For one night only…

Artisan is coming out of retirement (for one night only) to take part in a benefit night for Norma Waterson at the Square Chapel, Halifax on Wed 18 May. Acts appearing include Steve Tilston, Martin Simpson, Heretique, Demon Barbers, Ryburns, Artisan and more.

It was arranged too late in the day to get into the Arts Centre brochure, so we’d love you to pass on the details for us word of mouth.

Norma has been very sick and still has a long way to go on the road to recovery. Martin has been by her side in hospital for the last several months and – as you know, folk singers who don’t work, don’t earn.

Box office: 01422 349422. Please support the night.

Artisan: Random Play

What The !*&$! is a Percentage Deal and How Does it Work?

It’s called ‘A guarantee against a box office split.’

You want to book an artist to play at your venue – let’s call him Lawrence of Arabia, Laurie A for short – and you ask me what his fee is. I tell you it’s three hundred pounds against 80%  of the nett ‘door’ and your brain goes into overload. Am I offering you a good deal? Am I trying to blind you with science. What the blooming heck is a percentage deal anyway? What’s a box office split? What’s a guarantee?

Well, first off, it’s nothing to worry about. It’s a pretty good way of ensuring that there’s a bit of flexibility built into the deal which means both the artist and the booker get the fairest deal at the end of the night, based on how many seats were sold at the gig and for what price.

It’s customary when negotiating a percentage deal for the ticket price to be agreed in advance so the artist knows that there’s every chance of  ending up with more than the basic agreed amount. I don’t insist on a minimum ticket price for every artist, though some insist on it for themselves. I generally hope that we can come to a sensible figure based on your hstorical precedent and the artist’s usual expectations.

Terminolgy

The ‘door’ is just shorthand for ‘box office revenue’. Americans and Canadians refer to it as the ‘gate’.)

What does £300 against 80% of the nett door actually mean?
It means you guarantee to pay Laurie A a minimum of £300 but when you’ve counted your box office revenue, and deducted the direct costs of putting on the gig, if eighty percent of the amount you have left comes to more than £300, you pay Laurie A the higher figure. Legitimate expenses include: hall hire, Laurie A’s bed and breakfast bill, the PA hire and any direct advertising for the one show. The list of legitimate expenses is usually agreed in advance. Note if you advertise ten gigs in the same ad you can’t deduct the amount of the whole ad before calulating the expenses, only one tenth of it.

Obviously the ticket price enters in to the calculation, so ticket prices are agreed in advance too. It’s important for everyone to know at the time of the booking what the potential revenue is from the gig. If the hall seats 100 and you are only charging £3 per ticket, there’s no way a percentage deal can kick in. But if the hall seats 100 and ticket prices are £10 then there’s every chance of smiling faces at the end of the night.

An example.

You book Laurie A for £300 against 80% of the nett door.
You sell 80 tickets at £10 each meaning your gross box office take is £800.
You hire a hall for £100 and pay another £100 for a PA system, but Laurie A stays in your granny’s spare room so you don’t pay for B&B on this occasion. You take out an ad in the local folk magazine, but it advertises 6 artists and only costs £20 so you write that off. Therefore your total direct costs are £200

Deduct your direct costs of £200 from your gross box office of £800 and your nett box office is £600
80% of £600 is £480
You pay Laurie A £480 instead of the £300 guarantee.
This means that you keep a clear £120 for your club/venue/pocket, in addition to the £200 for expenses. (You also keep the proceeds of the raffle if you have one, that doesn’t enter into this calculation).

BUT
Say you only charged £7 for tickets and all your expenses and Laurie A’s fee remained the same the figures would look like this:

Gross box office take (80 x £7) = £560
Nett box office (after deductions of £200) = £360
80% of £360 = £288
You pay Laurie A the minimum guarnatee of £300 as agreed.

Let’s try that again

You book Tinkerbelle Tailor for a fee of £200 against 90% of the nett door.
Your folk club room costs nothing and you don’t use a PA. Your only expense is £20 for the local folk magazine advert which you took out just for Tink (as you didn’t have any other guests that quarter).

You charge £6 on the door and get 47 bums on seats, but you let 2 of them in free because they are the support act. So 45 tickets at £6 each equals £270. Deduct your expenses of £20. The nett is £250.

