Insider tips on how to get booked for shows.
I want to talk a little bit more about venues, how venues work, how venues can work for you as an artist, even from the beginning, up to where you can start making like $30,000 a month doing shows, just selling, you know, not a crazy number of tickets.
But like how can you really do that?
I’m gon na talk about how these things work, how venue splits work, the different types of venues, and you know, a lot of that stuff that I really feel is very, very, very important information for artists like you who see themselves as a business who’s passed on just a raffle.
I know you understand. I’m a businessman. I can make a lot of money doing this, but you need to understand how business works.
So I’m gon na explain how the venue works and everything like that in this video. I also want to let you know that this information isn’t just for rappers. This information is for anybody who wants to book shows, singers, R & B artists, dancers, anybody who wants to actually set up shows in venues. This video is going to show you how to do that.
Because the business of being a venue, bringing artists and selling tickets is the same.
A lot of venues that do rock music will also do rap music, hip hop, music, r & b. Whoever can bring an audience in there, they really want to be in there.
Okay, first and foremost, venues are businesses. Okay, anything that’s out there, there’s a storefront, there’s a brick and mortar, if anything is out there, it’s there to make money. Somebody only invests their money and time into it generally, because they want to make money.
And additionally, you know, the passion, I like being the person that owns this.
So a venue is there every night that a venue is operational, that they have an artist there or that they have an event there. They need to profit, they need to make money.
So they knew how much money it cost for this ad to be operational every single night that it was up, including paying the people for the lights that ran in the building, and everything like that.
So you get to look at it from a business perspective, okay.
And that’s why when there’s a venue, they want to make sure that there are as many tickets sold as possible, because obviously, the more tickets sold, the more money they make, the more people come to the doors, the more buzz that gets generated for that venue by word of mouth, as well as more alcohol being sold and more merchandise from the artist.
And we’re going to talk about splits and stuff like that in just a minute.
When an artist like yourself goes into a venue, there are a couple of options in ways that they will allow you to perform and say that you’re the headliner.
In these circumstances, the headliner, meaning the main person, is not the opening for the person, but you’re the main person.
Now, as the main person is the headliner, there are a couple of options, and I’m gon na go over those with you as how a venue would make the money from you, or you know, the deal that you would make with the venue that you’re going to have to get used to making.
So option A is going to be, and this is if it’s an option. Not all venues offer both of these options. Sometimes they only offer one type of option.
But these are the different types of options for different venues. It’s going to vary, okay, but the first one is going to be where you can actually rent out the venue for the night.
Okay, so there’s going to be a set rate for how much money it’s going to cost to rent the venue.
Now, if the venue costs $2,000 for the night to rent, well, if you sell $1,000 in tickets, you are going to make $6,000.
Right?
It’s really simple, basic math.
So let’s talk about option B real quick.
Option B is where they do a split 5050 split, meaning they get 50% and you get 50%, or there’s a 6040 split, and that can go in either direction for them or for you.
It just depends on who you are, how many people you can bring to the door, because obviously they’re like, “Well, this guy can sell 300 tickets. We’ll be more than happy to split those sales with you.”
Okay, because the tickets cost $10 a ticket and you sell 300 tickets, that’s $3,000.
Okay, and if you did a 5050 split, you could make 15 $100.
Okay, that’s not bad for a little bit of promotion, and a 45-minute performance from you.
Okay, 1500 bucks.
Come on.
Now, let’s say that you want to tour, if you’re touring like mad crazy, because you’re somebody who can actually go on a regional tour or national tour.
Imagine that you go on a tour that consists of 20 dates like this, and you can sell 300 tickets at every market or more. You’re gon na make at least $15. At 20 shows, you’re talking about $30,000.
Okay, think about that for a second.
Once you do 20 shows a month, if it’s all set up properly, okay, you make 30 grand in a month.
And I’m like, there’s no reason for me to inflate these numbers.
You know what I’m saying?
This is real. This is basic math.
1500 times 20 shows shit 1500 times 20 shows what you do in a year.
Okay?
Now again, if you’re the headliner, like I said, the person who’s the main artist, not the opener, usually the show is set up, you know, two to three months in advance.
That’s usually how you get the show booked as long as you let them know in advance.
And the reason for this being advanced is so that the promoters can promote the show and the venue can promote the show to the people who are already coming to the shows.
Have you ever been to a show in the hands of that flyer? That flyer is so flat, it’s thrown away. You pick it up real quickly, throw it away.
Well, it’s the venue’s attempt to let you know who the upcoming artists are.
And if it’s a name they recognize, well, then that person may come back and actually come to your show.
And here’s the most important factor right now, because I’m going to assume you, as an artist, are not at the level where you’re going to be a headliner. You’re probably more interested in knowing how the opener stuff works.
Okay, well, this is another way that they help sell tickets.
Generally, if you go to see a major artist, they usually have five to eight openers. Okay, and the reason why there are five to eight openers is This is because the venue will sell tickets to the artists who want to open.
Okay, let me give you a quick example.
Let’s say you wanted to open for me when I go on tour, okay?
And the venue, you don’t want to want to open the venue and say, Okay, here, I need you to buy these tickets. Okay, they’re $10 each, so you’re going to give the venue $100.
And they’re gon na give you 10 tickets. As long as you sell 10 tickets, they’re gon na say, Hey, brother, Hey, Mom, Hey, Dad, come see me perform. Go to school, or go to your job and say, Hey, I’m performing on the fourth. You know, I’m opening for Rob Levels, or whatever artist they’re going to open for. You know, to try to incentivize
But what the venue does is, they say, look, you know, to sell these for $10, usually tickets for $15.
