No Pay Benefits Shows

[jmattbassplaya]

Depending on the setup of the event that's not accurate.

I played a relay for life event 2 years ago. The band that was on before us (8 piece reggae band) were still sound checking when we arrived, and continued sound checking through their starting time and were still playing on ours! We let the event coordinator know, who cut both our sets short. We were the last band (and only cover band willing to donate time) so the organisers tried making it a big bang send off since people would recognise the music.

Come swap over time, our members (4 piece with electronic drums) were at the sides of the stage helping them pull their gear off stage (it was a full backline swap), threw ours up and into place in less than a minute (we'd lined it all up, waiting for them) and connected it all up. Confirmed line levels with the sound crew, drummer counted us in and were rocking the joint in about six minutes while the sound crew adjusted our levels on the fly.

I'm willing to bet if that were timed it was more than ten minutes

 

[azureblue]

of the conditions of performance point to the event coordinators not knowing what they are doing. 10 minutes and a go, for that number of bands, is ridiculous. I hear alarm bells that warn of a train wreck going to happen. I'd pass.

I have a charity gig contract for my bands. It is basically a " our services cost us $xxxx, but we will donate our services, under these conditions, if you will just sign here" agreement. This allows the band to deduct the cost of services provided gratis, off the taxes at the end of the year. But, even if the band does not "do taxes", the presentation of a contract of performance to an event handler gives the impression that the group is "professional" and expects to be treated professionally, and their donated services valued. Over the years, I have had a lot of offers to play benefits, and most of the coordinators seem to treat the play for free bands as chattel, that is, until they see a contract and suddenly they start treating the band with respect.

 

[mboogiemanusa]

I've done a few of them. Always a crap shoot. They can be fun and great exposure in the right situation. The biker poker run type benefits with just one band at the end are great. My stipulation is if you want us to play for free is that you feed us and display our band name and logo on all promotional material - flyers websites etc. If the promotional flyers only mention "live music" and not our band name specifically then we will cancel. Basically we are trading a performance for band promotion. The free gigs with multiple bands would bring up all sorts of red flags. What is the PA situation? Many of these benefits are run by clueless amateurs that in many cases don't even like music. 10 bands and 10 minutes to set up is already a big red flag. Also any promotional benefit is being diluted by sharing the bill with 9 other bands. Sounds like some thing that I might attend but would pass on playing.

 

[fingerbun]

I don't think its wrong to expect your expenses to be covered. You are donating your time, talent and your actual profit or performance. Think about it. If your band typically makes $500 per gig, your expenses (food and gas and drinks) for a whole band might come to $200. You are donating your time and $300 bucks as well as donating YOUR audience and following, which at say 40-50 people at $10 per the gate here is and additional $400-$500 for the venue. So, your normal fee plus your draw = $1000. Your contribution, minus expenses = $800. Not too bad for any charity, especially for an hour of your performance time.

I reckon this is double counting. Your normal fee is compensation for drawing your normal crowd.

 

[AnchorHoy]

Yo, Trenton is still in NJ?

Just barely

You can literally see across the river to Pennsy from the outdoor stage at the venue

Nice benefit. I'll try and make it down. I forgot about all you guys on the left coast of the state....

If you can make it, come on over for some great blues and schmooze! I'm not playing this one but am more than willing to drop a ten-spot for this particular cause, which has a special resonance for me since it is directly related to music education - something that has been cut back hard in Public Schools across the country during the past decade or so. As a matter of fact, one of the players (Joe Zook of the justly famed Blues Deluxe) happens to be a music teacher in the Trenton Public School system and deals with the effects of that policy first-hand every single school day. He's doing what he can to make it better, and I figure that since he's willing to go that extra mile I can get off my arse and help too

Anyway, if you can't make this one there's always the big Invalid Link Removed benefit. Last I heard from Papa Carl, this year it'll be held in November. Last year there were about 20 local and regional acts on two different stages

 

[TRichardsbass]

I reckon this is double counting. Your normal fee is compensation for drawing your normal crowd.

