often is not, because a percentage of a thin gate is still thin. A versus deal sets both a guarantee and a percentage and pays whichever proves larger, giving the artist a floor on a poor night and a share of a strong one. The percentages vary by market, by night of the week, and by how badly the promoter wants the date.

What the room spends before anyone is paid

Before any split is calculated the promoter subtracts a show cost, and the line items are dull and unavoidable. Rent, if the room is hired, or an internal cost allocation if the promoter also operates the venue. Sound and lighting staff, usually a house engineer and sometimes a second person on monitors. Door staff and security, scaled to capacity and to whatever the local licence requires. A performing rights licence, paid to the collecting societies so that songwriters are compensated when their work is performed in public. In most territories that is a blanket licence held by the venue and priced against capacity or receipts rather than billed song by song, which is why an artist rarely sees it on a settlement sheet even though it is there. Then local marketing, meaning a small digital spend and printed matter. Then hospitality: a rider that runs to water, towels, beer and a meal buyout. None of it is extravagant. Together it can consume a large share of a full gate.

Bar revenue sits outside all of that, and it almost always belongs to the room. This is not a slight against the artist. It is the reason the room exists. Plenty of small venues run the concert side close to break even and take their margin on drinks, which is why a booker cares how early an audience arrives and how long it stays. An act that sells tickets but empties the bar is a worse booking than the headcount suggests.

The support slot and the merch table

Support acts are paid a flat fee, generally a small one, and the reason is structural rather than mean. The opener did not sell the tickets, so the opener carries none of the risk and shares none of the upside. Where an opener genuinely moves tickets the fee rises to match, and on larger packages the arrangement sometimes inverts, with the support act buying onto the tour.

Merchandise is where a run of small rooms is decided. A shirt bought at wholesale and sold at the table carries a margin no ticket split can match, and on a tour this size the table frequently out earns the guarantees. Venues commonly take a percentage of merch sales, higher on printed goods than on recorded music, and in many rooms nothing on vinyl. The rate is negotiable, an agent will push against it, and it moves depending on whether the house supplies a seller or the band works the table itself. Where the house sells, expect the cut to be larger.

Why a sold out night can still lose

The artist's own cost stack runs in parallel and never stops. A van and its fuel. Rooms, or floors. Per diems for four or five people. A crew member once the act has outgrown loading its own gear. Commission to the agent, usually on gross, and to the manager, on gross or net depending on the agreement. Repairs, which arrive uninvited.

The shape of the arithmetic is easy to sketch even without numbers. A modest guarantee is drawn down first by fuel, lodging and per diems for the day, then by commissions on what remains, and the day is carried by the merch table or it is not carried at all. Every one of those costs is fixed against a gate that is not. That is why a sold out sign is a marketing fact rather than a financial one, and why the tours that survive treat the table as the business and the stage as the reason anyone came.

■  The Sunset Recorder