[mplpost] Gigging and Touring

[James Gordon]

Oy. Such a lot of questions, Mr. Usher!  Excellent threads, though. ( And
you WERE looking quite dapper when I saw you last week!)
I hope that other Mapleposters take the bait with your survey...
You've just caught me on a day when I was working on book-keeping- so I
thought I'd address some of your gigging and touring questions with my
second annual JG Financial Disclosure-
In 2001 my over-all income ( all generated from showbiz ) was up 19% from
2000. My largest single source of income was Cd sales, which generated 27%.
Though I tend to gig quite a bit- gigs were just 17.5% of my income, in a
tie with the school song workshops that I do, ( 17.5% ).... Grants were high
this year at 14.5%, mostly due to one large video project;  Royalties from
airplay, Socan-covered performances and cover versions of my songs on other
people's records earned 10%; wearing my record producer's hat in my studio
generated 8.3%, and my fees from contributing songs to the CBC was a
whopping 3% ( that gig pays really poorly, but the publicity from it is
priceless )... somehow it all added up to a living.....

Observations about this: as i've stated before.. diversity is what sustains
musicians/writers these days... if i relied on gigs i'd be broke, BUT if i
wasn't out doing the gigs, I don't think very many of the other items on the
list would exist... Gigs ARE promotion these days. In my experience the
average paycheck from a gig is worse than it was 20 years ago, though the
expenses are WAY higher..
I don't have these numbers handy, but I think about 75% of my CD sales are
right off the stage( as Anne Lederman pointed out, this is partly because
it's so hard to find folk albums in stores!)  When I plan a tour, I often
count on doubling my gig fees with CD sales... ( though since Sept. 11th,
I've noticed a decline in CD-spending with our American audiences )---  This
percentage is what makes doing house concerts feasible. Usually a house
concert has between 30 and 50 people at. If they are paying an average of
ten bucks a person, then your are only making 3-500 dollars... but they tend
to be real keeners, those house-concertizers, so they usually will spend an
average of 10 bucks each on CD's, ( or a little more than one CD per
couple)..  
    Fees for gigs? I think there is a dollars-per-bum-in-a-seat equation: (
I've also noted that the average folky bum is quite a bit larger in the
American mid-west, so perhaps they should be paying more!)  If the venue
seats 100 people, it's usually in a hall that a promoter has had to rent and
publicize, and pay a soundman, etc... so the ten dollars-per-bum number
shrinks from the house concert scene by about 50%... in other words 500
bucks for a 100-seat hall is all I'm seeing these days.... If it's a large
hall with over 500 seats... the percentage shrinks to about 3 dollars per
bum-- or about 1500 dollars....
When I started in the biz I considered myself lucky if at the end of a night
I came home with a hundred bucks in my pocket... That hasn't changed in
nearly 25 years... I make more money now only because i work more often, not
because my fees are higher!
Hope this helps....
James
back to work.... (though they call it "playing" in our biz don't they?)
 




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