(Lack Of) Money

[Andy]

The mathematics mean that a venue that small (200) wouldn't be economic for FC or the booker.

[Chris]

For the full band, you'd need a 400 seater (full!) to break even on a reasonably priced ticket....

But, I belive FC acoustic can be economic in a 200 seater, if they're booked while on tour & not a one-off gig. Trouble is, they don't tour a lot after the end of May for obvious reasons.

I agree that, as long as any guarantee is reasonable for the size of venue, the artist can quite often come off better on a percentage deal rather than a guarantee, especially if the band are confident of their pulling power, and ability of tthe booker in publicity.

Jonny Jonah Jones was superb at structuring percentage deals as he had worked out that he could make more money out of bookers if they weren't busted by a ridiculously large guarantee that was never going to be made!

There are acts around that will always work on a percentage basis - Mundy-Turner, I believe, and Show of Hands both do, for example.

[Andy]

How much does one pay to NOT get the kookaburra?

[Chris]

I think they know that they've done the kookaburra to death.....not heard it in the last couple of gigs that I've witnessed. Otherwise, just a friendly request!

[GarethWR]

Bit late in the day on this thread, but one potential avenue for income that a lot of folk musicians miss out on is TV broadcast use, especially on things like promos (trailers).

Most TV promo directors (and I am one such) get pretty much total freedom to choose the music they use on their work. The big caveat is that, for commercial TV at least, the tracks need to have been registered through MCPS and PPL - if they're not, we can't use them without approaching the publisher and record company directly and negotiating a special rate, and we almost never do that because it's expensive.

Pretty much 90% of all commercial music (i.e. stuff you can buy in shops, as opposed to production music, which is only available to the TV, radio and film industries) is covered under the blanket agreements that broadcasters have with MCPS and PPL... but a lot of stuff on small labels, or which has been put out privately by artists, isn't. This wipes out a great many folk artists.

FC is a good example of this; all their Island stuff is covered under the MCPS and PPL blankets, so that's fine to use, but virtually everything released on the Woodworm label isn't. And here's where it gets a bit daft : I can't use the original Woodworm releases of, say, Glady's Leap or Expletive Delighted, because when you look them up on the MCPS computer system it reports that they're not part of the blanket... but I *can* use the exact same tracks taken from the Folkprint re-releases, because Folkprint *is* part of the MCPS/PPL blanket.

Whether that means that Folkprint took a cut from the mechanical royalties that ITV paid for my use of Portmeirion and Bankruptured in the last couple of years, I don't know... personally I'd have preferred to have been able to use the Woodworm originals and be sure that all the money was getting back to FC, but since Woodworm wasn't part of the blanket agreement, I couldn't.

So I'd urge any folk musicians to try and ensure that their record label is fully signed up to the MCPS/PPL blanket agreements for TV broadcast use! It won't mean that suddenly everyone will start using their music on promos, but it will at least offer the possibility that their music *might* be used (and hence earn them a bit of money), which has to be better than knowing that their music *can't* be used.

[jude]

Thankyou Gareth. That's really useful stuff to know. Although I must say trying to find one's way through the MCPS/PPL maze can be a nightmare, but hopefully my publisher and record company have done all that.

The publisher (RealWorld) is extremely good at explaining stuff to me in words of one syllable....or less 

Jude

[tarda (Gill)]

How do they make gigs like the Bluebell railway w/e pay? We paid £16each (I believe) for a day ticket which included unlimited rail travel, the back-ups and FC. I'm sure the marquee couldn't have held more than 250.