There is something that has been on my mind for a few months now and I just feel the need to let it rip here, so I am! This is more on a local aspect as opposed to a national aspect, but I know a LOT of bands can relate.

Playing locally for a band is hard because you are pushing yourself to become a better musician on stage and in practice, showcase new songs or jam out to songs people know and like, attract a fan base and be able to keep it where it is all proven on stage! Most of the time it is just warm up shows for touring bands, whereas local bands kind of get fucked!

The thing that pisses me off to no fucking end is promoters. Not all promoters are bad mind you, but the majority of them are clueless on what the hell is going on. They want to book bands because they love music, but most think they are going to make money at it. The thing is, it is just like any business, it takes money to make money.

When a band is booked, all of a sudden it’s the new thing to make bands to sell tickets. In a sense, I can understand the motive. I do understand that a band has to draw people, but making any band sell tickets to a show is plain wrong. That should be up to the promoters to make sure they are sold, not the bands. If a promoter prints tickets, obviously something is wrong right away. Promoters are normally a lot like bands, meaning they are as broke as a band member is. So to a promoter perhaps making tickets will solve the problem. Now that the promoter is making tickets, some of the costs of the show are being spent instead of spending that money to where it could count more. But now the promoter puts the hassle of selling a stupid ticket to play the show on the band members.

The thing is, if you are into a certain genre of music and you follow the bands you like, you talk with your friends, you already know who's playing where and when. Tickets are wrong for local shows anyways. If tickets are involved then the promoter should book the bands, sell the tickets, and most importantly, ADVERTISE! Fliers are only 25% of the solution to getting people out to the shows and it helps to a bigger degree than most because they are grasping it and reading it. Myspace, facebook, or any of that other type of web site is only another 25%. Again though, it’s just like a flier only on a screen but easier to forget unless you keep on it and eventually pissing people off. The other 50%, well that is where things go wrong on a promoters end. So how is any promoter encouraging making bands sell tickets when the promoter don’t do anything other than book the show with the club and make fliers? Where is the advertising? Where is the publicity? There is NONE on a promoters end. -----------------------------------

Lets look at that word for a second. Promoter: The suffix “er” refers to “one who”.
Promote – (verb) to encourage the sales, acceptance, etc., of (a product), esp. through advertising or other publicity.

Does it all have to do with money? Well if so, then STOP FUCKIN BOOKING SHOWS if you don’t have the monetary funds to pay the bands, the bar, the soundman, the bouncers, and whoever else needs to get their cut. That’s a number one rule!

By making bands sell tickets, promoters are only hurting the scene that you have because it pisses bands off that they have to do even MORE work than what is called for while promoters don’t do anything.

Let’s move on to the bands. Bands need to stop this from happening and not give in to selling tickets to play! Boycott that horrendous practice and get back to the basics of it all. By selling tickets to play a show, you are giving in and letting promoters have their way screwing yourselves and bands that will emerge in the future.

Bands that are more known on a bigger scale should encourage the bands to stop this practice as well! How is that helping the more known bands? It’s not! The reasons being is because they’re either clueless on it or just don’t care. But they should care!

Tickets to a local show anyways, is a really god damn dumb idea to begin with. If people are going to attend, they will and they will pay at the door. When you go to McDonalds, you don’t need a ticket. When you go to a hardware store, a CD store, movie store, bar, casino, do you need a ticket for that too? NO! So why make it a ticket deal? A person comes to a venue to see live bands play and they pay for that the same way one does anything else.
When you go to a movie theater to see a movie, sure you get a ticket to go see that movie that starts at a certain time. That way you don’t have to wait or have it sold out. To a local gig though is completely uncalled for.

Now you are thinking “well then what’s a solution?”. Well I’ll tell you! How about perks to get people to the shows? How about advertising? How about dropping the prices to get in the venue? Not have so many bands play the show! Start the shows at decent times with GOOD bands and not make every show last until the butt-crack of dawn?

This deal of selling tickets is a joke and it has to stop! Ok so I think I have proven my point!