So you could sell these tickets to friends and family for $15. You’re going to profit 50 extra dollars, plus you get the performance. Okay?
That’s how this works.
You’re not paying to play, you’re paying to prove your worth.
And then you go sell your tickets.
And this is why it requires a little bit of hustle for upcoming artists.
But also, why this is great for headlining artists is because upcoming artists like you go out there.
And if there are five openers, and they sell 10 tickets, they’re gon na drive 50 more people into this building that may not be fans of the headliner.
And now the headliner can gain fans as well.
But you also get to gain fans from all the headliners’ fans, okay.
I don’t know if you ever thought about that.
But this is really how it works really quickly for your safety.
If a venue ever asks you to pay to perform in front of people, do not do it.
There are certain circumstances where, I mean, if you want to go on a tour with an artist, you have to chalk up some money for that. Plus, you get to pay for your hotel, stay in a lot of other stuff. You’re not gon na go crazy with that.
But if a venue nearby says give me $500 and you can open for this person, do not do that, because that’s not how it works, and it’s not worth the money.
Now real quick, let me mention a way that you can make a lot more money.
Okay, almost double your money, if not more than that.
Every time you do a show, especially if you’re a headliner, okay.
And this is also a reason why I didn’t mention it before.
But a lot of venues when they do that split, they’ll do the door split, or even when you rent out the venue, sometimes they do ask you, or require you to give them a percentage of the merchandise sales. Okay, so if you sell, you know, for instance, that it’d be 10, or 20%.
So if you sell $1,000 in merchandise, and it’s 20%, you have to give them $200 of that $800.
But your margins are so good on merchandise, that’s not really gon na be a big deal.
You’re still making $800. It was part of the price, it was the price of doing business.
All right, but let me let me give you some numbers here to get you a little excited.
And I will explain to you why merchandise is so valuable for artists, especially on tour.
When you tour, if you can sell 300 tickets to your show,
You’re the headliner. You sell 300 tickets. 300 people come through the door. Let’s say that just 10% of those people buy merchandise. Okay, so 10% of 300 is 30 people. If just 30 people out of those 300 people buy merchandise, it will probably be more.
And they actually bought a ticket. If just 30 of those people bought a hat or a T-shirt that cost $30, you just made an extra $900.
A show.
Okay,
So if you do 20 shows, it is $18,000.
And you’re probably gon na sell more than that, because, like I said, that’s only 10% of the people who buy it.
And that doesn’t include people buying meet and greets from you to meet you, or people buying autographs from you or autographed CDs or posters, or people buying bundles that come with a hat and two t-shirts, right, and you autograph them because you’re there at the table and it incentivizes them to buy, like, you make a lot of money off of merchandise.
This is a very basic wrap up of all of this information. This video, honestly, is actually the intro video of my course on how to book your own shows and grow your fan base by looking at shows and creating these relationships in order to start going on national tours.
This is actually a course that I have.
But this is like one of the intro videos that gives you information about this type of stuff.
And in the course, I even call venues.
And I’m like, hey, Baba, Baba, how do we?
How can I get to the show?
Who who’s opening?
What show?
Can I open it?
You know, can I get 10 tickets?
Can I do one of the primary openers?
And can I get this time slot to actually show you guys this stuff?
I have email templates that you copy and paste changes, like a couple of words.
And you can send them to all of these venues, the people who run the venues and choose the people who open the shows. I show you how to fix your social media, how to get your APK, how to get your profile, so that you can actually make sure that they want to choose you to open.
And I mean, this is super valuable.
If you’re in your hometown, and you want to start branching out, this course is going to help you a lot.
And it’s exclusive to my smart rapper community. They actually made it as one of the extra courses. I already have 16 courses.
And then I’m like, my team’s like, that’s an Of course, I’m like, “No, there are not enough courses.”
I want to make as many courses as I can so that everybody really sees the value in being part of my community, and the community is new right now.
So I’m very excited about just keeping getting these incredible pieces of content out there and these courses, but this course is going to show you everything from A to Z.
No problem as long as you have the right mental attitude and the right knowledge. You know and you really want to make it happen.
You got to hustle fire under your ass to really make it happen.
There’s no reason why you can’t book shows because, like I said, if you let them know I can sell 10 tickets, then well, you can sell 10 tickets.
Let me check out your music.
Oh, not bad.
Okay, cool.
Okay, yeah, you can form even 10 tickets. You can buy 10 tickets for $100. You will make $150 with this. Right actually to do all this stuff in the course.
I’m gon na put a link below for you to the course as well as to the communities. You can check both of them out.
And then I’m also going to have a course on how to build your own national tours. I’m going to bring in experts that actually do that for a living to explain how to do that process because there are a lot more seasoned at that.
I’m sure that you want to get to the point where you’re making $30,000 doing 20 shows plus the merchandise.
So imagine making $60,000, imagine making $60,000 a year just from just a year from your music.
Like that’s beautiful, you can live off of that, you and your family can live off of that and you don’t have that. Okay, right, that’s what I’m trying to provide this value and I always release a video a day on the Smart Rapper channel for a reason to consistently provide value.
And I’m just going above and beyond to continue doing that right.
I’m Rob level, going into the like. Please hit me with a comment.
What do you think about this? I hope this helps you understand a little more about how venues work and stuff like that.
I do apologize that this video is a bit longer than expected to be this long.
And hit the subscribe button and check out all the other videos on the channel.
We’re gon na have like 15,000 subscribers a month right now. It is going crazy.
I will see you guys tomorrow with another video.
Insider tips on how to get booked for shows.
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