In this case no, not double counting. I am waving my normal fee, which is in this case $500. So, that is my direct donation. Then, I draw 50 people. Each pays $10. So, my draw brought the charity/event an additional $500 of revenue. So the cost savings (my $500) plus my draw ($500) is actually a direct total contribution to them of $1000. The event got a direct benefit in total.

Its a normal business method used in many situations. While cash flow is king, cost avoidance is also important.

My compensation is NOT for my draw. A band and artist get paid for providing a service, in this case musical entertainment. While a draw is important to get further work, in actuality you are paid to perform. In the charity benefit I am not being paid for a draw, I am being paid to entertain. To say any musician's pay is for his draw says that your vision on this is skewed. U2 is not paid to draw. They get paid to perform. They get paid whether they pack the stadium or whether they only put one butt in the seats. Now, some of their direct compensation may be tied to ticket sales, but they don't do a show based on what the draw is.

I don't know anyone in my area of any ilk that plays for the door. A lot of clubs collect a door, but I will tell you that if my price is $500 for the date, and I draw 100 at a $10 door, the club owner isn't forking over the other $500. Conversely, if my price is $500, and the door is only 40 people, I'm not taking $400. I am not directly paid for the draw. I'm paid to play.

Sorry for the soapboxing, but I want to make sure others reading this understand that it is important to draw, and clubs will normally only book you if you are a good draw, you are not paid for your draw. You are paid for your performance.

 

[Munjibunga]

My band plays a lot of benefits, but we're the only band. I don't think we'd play one of those funky festival-style thingies, especially if they were charging admission.

 

[Downunderwonder]

Tom, no disrespect, but your logic is terrible. You're correct that the performance is what we get paid for. I wouldn't have it any other way. But that's not the same as saying the we don't get paid for the draw, most of the time, and certainly in this case. No bands, no draw. We get employed for our drawing potential.

By your example how much benefit does the event get if they actually pay your fee? $1000 - $500 = $500, but they have zero dollars in the till! $500 of warm fuzzies from actually paying the talent isn't a direct benefit.

In this case no, not double counting. I am waving my normal fee, which is in this case $500. So, that is my direct donation. Then, I draw 50 people. Each pays $10. So, my draw brought the charity/event an additional $500 of revenue. So the cost savings (my $500) plus my draw ($500) is actually a direct total contribution to them of $1000. The event got a direct benefit in total.

Its a normal business method used in many situations. While cash flow is king, cost avoidance is also important.

My compensation is NOT for my draw. A band and artist get paid for providing a service, in this case musical entertainment. While a draw is important to get further work, in actuality you are paid to perform. In the charity benefit I am not being paid for a draw, I am being paid to entertain. To say any musician's pay is for his draw says that your vision on this is skewed. U2 is not paid to draw. They get paid to perform. They get paid whether they pack the stadium or whether they only put one butt in the seats. Now, some of their direct compensation may be tied to ticket sales, but they don't do a show based on what the draw is.

I don't know anyone in my area of any ilk that plays for the door. A lot of clubs collect a door, but I will tell you that if my price is $500 for the date, and I draw 100 at a $10 door, the club owner isn't forking over the other $500. Conversely, if my price is $500, and the door is only 40 people, I'm not taking $400. I am not directly paid for the draw. I'm paid to play.

Sorry for the soapboxing, but I want to make sure others reading this understand that it is important to draw, and clubs will normally only book you if you are a good draw, you are not paid for your draw. You are paid for your performance.

The bold bit is quite right, but it's a different issue to the charity event's accounting.
Say you weren't even there, 500 bucks of draw goes south, do you owe them 500 for not going on the bill? That's effectively the flipside of your 1000 benefit calculation.

