Battle of the Bands

Posted on April 3, 2009

Now anyone who’s been in the music business (and I’m sorry to say it is a business) for any length of time knows that’s it’s full to overflowing with slimy unscrupulous parasites who make their money by inserting themselves between musicians and their fans in order to take a chunk of the money, but I think I may have just discovered a new low.  There’s a new company that’s been advertising on Craigslist in San Francisco for an upcoming “Battle of the Bands” and bragging that they’re setting them up all over the country.  The battles (or rather series of battles) are basically marathon shows.   Starting at 5:30 in the afternoon 9 bands get to play half an hour each and the band that gets the loudest applause advances to a second round; the winner of which gets $500, a gig all to themselves, and the possibility of getting some free studio time or even a tour to all the cities where they’re hosting battles.  Sounds kind of cool, huh? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.  So I called them and asked what it would take for Beltaine’s Fire to get in.

And here’s the catch.

Each band gets 100 tickets for the events and is expected to sell as many as they can at $10 each, the more you sell the better your time slot in the battle.  And since the winner is determined by audience applause, the bands that sell the least will be playing to an empty house at 5:30 in the afternoon and lose.  That makes sense, they’ve got to fill the venue somehow after all.  Thing is, the promoters keep ALL the money.  The bands, who have to go out and convince their fans, friends, and family to collectively drop up to $1000 in tickets, get NOTHING.  Nada.  Not a thing.  So at the end of the night if half the tickets get sold the promoter walks away with $4,500 free and clear – and up to double that if the bands sell more tickets – and the “winning” band gets no cash, not even gas money, and their prize is the chance to do the same thing again for the elimination round, after which – if they win a second time – they get $500.

If the promoter runs four preliminary battles at $4,500-$9,000 each that’s $18,000-$36,000.  Add to that the final battle where only the best-selling bands will play (we’ll estimate maybe $6000-$9,000 for that since any bands that were unable to sell tickets have been eliminated) and the promoter walks away with $24,000-$45,000 in cash. From that they pay the best-selling winning band a measly $500 “prize” and the other 35 bands get nothing and are expected to be grateful for the “exposure.”

The worst part of all this is there are thousands of musicians out there who are desperate or naive enough to believe this is a good way to make a name for themselves and will sign up for this type of thing and make the promoter rich. (most of them won’t have read the fine print or figured out that they don’t get to keep any of the money until the night of, but that’s another story and an object lesson in and of itself).

And that type of shit, dear friends, is why the music industry is run by evil bastards.  Because too many musicians lack the common sense and self-reliance to work together to build a scene instead of relying on opportunistic creeps who are in it for the money.