This course provides an engaging and methodical insight into the past and present cultural and commercial music industry developments, directions, and trends. It will equip the students with the knowledge and skills necessary to appreciate, understand and more productively participate in today’s music industry field.
Methods and Practices: Concert Promotion (Part 1)
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From the course by West Virginia University
Today’s Music Industry
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From the lesson
Live Music Industry
Meet the Instructors
Darko VelichkovskiMusic Industry Program Director
Music Industry
Since in this module we are talking about the live music industry, and in this particular
section, about methods and practices of concert promotion, what better place to talk about
those things than a live music venue like this. We are here at the Lyell B. Clay Concert
Theatre, at West Virginia University’s College of Creative Arts. It is a 1,440 seat venue,
with a full complement of the stage, light, and sound equipment, a dozen stage trap doors,
a full orchestra shell, a stage lift, 45 line sets, an orchestra pit, and so on. The whole
nine. What we all wish we can get in the live music business. A turnkey venue. We host touring
Broadway shows here, national acts, orchestra concerts, ballet, opera, and music theater
performances, and so on.
But how do music performances get organized in the music industry in the first place?
What is the anatomy of the live music performance preparation and organization? To answer that
question, we have to start with the booking agents.
There are agents and agencies that in addition to live, in-venue, music performances, handle
engagements by performing artists of all kinds (actors, musicians, dancers, etc.) in movies,
television, commercials, product endorsements, etc. Although technically these agencies do
bookings, among other things, generally, such agencies are not called “booking agencies”,
but “talent agencies”, and are usually referred to as “full service agencies”.
In this module, we will concentrate on the agents and agencies that handle exclusively
live music performers and performances, those traditionally referred to as the “booking”
agents and agencies.
Live music booking agents have a dual role. On the one hand, they represent the venues
and/or the concert promoters they help to book live performances. On the other hand,
they represent the artists they book for live performances. A booking agent is not a concert
promoter, a venue operator, an artist, or an artist’s manager. A booking agent is
a middleman, facilitating business arrangements between these parties.
This business arrangement can have two basic flows: from an artist, or an artist’s manager,
to a venue, or a promoter, or from a venue, or a promoter, to an artist, or an artist’s
manager. Meaning, either an artist (or an artist’s manager) seeks a venue, a festival,
or an event in which an artist can perform, or a concert promoter (or a venue operator)
seeks an artist to perform in a venue, a festival, or in an event. Either way, the pursuit flows
through a booking agent, whose role and business is to bring artists and promoters together,
in exchange for a percentage of an artist’s fee (usually around 10%).
A booking agent (or agency) thus maintains an active list of artists and their managers,
and promoters and venues, and aims to create mutually acceptable and beneficial pairings.
By and large, at the standard professional level of the industry, a requests for a live
performance is initiated by a concert promoter, who contacts the booking agency representing
the artist of interest to the promoter, inquiring as to the artist’s fee, schedule, and availability.
After finding out about the promoter’s general performance plans, location, venue, etc.,
the booking agent, normally, contacts the artist’s manger, and acquires the pertinent
information in relation to the promoter’s parameters and interest. This information
is then shared with the promoter who will either accept the terms, or will try to negotiate
possible alternatives. When the two parties agree on the terms of engagement and sign
a contract, the booking agent’s job is usually done, and further details of the performance
are handled by the artist’s management or touring team.
In another scenario, an artist or an artist’s manager, seeking performance opportunities,
may initiate the contact with a booking agent. In that case, after finding out about the
artist schedule, fees, programming, etc., a booking agent would generally attempt to
locate a promoter, or a venue, possibly interested in such artists, and would “shop” the
artist on the live performance market. If an interested promoter or a venue is found,
the process would proceed as in the previous example.
Naturally, since the booking agents’ role is positioned between the performers and the
performance organizers, they may initiate the pairing themselves. Booking agents have
a much better vantage point than either of the parties in question. They know the venues
and the promoters, what they are interested in, what their audiences like and don’t
like, what kind of artists do they normally book and work with, what budgets do they control,
how often do they book, etc.; and at the same time, they also know what artists are actively
performing, in which areas, what repertoires, for what fee, etc. Proper analysis and management
of this information, coupled with proper communication and networking activities, can lead to productive
and mutually beneficial live performance business arrangements initiated by a booking agent.