 

[fingerbun]

In this case no, not double counting. I am waving my normal fee, which is in this case $500. So, that is my direct donation. Then, I draw 50 people. Each pays $10. So, my draw brought the charity/event an additional $500 of revenue. So the cost savings (my $500) plus my draw ($500) is actually a direct total contribution to them of $1000. The event got a direct benefit in total.

Its a normal business method used in many situations. While cash flow is king, cost avoidance is also important.

My compensation is NOT for my draw. A band and artist get paid for providing a service, in this case musical entertainment. While a draw is important to get further work, in actuality you are paid to perform. In the charity benefit I am not being paid for a draw, I am being paid to entertain. To say any musician's pay is for his draw says that your vision on this is skewed. U2 is not paid to draw. They get paid to perform. They get paid whether they pack the stadium or whether they only put one butt in the seats. Now, some of their direct compensation may be tied to ticket sales, but they don't do a show based on what the draw is.

I don't know anyone in my area of any ilk that plays for the door. A lot of clubs collect a door, but I will tell you that if my price is $500 for the date, and I draw 100 at a $10 door, the club owner isn't forking over the other $500. Conversely, if my price is $500, and the door is only 40 people, I'm not taking $400. I am not directly paid for the draw. I'm paid to play.

Sorry for the soapboxing, but I want to make sure others reading this understand that it is important to draw, and clubs will normally only book you if you are a good draw, you are not paid for your draw. You are paid for your performance.

I invite you to write that approach up as a formal set of accounts and find a reputable auditor who will sign off on it. Maybe pre Enron you could have

In your scenario the charity has a profit of $500 (gate) less costs of $200 (your expense) giving net $300. Your donation of time removes $300 worth of cost but it's the difference between the charity making $300 vs making nothing, not $300 vs $600.

Also, if you were not there to draw, how can you take credit for the money paid by people who were drawn?

In the end it doesn't matter. If you make enough when you play and the charity ends up ahead when you donate, all good.

 

[Downunderwonder]

His expense was 500 in the example, leaving profit of zilch. Good thing Tom has a steady job playing bass. Hats off to that.

 

[TomB]

Hi, I am hoping some of you pros can enlighten me on the perils of no pay benefit shows.

Last night I received the details.

10 Bands agreed to play

No Pay

They will be charging 10.00 at the gate

Band has 10 mlns to set up,if you take longer they take time off the 45 mlnute slot.

No outside food or drink on the grounds


Band members have to buy their own food.

I have made it clear to the BL that I am not playing the show

What do you guys think?

I'm with you!

 

[dj150888]

I don't mind doing a benefit show occasionally, but I'm not going to do it for free, and I'm sure as hell not going to do it for a loss.

If we play a standard gig, we get our expenses, plus our fee, and the promoter makes his money on the ticket charge. To use abstract, simplified figures leaving out expenses etc for simplicity, say there's a $10 ticket charge, our fee is $500 and we draw 100 people, then our efforts have led to a $500 profit for the promoter.

In the case of the charity, I wouldn't think it too unfair to just leave it like that. Our time and effort has still led to the charity making money, its a win-win scenario. This is the scenario for a charity I have zero feelings about either way. If a charity I think are alright, but don't have any strong feelings about are requesting us, we might half our fee as a one off, if its a charity which is directly relevant to me or one I strongly support, I might waive the fee entirely. My expenses will still be covered, including food and drinks, and all technical details like soundcheck time, changeover time, backline requirements will be the same as any other gig.

In the last scenario, not only am I donating my time, but I'm donating my fee for the night as well. I sure as hell won't be guilt tripped about anything else. I've already done enough.

 

[Dark Horse]

I guess I'm odd, because I actually enjoy doing benefit shows. I definitely do the ones I'm passionate about, but even the ones that aren't on my "personal favorite charity list" are fulfilling to play. Sure, I won't pass up high paying gigs for them (unless it's for something like MDA or a musicians medical bills), but in the end, what's $20 and a few hours out of your time in comparison to the satisfaction of helping others ?

