FREE $HOWS R 4
L CAL BANDZ

I think we should return to to Incan times and just kill the band when they get off stage.

Bernie's used to be my favorite place to play bcos there was no cover and you got paid a percentage of the bar sales. When nights were packed it was a real win-win. It helped to develop a new audience who just happened to stumble down there and you made more money.

Hell, on slow nights- we had friends who drank A LOT. So, it even worked for us when it was slow.

So, I love the concept, but, I don't know how easy that is for most bar owners.

I see the whole thing as simple supply and demand economics. You can look at this either way as a negative or a positive thing, but there is just a huge supply of decent local bands in columbus in comparison to the amount of people who regularly check out local shows. On top of that, I'd say a good amount of people who check out local shows are part of the huge supply of local bands.

Just to add a spice of credibility to my argument, you can just look at comfest to exemplify the amount of quality acts in this city (and everyone can make their arguments on whether the bands are actually quality or not, but I find all the bands to be enjoyable), there's what, at least 30 bands on the offramp stage alone over the entire weekend? We can comfortably say there's AT LEAST 50 good (active) bands in columbus that some people of the local music faithful would like to check out at some point, and that number is defeinitely higher. In combination with a lot of local bands' desire to play out at least once a week, this makes it so that there can potentially be anywhere from 4-10 good local shows on any given night. When there's that much competition, sometimes having a free show just won't help your show that much.

I don't know how Carabar's system works because I've never played there, but most free shows I've played have a pretermined percentage of bar sales they'll give you after the bar makes a certain amount. For example, once the bar makes $250, you get 20% of total bar sales after the $250, the justification being that the 20% of the first $250 ($50) goes to sound. If a band then decides, "hey, there's 4 other free shows going on that most local music fanatic's will go to before mine, but I know my 20 broseph's will come to my show whether it's free or not," it probably becomes more sensible for a band to charge a cover. The dude's bro's demand it, so they'll pay.

So, in terms of financials, 20 people show up to a free show, each spend an average of $10 at the bar, the bar makes $200, and the bands get nothing. 20 people show up and pay a $5 cover, minus the $50 sound charge, now the bands have made $50 vs. nothing on a free show. Sometimes it just makes sense to go with the cover. On top of that, the bar now doesn't have to feel any guilt and get's to keep their sound percentage. This is an explanation of a small time operation, but still a good model.

You can also find this in comparing other cities, for example a place like Cincinnati and New York. I'm by no means an expert on Cincinnati, but to me it seems like every time I've played there we've gotten a gaurantee and it's normally a free show. This isn't too rag on cincinnati or anything, because I think there's a lot of really good bands down there, but I just think the supply is less than in columbus. Thus a bar can be confident that people will just show up to their free show because there isn't much competition. Then you look at a place like New York, and there's so many competing shows and good bands, that venues down there are now charging around $10 for a local show!

Basically, I'd say no show can follow a standard format. You need to determine the competition, look at how long you have to promote it, and at the end of the day the quality of the line up is huge when deciding between a free show vs. a cover. Free shows are good encouragement to get people out who've never seen you before, but you have to have good promotion behind it to get new people out. If it's the same 30 friends who would show up no matter what, you're probably just better off doing a cover. There's always tons of other factors of course, but this is what I think it boils down to.

too much math

So your reason for the equations are to tell me that: a. we made more money than I said we did or b. There really wasn't 175 people through the door?

Let me um clarify some of the main talking points of my original points and maybe Justin you should write these out on a clean sheet of paper for later reference: 1. There were alot of people in the bar, more than any show we've played. 2. Everyone came up front and watched even though we'd never played in Chicago before. 3. That hasn't happened in Columbus yet. 4. And they all dished out 7 bucks.

The attitude of people there was very different than those who won't pay five dollars to see four bands and who spend most of the time back at the bar talking to their friends.

175 wasn't an offical door count...I just asked someone in one of the other bands about how many people were there and he said around that number. Maybe we got paid less because no one was really there to see us, or maybe the count was significantly less than 175, don't know. Didn't ask, don't care.

Again, feel free to reference my four talking points at any time. I know what crowd we typically get at Columbus shows and I know what crowd we got in Chicago. Doesn't mean we're all shipping out tomorrow for greener pastures...it just is what it is.

the point of the equations is, um, you made some numbery factsies available fer folks to play with.




i can't wait until said screed is set to music.

Wait, what was the last local show you went to?

You're dust under the rug. don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Permission granted. See? Wasn't that easy?

I don't got no beef wit you.