Firestarters? Gigstarter’s looking to create a big disruption

As they warm up for Friday’s Pitch Party at the #OneDayer – Gigstarter’s Donal Scannell talks us through one issue he says prevents musicians from making a good living in independent live music. 

It’s worth remembering that artists and their fans are the ones ultimately paying for everything in the music industry including a lot of nonsensical inefficiencies. In the live music industry the revenue splits are based on concepts that haven’t changed in decades. Artists are unnecessarily paying a premium for services which technology has massively disrupted.

Have a look at this revenue split, based on a real example of an artist playing a sold out 2100 capacity venue with a very reasonable all-in rental of €9900 plus a modest €2000 for marketing and €800 on rider/meal buy-out:

The artist gets 54% of the ticket price but needs to pay band,crew,pa,travel and transport – expenses which all continue to rise, especially if the artist has high production values as most rightly do.

• Why do artists give up so much of their income to promoters and ticket agents?
• Why do fans pay on average 15% for tickets?
• Why do artists pay extra money to promoters for shows that fan funding can bank roll?

The short answer is because they can… they have spend decades creating near monopolies in a pattern that’s been repeated globally.

At Gigstarter we want to level the playing field by offering a solution that puts a third more into artist’s pockets – find out how we’re doing it at Joining the Dots: The One Dayer – Finance, Technology and the Future of Independent Music, 12 September 2014.

For more information about the One Dayer go here.  Book tickets here (£40.00).