It is important to recognize first that “agents” and “managers” are not interchangeable
terms, and that these two types of professionals have different spectrums of activities, and
generally perform different roles in the industry. While the agents, as we have seen, are mostly
concerned with pairing artists and concert promoters for live performances, the managers’
business concerns are of much wider scope. An artist’s manager, or as it’s often
referred to - a “personal manager”, is usually charged with the responsibility of
guiding an artist’s career in general, not just finding opportunities for live performances.
As a matter of fact, given the employment and talent agencies regulations and requirements
in many states that we discussed earlier, personal managers are not allowed to procure
employment, because they are not licensed to do so. Other words, personal managers are,
by law, not permitted to book live performances for their artists. That is the role of the
booking agents.
Personal managers guide the careers of the artists with whom they are associated, manage
the artists’ professional affairs, and act on artists’ behalf, presumably in the artists’
best interest, including: negotiating artists’ contracts, accepting or rejecting various
business proposals, managing artists’ schedules, image, repertoire, PR activities, etc. In
the live music industry, personal managers either receive, review, negotiate, and accept
or not, the booking agents’ requests for live performances by their artists; or initiate
the requests for live performances with the booking agents; or both. But they would officially
not be in direct negotiations with live venues or concert promoters, because that would constitute
procurement of employment for which they are not legally authorized.
Of course, there is a fine line between those two activities, between booking a performance,
and finding or creating an opportunity for a performance. Personal managers normally
aim to stay on the side of “finding and creating” those opportunities for their
artists, in order to avoid regulatory problems.
Just like the booking agents and agencies are normally classified by the territory they
cover, the concert promoters are also classified as “national”, “regional”, and “local”.
Naturally, the number of active concert promoters diminishes as the territory widens. Thus,
whereas there are thousands of local concert promoters across the country, organizing small-scale
live performances in their cities and towns, there are only about half-a-dozen major national
concert promoters in the United States, organizing national tours and large-scale concerts. The
national and regional or local promoters often collaborate, when the national’s act is
scheduled for a performance in a regional or local promoters’ territory, as those
promoters are usually much more familiar with the area, and better versed in the regional
and local regulations and services needed for the live performance preparation and execution.
The type of payment that regional and local promoters would receive for such collaboration,
is usually a percentage of the box office net income of the performances in question.
Generally, the concert promoters’ scope of professional concern and activities covers
the full spectrum of live performance organization and execution: from making a deal with an
artist or artists (often collectively referred to as an “act”), marketing, promotion,
and ticket sales, to accounting, sponsorships, and regulatory and technical requirements.
It is a concert promoter who has the most to lose if things don’t work out, but not
the most to gain if all is well. If the tickets do not sell, and sponsorships do not materialize,
a promoter still has to pay everyone involved according to their contracts, even if it means
going into financial debt. Everyone must be paid for the services they provided, except
the promoter. On the other hand, if the tickets do sell, and everything goes according to
plans, the promoter’s take is not the highest in the chain, though it may be sizable, depending
on the scale of the event. The highest income is usually the act’s. In the mainstream
live concert business, even if the seats are empty, the act most often don’t have anything
to lose financially, since their contracts usually specify the minimum amount they will
be paid for a performance, regardless of the ticket sales, as we will see later on in this
module. (Loss of dignity and reputation is another story.)
Concert promotion is inherently a very risky and demanding business. Concert promoters
must know their market, audiences and acts well, must be in tune with the music trends
and demands, must be versed in all the relevant regulatory codes, must be able to manage numerous
and diverse personnel, must maintain strict schedules and deadlines, must be proficient
in live music PR and marketing, and most importantly, must have access to sufficient funds and have
high “threshold of pain” when it comes to financial risks. Professional concert promotion
is usually profitable only in the long term, where the events that made profits, can cover
the loses incurred by the events that were not successful, and keep the promoter in the
“black” (profitable). “All or nothing” approach in the concert promotion business,
usually results in the “nothing” part of that equation. Successful “one-offs”
are so few and far in between that, reasonably, should not be attempted (especially if the
investment in question is sizable, or critical for one’s existence). Meaning, it is not
a good idea to take your mother’s pension money, or your life’s savings, and invest
it all in one, or a few, live performances, hoping for the possible best-case scenario.
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