Jeff Riddle started out as a touring musician, and eventually went on to work in booking/artist management and artist/venue consulting. He managed my career for over a year, and helped to secure me tens of thousands of dollars in concert fees. Jeff now lives in New York City, where he heads the East Coast division of a successful marketing firm. He also runs TheGiveGive (www.thegivegive.com), a blog that specializes in teaching professionals to build lasting business relationships. I recently spoke with him about booking, and specifically about the process of negotiation. Note that in much of this interview, we're talking about negotiation with venues that are willing to pay a guarantee, such as colleges, private events, festivals, etc.
MT: When you realize you have interest from a venue or a college, what do you want to keep in mind?
JR: First you’re going to want to address the mindset. The typical mindset in the negotiation (and a common misconception!) is that the artist is going to feel undesired, and that the other party (venue, presenter) has all the power. The reality is that if the other party is willing to work with that artist, they need the artist, too. So once there’s a mutually agreed-upon movement forward, the artists need to understand that they are in a much more powerful position than they let themselves have. Remember that just because you ask a question, or ask for something, doesn’t mean they aren’t going to want to work with you anymore.
MT: An artist might also run into a situation where a venue hasn’t committed yet, but is ‘shopping around’. This happens a lot with colleges, especially college festivals.
JR: That’s another mindset. Say they email you back something like: “This sounds interesting, but how much does it cost?” In this case, the artist becomes a commodity. The venue is basically price shopping. Depending on how you feel about this as an artist, you can respond one of two ways. You can either say, “We don’t talk price until we’ve had at least a commitment that a venue wants to move forward,” or, if you are okay with that and have an idea of what they might generally pay, you can name a price range. For example, you could say, “For this type of event, I usually get this range of price, depending on details - travel costs, promotion, etc.” This gives you leeway.
MT: Do you think every artist should set standard prices for each type of show they might play?
JR: Yes, I think they should have a general price point for each type of venue. With every new business, when they start out, they’ll work with anybody who will pass the fog test – meaning, put a mirror up to their face and if they breathe into it and it creates fog then they’ll work with them, (laughs), And that’s kind of how it works with the artist, too. Anyone who will even give them a dollar, they’ll play for them, because it’s like ‘Oh my god, I’m getting paid’. So in terms of price point with every business, you can take one of two approaches – you can either start high and work your way down to figure out your fair market value, or you can start low and work your way up. Most artists are going to start low, and that’s okay, but one of the advantages to starting high is that your value is set high – there’s an association with price and value – so there’s some power because of that, but at the same time there is a possibility that if you’re trying to book a full tour, you cut out 2/3 of the shows because you’re not even in that range.
MT: So how do you know if you’ve set a good price for yourself?
JR: A lot of it is based on peoples' reactions. Based on how they react, you are able to determine what they’re willing to pay. And in most businesses, pricing is so similar, but for artists every venue is so different.
MT: That’s one of the hardest things about the music industry, especially for independent artists. It’s hard to know what the right approaches are.
JR: There are all these standard approaches that people talk about, rules of negotiation – like, for example, ‘the first person to name a price loses’. Most people go into this looking at it as a win/loss – meaning someone is going to win and someone is going to lose. Unfortunately, the problem with that is that if you look at it that way, the artists are almost always going to lose. Instead, you should approach this entirely as how do we create a win/win situation, a situation where the venues are happy, and we’re happy too. That should be the mindset and the general approach.
Have a general idea what your price is – if you are super flexible and will play for $10 one night, but another venue you want to try to play for $500, that can hurt in the long run. You should standardize pricing to the best you can. Along these same lines, artists should have a non-disclosure agreement with every single venue; a confidentiality agreement that they won’t share the price you gave them with other venues.
You should also try to subsidize as much as you can; try to get venues or organizations to try to pay for products, travel, promotion, etc. Sometimes, at colleges for example, they can budget out separate things in different areas. For example, if you go to a company or marketing organization and try to do something with them, they may only have a limited budget in some areas, but then in other areas they can make up the cost with travel, because it’s a different kind of expense – things like that.
Artists should have a standard terms and a standard agreement. The venue might send a contract, but you should also have a standard contract to use. Even if they send a contract, still having some standard terms of your own - attaching a rider, for instance – makes you more consistent and more professional, and the more professional you seem, the more money and respect you’ll yield.
MT: I was talking earlier about how an artist is somewhat replaceable until they hit some level of notoriety or critical mass.
JR: The critical mass is all based on financial value – and I think that’s something else artists need to remember with negotiation. We all know there are plenty of artists out there who are not that musically talented, but they’re getting paid a ton of money. At the end of the day, you have two choices – you either go into your room and do art, and it’s all about the art and it’s for you, but if you want to get out there and make a living at this, you’ve got to look at as a business, and unfortunately in the business community, they don’t really care as much about the art. The more you can understand that, the more negotiation will make sense, because it’s kind of a counter-intuitive approach.
There are two ways to go about this. If you’re going to just show up and be entertainment, then you’re just a commodity. But if you’re dedicated to building a following, and leveraging the tools and resources that exist out there, then that’s something different. In that case, the negotiation doesn’t even matter.
MT: Any other advice?
JR: Building and leveraging relationships will be really important, too, as a marketing tool. If you’re playing one place, these guys all know everybody else, too, so it’s in your best interest to A) build a relationship with them and be really professional and B) Leverage it in the right way.
MT: And people talk between each other more than we realize – venues and agents all talk with each other, and it’s a smaller community than we might think.
JR: One of the things a lot of artists don’t have going for them s professionalism. If you’re professional, it can go a long way. People really appreciate that, and they’ll talk about it.
-Martin Storrow for Modern Touring
*Visit Jeff's blog at www.TheGiveGive.com
No comments:
Post a Comment