Just my opinion.

 

[Downunderwonder]

in the end, what's $20 and a few hours out of your time in comparison to the satisfaction of helping others ?

The thing is you might be the only ones present who are wholly giving, and getting only satisfaction in return. It really depends on the true nature of the organisers.

Lots of legal, registered charities here are mainly profit centres for their managers. Going by the posts here it's similar in the US?

I know of one lady here that makes a very nice annual salary, going on double a policeman's annual wage, working part time as fundraising organiser for a local good cause. She's very good at tapping the deep pocketed.

 

[Depth_Charge]

I'm willing to bet if that were timed it was more than ten minutes

I guess one benefit of having actually been there to do it (and time it) is I don't have to worry about losing any bets later on.

And for sure it took a lot longer than six minutes to go from line level noise people could hear to mixed music that sounded good at FOH.

 

[TRichardsbass]

I invite you to write that approach up as a formal set of accounts and find a reputable auditor who will sign off on it. Maybe pre Enron you could have

In your scenario the charity has a profit of $500 (gate) less costs of $200 (your expense) giving net $300. Your donation of time removes $300 worth of cost but it's the difference between the charity making $300 vs making nothing, not $300 vs $600.

Also, if you were not there to draw, how can you take credit for the money paid by people who were drawn?

In the end it doesn't matter. If you make enough when you play and the charity ends up ahead when you donate, all good.

I'm not talking about profit, I'm talking about total contribution/donation.

The charity hopes I draw, but no one actually pays me "to draw." You get paid to play, period, with the expectation that you are good enough people will want to come see you play and they will spend their dollars.

I don't know any club owner who says, "I'm not paying you to play, just for your draw. So, I'll put you on the bill and you don't have to play."

Charities book you to play, and yes, based on your popularity as part of it. Most charities hope you bring people with you, but most, I have found, are looking for entertainment for the event. The cancer society can have many fund raisers that don't include any entertainment. Most of those bomb. Its funny how so many people, including TBers, will say they support a cause but if all they had were 1 hour meetings monthly and you had to pay $5 at each meeting, none of them would go. But have a silent auction, dinner dance, cruise or vegas night? People come.

I am showing the youngun's here how you have to approach the finances and the thought process for benefits and charities and why asking for your expenses is justified.

My fee waiver is a direct donation. They don't have to pay squat. That is a direct benefit to the charity of $500 in this case. If I draw another 50, they just got $500 they would not otherwise have realized. So, my donation of time plus my draw is a direct benefit to them of $1000. Yes, in pure cash its only $500, but in direct benefit its double that.

My point again is that in these situations if you treat them as pure cash transactions you can't really assess them. For example, what is your time to advertise this gig worth? Do you have to pay for the website maintenance? Did you eat up text message limits? Did you spend any time marketing yourself at that event? That costs, in most cases time, but your time is worth something. So to add up the true "cost" you have to add up not just your performance donation but the time you spent with it. Ever hear of the economic term "cost-benefit analysis?"

I used to do this all the time when Phil Crosby's "Quality if Free" was all the rage. The "cost of quality" was not just the cost of the material you threw away, but all the labor it took to make, inspect, sort, quarantine and discard the item, or all the "value added prospects of it." Then, when you wanted to calculate how much "zero defects" type quality systems saved you added up not only the actual cost of the materials you would normally would have thrown away, but also the labor and overhead associated with that item in its form. Hence how they got "quality is free".

Anyway, enough economic and industrial arguing.

Just the way I do business when it comes to benefit and charity events, and I find it makes it much easier to figure out what to do and to show the charity how paying your expenses is still okay.

 

[TRichardsbass]

Tom, no disrespect, but your logic is terrible. You're correct that the performance is what we get paid for. I wouldn't have it any other way. But that's not the same as saying the we don't get paid for the draw, most of the time, and certainly in this case. No bands, no draw. We get employed for our drawing potential.