90% of £250 = £225.
You pay Tink £225

BUT if you only get 30 paying people in at £6 per ticket, your gross is £180, yet you have still guaranteed to pay Tink £200, so you still have to do that on the night as agreed.

I hope that helps. If you are booking an artist through my agency and you are still puzzled call me on 01484 606230 and I’ll explain it all again.

Agentophobia

Why are some organisers scared of agents?

When I was a performer I used to play at Mr. X’s folk club regularly. I even stayed in his house after the gigs. We got on just fine. Once I became an agent he stopped returning my calls and never answered my emails. Mutual friends have told me that it’s because he thinks that if he books an artist through an agent it will cost him a lot more money, therefore he’s pathologically afraid of negotiating fees with an agent, even me.

I want to set the record straight.

An agent works for the artist and is paid by the artist. Yes, it’s in the agent’s best interests to get the artist the maximum amount for the job because 15% of £1000 is always better than 15% of £100, however the fee must not be at the expense of the venue or event because that’s counterproductive. The venue must not lose money on the gig.

Getting a single gig is reasonably easy, but building up a relationship with a venue and getting multiple gigs for multiple artists and then repeat gigs for those artists is much more difficult. It can only be achieved by being scrupulously fair to both venue and artist. Sometimes you sacrifice a short term gain for a long term good relationship. In the end you don’t lose by that and neither does the artist.

Artists’ fees vary. Some are negotiable, some aren’t. Some are a flat fee and some are a basic guarantee set against a percentage of the box office income. The artists are the ones who set the fees and conditions or give me the power to negotiate with a certain upper and lower limit. Some artists insist on a rider, others do not. Some artists insist on hotel accommodation, others are happy to stay with the organisers and a few prefer to arrange their own accommodation because they like to get away after a show. As an agent, all I can do is work within the guidelines the artists set me. (Note that I do discourage the sort of riders that ask for champagne and Smarties in the dressing room.)

So if Mr. X books an artist through me he’ll pay the same as if he (theoretically) books direct with the artist. My percentage comes out of the artist’s fee. And since I have an exclusive deal with my artists, they don’t actually deal directly with a booker. Instead they pass the enquiry on to me. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

The only time Mr. X might get a cheaper deal from an artist is if he pulls the old pals act, tries to go direct and browbeats them into a fee that’s lower than their minimum. Some artists are pathologically afraid of refusing a gig even if it’s not paying enough to more than cover their expenses. He might feel as though he’s put one over on both the artist and the agent, but this kind of deal doesn’t foster a good working relationship. Mr. X becomes known as a cheapskate pennypincher and artists avoid working for him.

NO. The N-word is really difficult to say, but it’s more difficult for an artist than for an agent.

“Ah, but…” Mr. X might say. “Whenever an act signs to an agency their fees immediately go up.” That is sometimes true for a few acts who are rising through the ranks, becoming more popular, growing and pulling bigger audiences. A long established act knows his worth, knows his audience and his fee is not likely to go up when he takes on or changes an agent. An up and coming act is still discovering their value and may well have been woefully underselling themselves prior to joining an agency. Upon joining the agency the artists and the agent might sit down together and review fees and may well set different fee limits. With the new fee limits set, however, Mr. X will not get the act at their old pre-agency price, no matter who he talks to. So I urge all the Mr. Xs out there to lose their fear of agents. We’re here to ensure that every booking is a win-win, or between artist, agent and booker a win-win-win.

What an agent doesn’t do

Sometimes there are false expectations. I’m an agent not a manager. There are other industry professionals whose job it is to do artist publicity and advertising, to plug CDs to radio stations and to generally further an artist’s career in many ways. If you want those jobs doing you have to employ the relevant industry professionals or you have to do the job yourself.

Let me say that again. Though I may from time to time make helpful (or unhelpful) suggestions, I do not manage an artist’s career.

An agent is also not a tour manager. (Yes I know what my agency is called and I will tour manage for artists, but at a substantial additional cost.) It’s generally the artist’s responsibility to get to the gig on time. An agent does not arrange transport to and from the gig, or book overnight accommodation except where accommodation is part and parcel of the remuneration for the gig. An agent does not arrange accommodation on days off.

