TOUR BUY-ON EXPLAINED!
Yesterday I posted this on my Facebook page:
I am looking for an opening band for the upcoming North American tour. If your band (2-3 performers) wants to be the main support for 3-4 weeks in April 2013, then please contact: booking@faderhead.com. This is a buy-on slot, but the buy-on is essentially a tourbus share, so you won’t need transportation/hotels, etc. – If you think you can go hard with The Lord and me for a month, hit us up!
Basically I am asking if anyone wants to pay to support us on 20 shows in April 2013.
This is a very normal thing and almost every support band you see on a tour is a buy-on band unless they are very close friends of the main act or are at a similar level of public recognition so that the tour is beneficial to both acts. And then you mostly have a 3rd band that buys on.
Within a few hours of my post I had a bunch of emails from random people saying “You capitalist pig! Charging bands to play is a crime!” and from some bands who are completely misjudging the costs of touring by thinking that the whole buy-on will be costing “around US$ 500 for 20 shows“. The real cost for a buy-on slot such as this is US$ 300 per show.
Why? It’s quite simple, because that’s just what it costs to travel. To express it more clearly, I took out my pen and paper and made this little infographic to illustrate the subject matter:
As you can see from the piechart at the bottom, the costs for tourbus and gas combined are approximately US$ 17500. And since there is room on the bus for more people than The Lord, me and our crew, it just makes sense to offer the remaining bus space to a band who wants to raise their profile by playing more and bigger shows than they usually could on their own. It’s not like they could play 20 shows cheaper in a van themselves and The Lord and I are buying mansions with the buy-on money (I wish!!) …
Tour buy-on’s are real because they help the newer bands gain a following from a more established band’s fanbase while they help offset tour costs. In more commercial scenes that means you pay big bucks on top of the tourbus-share/fee.
If you want to do that or not is up to you of course.
Hi,
I work in a concert venue in France, and i see a lot of bands with a “tour support” which pay for playing with this headline, and have to buy their own van + oil + deal with us for having hotel rooms, if we can’t, they sleep in the van… Great !
What you propose is very realistic and it’s a good opportunity for the band.
It’s an excellen investment.
I hope you’ll find a good band with great people.
Have fun in USA !
As a fan who knows very little about what goes on behind the scenes, it’s cool that you explain this stuff! It’s really great that you took time to do this.
I think that the main problem people are having is that is mainly a European idea. I’ve had friends in bands (ones actually signed to a real label like Metropolis) explain this to me in the past. In the US they would be asked to join a tour, the headliner charges a higher guarantee for all the bands involved and then pays the support acts a percentage out of the grand total with the lion’s share going to the headliner. There is no right or wrong here, just different. I guess the main question with you chart above is, does the opener get any money back from the guarantee with the buy on option? Obviously if they spend $5900 to go it alone, they can name their guarantee and hopefully they are making at least $300 per show and at the end of the tour they break even (and possibly have no girlfriend anymore) whereas with your scenario they spend $6000, have merch sales as their only means of recouping that cost (minus whatever they had to pay for their merch to begin with), but they do get a wider exposure. It’s all up to the bands as to what is more important to them. In any case, they shouldn’t be bitching at you because they are ignorant about how things work outside of their little biosphere.
So for $6k could you can see Faderhead backstage, and perform live in front of you, and share a bus with them around 20 locations and maybe get away with just hitting a bin with a stick on stage for half hour? sounds awesome!!!!
Travis: buying on always has the goal of spending money to reach a bigger audience. It’s an investment in the future, not a way to make money. For some bands it’s also simply too early to do a buy-on tour because they are not ready yet …