By your example how much benefit does the event get if they actually pay your fee? $1000 - $500 = $500, but they have zero dollars in the till! $500 of warm fuzzies from actually paying the talent isn't a direct benefit.


The bold bit is quite right, but it's a different issue to the charity event's accounting.
Say you weren't even there, 500 bucks of draw goes south, do you owe them 500 for not going on the bill? That's effectively the flipside of your 1000 benefit calculation.

If I'm not on the bill they there is no loss by the charity. There is no expectation in either direction as I'm not part of the benefit. But, if I were on the bill, and cancelled at the last minute, and therefore didn't draw, I did effect them to the tune of possibly $500 in revenue. Since my donation is a paper donation for my playing, and I didn't play, I therefore didn't donate. Would they have some expectation that I would draw? Yes, was that a calculation into expected cash revenue, probably.

This is what separates the cream from the milk. How you think about things. Sometimes the best net to you is not doing something, its the costs you avoid.

When it comes to paying bills, you need cash. But how many people here would sell their basses for much less then it was worth if they didn't have cash flow problems? I, like many, even take "paper profit" into account when purchasing instruments. I purchased a couple of basses this year at way less then I know I can sell them for now, even in this crappy economy. To me I already made a profit. Did I actually make a cash profit? No, because I didn't sell it yet. But if I sell them I will, and knowing that tells me I made an excellent purchase.


Yes, cash in the pocket is what matters in the end. Those of you in business and accounting know that you can account for all kinds of things that are not cash transactions. I once worked for a company that made a paper profit for 9 straight months even though they actually had negative cash revenue. Why? Because their accounting method, completely legal, allowed them to take full sale value credit for any work in progress at the end of the month. So, if we even moved a barrel of raw material into a machine, it was calculated at its finished final product state value. I can't tell you how many times we processed thousands of pounds of raw material into the first stage of the product every month end that year, showing, on paper, a huge profit, even though our cash revenue was negative. Now, eventually that accounting method does catch up with you if you don't sell at the expected rates, but it is one way to do it and its legal.

You can take depreciation on your car, office, instruments. They don't create any direct cash benefit, but they are accounting "paper" transactions. As someone here said, I can take credit for my fee waiver as a donation on my taxes. That isn't cash, but it is a direct benefit I can realize.

That is my take.

 

[Thor]

I agree with the methodology here.

If it is a qualifed charity, the method allows you to take a 500 dollar charitable deduction on money paid to you for
a service you intended to donate. But since you were paid, and wrote a check back, the charity nets out the same, but you are ahead a legit personal deduction.

Nice shuffle and totally legit as far as I can tell. And, you got some benefit from the donation because of the form it took.

Thanks, well figured!

 

[Gaius46]

The benefit we played Friday night was huge hit. Played outdoors on a gorgeous Friday evening. Tons of very appreciate people. The club hosting event comped the band on food and drinks and my wife won a bottle of vodka in a raffle. Free martinis for the rest of the year.

 

[MikeBass]

I've had this discussion with bands before and the funny thing is, most if not all will "open" for a big name act at some festivel some place for little or no money.
Play a 30 min set. Get horrible crap sound (because it's actually in most artists rider to allow opening bands maybe 8 channels on the board) and get treated not exactly the best.
And to be honest, usually get a whole lot of nothing in merch sales and/or fans from the deal.
IMO you have a better shot at a benefit to gain fans and sell merch.
Why? Because people actually care a bit more about what is going on.
At a big show where you're the opener, they don't care about youbecause they want the national headliner.

I've been on both sides. The opener and the national. And seen these great bands who play for nothing and get pretty much nothing to play at like 4 in the after noon when the headliner doesn't hit until 9:30 or so.

So, make to comparrison yourself.
Full set, usually pretty good sound.
Or,
25-30, and crap sound.
Both you're really not getting paid at all.