I am not a publicist. I am not responsible for sending out or paying for artist advertising. I do not send tourdates to magazines and websites. Artists retain the responsibility for promoting their gigs to the world at large and their own mailing list in particular. An agent is not a publicist. It’s up to artists to do PR work and to crank out adverts and gig publicity or employ someone to do so.

I don’t have any artistic input or any say in an artist’s show. I don’t arrange for venues to provide elements required for shows. If an artist needs a xylophone, they’d better have one in their kit. (The exception to this being negotiating the use of a venue’s grand piano if required.)

Beyond what I need to sell a show to a booker (which I generally design and have printed myself) I don’t have any responsibility for designing, arranging for or paying for an artist’s print promo, though I do require that it’s available in the required quantities for venues and that it’s good quality and apropriate for the job and I will send it out to venues at my expense.

I do not deal with an artist’s taxes (though I will provide the necessary duplicate contracts and information). Artists touring from abroad can get withholding tax waiver forms from the Foreign Entertainers’ Unit of the Inland Revenue. Your personal finances are really not my business and I don’t need to know your personal financial details – which is why I like taxation issues to remain between the Inland Revenue and the artist and (possibly) their accountant.

So remember, your agent might collect you from the airport, cook you dinner, nurse you if you’re sick, arrange for you to stay at her mum’s house when you’re not gigging,  sort out your parking tickets and generally be your friend, BUT YOU MUSTN’T EXPECT THIS! The contract only says that she will get gigs (or try) in return for an agreed percentage of your gig fees. More than that is good nature or an additional pre-agreed service which you will be charged for.

What an Agent Does

You are a musician, just starting out, and you think that it would be great to have an agent to get you some gigs. An agent knows the business, after all. An agent has more contacts.

An agent will solve all your problems…

Hah!

OK, so it’s an agent’s job to find fee-paying performances for an artist, negotiate the terms, send the contract and send the posters, flyers and promo as supplied by the artist. In return for which the agent receives a percentage (commonly 15% in the folk world) of the negotiated fee paid by the artist.

That’s the theory anyway. But please understand that even the best agent in the world does not guarantee to get gigs. An agent does not have a bucket full of gigs hidden under the desk ready to dish out for the asking. An agent has to go out and find those gigs – different gigs for different artists. There is no guarantee. All an agent can do is try.

Unless the artist creates a demand by a) being bloody talented and b) letting his audience and his potential audience know that he is bloody talented, even the best agent will not be able to create gigs.

It’s up to the artist to create a demand for their music. An agent does not make an artist famous. An agent does not, cannot work miracles.

Sheesh – if an artist can’t get gigs for him/herself, how do they expect an agent to? Let’s be realistic.

And even if an agent does manage to get a few gigs for [unknown artist] if the audience doesn’t turn out to support the gig that’s it, no repeat booking, ever. That venue is closed to that artist and it will also make the venue more wary about booking another artist from that same agency. I don’t want to hear: “Oh, sure these guys will get a good audience, you said that about the other ones and I had an audience of three.”

Vin Garbutt Joins Jacey’s Agency List

February 2011

Vin Garbutt Joins the Agency Roster

Vin Garbutt

I have long admired Vin Garbutt, the man and the music: his singing, his songs (some self written and some carefully chosen), his integrity, his passion and his wit and wisdom that has audiences rolling in the aisles from Aberdeen to Adelaide. It is with very great pleasure that I welcome him to the agency.

His diary is now open for bookings.

http://www.jacey-bedford.com/vin.htm

Archive 4: Work Permit System Changes

From 7th march 2009 – as originally blogged on myspace
As an agent and tour manager for musicians coming in from the USA, Canada and Australia I have to (amongst other things) secure work permits, so that my guys are all legal and above board when they fly into the UK. In November 2008 the whole system changed to a points based system. Instead of the old method of filling in the multi-page WP3 form and sending it off to the Sports and Entertainment Unit of the DFEE in Sheffield with a hefty cheque, copies of contracts and proof of performer-status, and then waiting approximately a week and receiving a shiny paper work permit in the post, now I have to be a Licensed Sponsor and make an application online for a Cerificate of sponsorship
for my guys, whereupon I pay up via Worldpay and get a simple Sponsorship Certificate number. I give my guys the number which they then present at Immigration when their plane lands. Hilarity ensues while puzzled Immigration staff try and work the new system by punching the number into the database, and then my guys get a warm and friendly welcome to the UK.

