American Idol

“An artist, in giving a concert, should not demand an entrance fee but should ask the public to pay, just before leaving, as much as they like. From the sum he would be able to judge what the world thinks of him – and we would have fewer mediocre concerts.” Kit Coleman, Queen of Hearts

Like that’s ever going to happen…as we all remember from Touring 101, it’s the talent agent and manager along with the promoters and/or venues who determine at any particular moment in time what they think an artist is worth. Along with timing, ticket price is a crucial factor; price a concert too high and – particularly with shiny new artists hampered by limited repertoires – there’s a good chance the potential audience will decide to pass; price it too low and odds are the artist will end up in the red. There are few things more dispiriting than touring for months on end only to realize, after the dust settles, that you’re deeper in debt than you were when you started.

A few of the Idol finalists have done reasonably well at headlining their own tours early in their careers, blessed (and cursed?) with a built-in Idol audience and enough name recognition to earn them top billing on a blackboard at a local bar or on a theater marquee, if not an arena or stadium.

However, most artists begin their touring careers more modestly, opening for more prominent, established acts who have proven they can draw a crowd. How are these fortuitous bookings obtained? There are any number of ways management and/or the booking agent can swing such a deal, and not all are mutually exclusive. A few of particular interest: calling in favors or tour support or by promising “ticket buys” or in certain instances, because the artist is in a position to “pay to play.”

Those who are faint of heart might wish to stop reading at this point and go play Bubbles or some other insidiously addictive game.

Favors

Favors come in many shapes and sizes, and are a common form of currency in the touring business. It’s not unusual for a manager and talent agents to represent acts which are at different stages in their careers, ranging from brand new artists no one has heard of to nostalgia acts looking for one last ride on the merry-go-round to major recording stars on the ascent. While logic might suggest that the easiest solution to breaking a new artist into touring is to let them tag along with another of their own manager’s or agent’s acts, it’s not always feasible. The opening act must at least have a reasonable shot of appealing to the headliner’s target audience; a pop princess probably wouldn’t do well opening for a reunited hair band, nor would you expect to find a blue grass band opening for a rap artist. So agents and managers trade favors, sometimes giving more than they get, sometimes getting more than they give. Favors are the coin of the realm and ideally, it all evens out over time.

Tour Support

For artists signed to major labels, there may be tour support available, which is essentially an advance from the label specifically to pay the expenses involved in touring – and there are more expenses than one might imagine, including (but not limited to) transportation costs, lodging, equipment rentals, per diems, insurance, hall fees, and all those lovely commissions. Tour support is fully recoupable, of course, which means that every dime advanced has to be paid back, most typically from royalties for CD sales, past, present, and future. And that’s if you can even get tour support; as the industry falters in the face of declining music sales, some labels are cutting back on tour support or – gasp! – insisting on a share of tour or merchandising revenues, which traditionally they have not been entitled to receive.

Ticket Buys

Ticket buys are exactly what the name implies: in order to get his artist an opening slot on a major tour, the manager guarantees a specific number of ticket sales for a specified number of tour dates. The money for this may be from tour support or siphoned off from marketing. These tickets are used for promotional purposes, via local radio contests or call-ins, or given away with the purchase of a CD, or just handed out on the street to get warm bodies in the seats. Please note: ticket buys differ slightly from the owner-promoter’s practice of “papering the house,” which is a flat-out ticket giveaway intended to disguise the fact that ticket sales were lackluster while allowing the promoter to make up his losses through ancillary revenue streams – once again, those refreshing beverages, as well as parking fees.

Pay to Play

No one likes to talk about it, but the reality is many new artists do have to pay to open for or support the headlining act. While it seems illogical that a new act whose financial health is often precarious at best would be asked to write a check to the headlining act which appears to be raking in the dough, it happens all the time. And in fact, the exposure that a new artist receives by touring with a higher profile artist can be invaluable, as long as the fans of the headliner aren’t aghast or perplexed at the pairing – although savvy fans have long since learned to show up late and avoid the often marginal and occasionally outright disastrous opening sets – and assuming the concert reviewers won’t regard the new artist with scorn, or perhaps worse, fail to mention the new artist at all.

Just how much does it cost to get that exposure? It varies widely and, like many things in the music industry, may very well be influenced by the new artist’s ability to pay. Acts with tour support would almost certainly be more appealing to a headliner for that fact alone, and no wonder. Why ask for a few hundred dollars per concert date when you could get ten of thousands of dollars, along with assurances that the check(s) won’t bounce?

Anyway, it’s one of the ways things are done. And if all goes according to plan, the opening act will one day be headlining its very own national tour and can extort, er…offer a golden opportunity for priceless exposure to some other wet-behind-the-ears artist with more (borrowed) dollars than sense.

“Being on tour is like being in limbo. It’s like going from nowhere to nowhere.” Bob Dylan.

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