OK? Sounds reasonable? Yeah, it does and (apart from the fact that actually obtaining the licence cost me £400, a lot of grey hairs and two days of my life chasing the damn thing up when it was delayed) it should all now be working fine… except it isn’t. Or at least it wasn’t this week

The system was broken.

Really broken.

Here follows the trials and tribulations of someone trying to stay legal, written as it happened. You honestly couldn’t make this stuff up.

MONDAY
I’ve done two applications already so I know when the system is not broken it does work efficiently, however I undertook to apply for the Sponsorship Cerificate for an America blues singer, KD. KD is leaving
the USA on Wednesday afternoon and arriving at Garwick sometime shortly
after 6.00 a.m. on Thursday. That means he leaves home Wednesday for an
overnight flight, right?

So KD’s contracts and information
arrive over the weekend and on Monday I sit down in front of the
keyboard to process the Certificate of Sponsorship, maybe an hour’s job at the most… except… I go through the whole process in the online Sponsorship Management System (all fine), click on ‘pay’ and get taken to the Worldpay site (all fine), pay by debit card (all fine, payment accepted) and then… I get a screen that says there’s a fault and although Worldpay has taken my money it can’t redirect me to the Sponsorship Management System site where I will then pick up the vital Sponsorship Certificate number. It gives me a helpline number to call.

Okay, thinks I. I’ll just make the call and obviously be given the number over the phone instead once I give them the Worldpay receipt number. Presumably they’ve got a handy-dandy backup system in place… haven’t they?

Errr… no. Actually they haven’t.

I’m in a phone queue for about fifteen minutes and then a harrassed but pleasant young lady on the other end talls me: no, sorry, the system is broken. It’s been down since mid-morning and we don’t have any way  of issuing certificates without it. In fact, it’s not the system itself, but the link between the system and Worldpay. They’re working on it right now,  she tells me, so I have to email the ‘Change of Circumstance Team’ to request a refund of my money and then start the whole process all over again… only not yet. Wait for the system to come back on line.

Since it’s not possoible to tell whether the system is still broken or if it’s been fixed until the very last step (when Worldpay takes my money and fails to redirect me to the Sponsorship Mangement System) I ask how I can tell if the system is back on line. Ah, she says. You can’t. Better phone the helpline first to ask if it’s safe to go ahead and do a second application. And oh by the way the helpline office is not manned after five p.m.

There’s not much I can do at this point except say OK and tell her gently that though I know it’s not her fault, personally, she knows what I think of the system, doesn’t she? Yes, she knows. Okay, I say, I’ll phone later.

I give it until four p.m. and my heart sinks when the phone message says the wait time in the queue is thirty minutes and fifty six seconds, but I grit my teeth and let it ring out, hoping I’m not being charged premium rates
by the minute. At five minutes past five I give up. The office staff went home five minutes earlier and my phone call has not been answered. Great. is the system fixed? I don’t know. I can’t tell.

I wait until late evening and conscious that it’s Monday night and my guy is leaving the US on Wednesday afternoon, I risk it and go through the whole process again. Worldpay eats my money and once more tells me the system is broken.

Fuck!

I send off a second request for a refund to the Chage of Circumstances  Team.

TUESDAY

This time there’s a recorded message on the phone answering system  saying ‘If you have experienced trouble paying for Sponsorship  certificates online please press 1.’ I press. A recorded message tells me the system is broken and that as soon as it is fixed there will be a
message, so keep checking in.

But it’s now only a day before my guy leaves the USA. If he arrives in the UK without a Certificate of Sponsorship and admits to working, he’ll get put right back on a flight for home. So I wibble my way around the recorded phone system and eventually get a young chap who confirms that the system is broken. Yes, I explain gently, I know the system is broken, but I have Mr KD leaving the US in twenty four hours, so please, if he can’t tell me when the system will be fixed, can he please tell me what backup system is in place. Ah, yes – he sounds wistful – a backup system would be nice.

Okay, I say, I’ve done all I can. You say you have no backup system, but my guy is flying in to the UK on Thursday morning with a gig lined up for Thursday night and an audience waiting for him. Yes, he says. That’s right. So what can we do? I ask him in the spirit of hopefully asking the right question to get a light turning on in his head. Do? he says… We can’t do anything. The System is Broken.

I remind him that this is the online application for work permits for the  whole of the UK. Yes, he says. He knows.

So, I say, I presume your senior management is – as we speak – talking to the senior management in the Immigration service at all the major airports, trying to find a temporary fix for all the people who will be flying in without Sponsorship Cerificates, through no fault of their own? You’d think so, wouldn’t you? he replies in a tone that says Maybe in your  wildest dreams.

So what can I do? I ask again. You could try calling the airport, he says (then there was what should only be descibed as a pregnant pause except it didn’t give birth to anything useful)… but I wouldn’t bank on  them being cooperative.

Okay…

So I got on the phone to Gatwick and, surprisingly, after only a short runaround with the switchboard, got a direct line for the Immigration people at the North Terminal where I spoke to a Mrs Lee. No, she hasn’t heard that the Sponsorship Management System is broken and wonders why I’m calling her since she has nothing to do with issuing Sponsorship Certificates. In fact, staff there are still getting used to being presented with them. I take a deep breath, start from the beginning with all of the above. She grasps the implications immediately and the gist of the conversation is that I can keep an eye on the broken system (keep phoning to see if the recorded message has changed) and keep trying to get the Certificate number, even while KD is in the air, and as soon as I get the Certificate number I can fax it direct to the Duty Chief Immigration Officer at Gatwick North.

And if I don’t get the Certificate number? If the system remains broken? I ask, reminding her that KD is making a leap oif faith if he leaves the  USA before I have a Sponsorship Certificate.

Well, she says, it’s hardly KD’s fault. I don’t see why he should suffer.

In this whole mess that’s the first ray of hope that someone is going to apply commonsense at the sharp-end. And I’m clinging to that. Hoping against hope that if the system remains broken the Duty Chief Immigration Officer at Gatwick North at 6.00 a.m. on Thursday is of a mind with Mrs Lee and is not a jobsworth or someone so stressed out he can’t see beyond the paperwork..

Ah the joys of being an agent.

Part Two: WEDNESDAY

So this morning the recorded message has disappeared from the helpline number and when I click on ‘talk to the technical department’ the wait time is 1 hr and 5 mins. Great!

So I wait until after 12.00 and try again knowing that wait times drop dramatcally at lunchtimes as all the people phoning from businesses go to lunch. Wait time 78 seconds.Bingo. I wait. It’s actually closer to five minutes, but – hey – that’s OK.

While I’m waiting I click through the Sponsorship Management System yet again to get to the stage where all I have to do is make one click to finalise the payment.

So then I get a girl on the other end of the phone line who tells me: Yes the system was up and running again this morning, but it’s broken again now. In other words if there had been the correct recorded message on the line when I rang the first time, I could have gone through and got the Sponsorship Certificate for Mr KD with no problem, but now I can’t.

Buggerbuggerbugger! Fuckfuckfuck!

The guy is due to leave home for the airport in the USA at 2.00 p.m. It’s now 12.30 p.m.

So I tell her exactly what I think of her senior management, without actually resorting to words of Anglo-Saxon origin, which I think is very restrained of me. I tell her that it’s a simple matter to set up a manual payment line with a credit card phoine payment and shouldn’t they be thinking about having a manual backup system and I tell her that while I appreciate this is not her fault personally the senior management deserve a rocket.

Yes, she knows all this. She damn well should, she’s probably been  listening to it all morning from hundreds of us.

And then – because – hey – I’ve already got two refunds coming for previous failed attempts so why not make it three in a row – I Press Go.

And the bloody thing goes through, sweet as a nut. Just thirty seconds  after the lady on the Home Office helpline has told me not to try it.

I now have the Sponsorship Certificate number for Mr KD and have sent it to him with an hour to spare.

The story has reached a satisfactory conclusion but the plot twists were, frankly, incredible.

SATURDAY
I go to the hairdressers and have the big grey streaks dyed out of my  hair.