Concerts and Touring – Case Study (SHR5E018P~001)

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Finlay Alderson 24100542

Concerts and Touring – Case Study (SHR5E018P~001)

Case Study 1: Promoter 

The roles and responsibilities of a music promoter are to organise and publicise live musical events, concerts, gigs and tours. A promoters main goal is to create interest and public awareness of the event and or artist they are promoting. Whilst creating public awareness is the main part of their job, promoters also work very closely with the artists, venues, marketing companies and other industry professionals to help make their events run as smoothly as possible. According to Career Explorer (Career Explorer 2.), These responsibilities could include, finding suitable venues, developing marketing strategies that help the artists reach their target audience and making sure everything stays within their budget range, so they can make enough money to pay their costs and leave with profit for themselves.

When planning musical events, musical promoters are responsible for selecting the artists/musicians for the lineup, choosing and booking the venue, and deciding on a date and time for the event that suits everyone. This will require the promoter to work closely with the artists and their management team to sort out logistics and contracts etc. Another role of a promoter might be looking specifically at artist performance fees, and deals with the venue in specific. This is a super important job that a promoter must get right, otherwise the artists won’t be in the right place, at the right time. This may also have a knock-on effect for the audience that have bought tickets if any logistical errors occur.

Using primary research tactics I interviewed Anthony Alderson (The Creative Director of the Pleasance Theatre Trust) for his Insite and experience on the importance of Promoters from a venues Standpoint. He said, “A promoter’s true value lies in their ability to understand the production, its tone, its audience, its story, and then transform that understanding into a clear and engaging marketing and PR campaign.” 

The marketing and promotional strategies of a promoter are very important. This will help drive ticket sales for their events, and help build a good name for themselves, attracting more artists and therefore generating more potential funds. 

A promoter may want to think about the 4P’s of promotion; Price, Promotion, Product, Place. 

Promotors need to consider how much the tickets are going to cost. To make this decision, multiple different factors need to be considered. These include the total costs of putting the event together, who the audience are and how much will they be willing to pay for a ticket. In my interview with Anthony, he stated “As part of a promoters job they may use pixel tracking on websites to gain insights into how people are booking and finding information, in order to refine marketing campaigns.” This can help refine decisions about ticket pricings and give the promoters inspiration for their marketing campaigns. He later went on to say that. “A promoter’s role is to make a show stand out in the marketplace in both PR and marketing.” This could vary on how popular the artists are. 

A lasting factor would be themselves, and how much they need to price the tickets for so that the promoter themselves walks away with a profit. Anthony backed this up by stating that “The Pleasance collaborates with promoters because they are financially at risk and therefore also motivated and incentivised to sell tickets.”

Promoters need to explore which options are effective, wide reaching and within budget. Word of mouth is huge in the music industry, so is social media. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. These platforms will be their main hub for communications, announcements, artist comms event updates etc. 

Promotion doesn’t just rely on the promoters shoulders. The main promotional push will be from a mix of the artists themselves and the industry professionals around them. The venue will also be doing their own promotion. 

Examples: 1. (Resident). Resident (Brighton) – Record shop and promoter. Using their influence as a record shop to promote the artists their working with. 

Place – This is referring to the place in which artists genre of music sits within the market the promoter is advertising to. A promoter will have decide if they want to market to the masses or channel their marketing strategies and target a niche sector of listeners. Anthony Alderson also stated in our interview that “Skilled promoters know where the audience is in the marketplace, how to communicate with them both cost-effectively and directly, and how to generate momentum through press stories and promotion. This is done successfully with the knowledge and understanding of the placement each artist has within the music market.

Case Study 2: Tour Manager

The responsibility of a tour manager is to take care of every aspect of the artist and crew members life while they’re on the road. To do this successfully, tour managers need good organisation and administrative skills to make sure everything happens smoothly on tour. Tasks a tour manager would be responsible for would include looking at lodging fees, accommodation, food, transportation etc. Tour managers would also be responsible for making sure the equipment requirements for the artist is correct. Tour manager will know the bands specific tech specs, so they’d be in communication with concert producers and venue management to coordinate load-in times, sound checks and set times. This may also include the artists hospitality needs on site. For example, dressing rooms, green room requirements etc. (This may vary on who the artist is).

According to Berklee’s official careers page (Berklee)3., “The best tour managers are well-prepared for the issues and crises that sometimes arise on tour, and deal with them resourcefully and efficiently.”

Whilst interviewing Mr Alderson, I thought I might ask him a few questions about the responsibilities and tasks he expects a tour manager to be doing for a successfully touring show, such as “Stamptown”. He stated that Stamptown’s tour manager helps with “Scheduling arrivals, rehearsals, sound checks and technical needs,acting as a single point of contact for backstage and technical queries, ensuring the cast and crew are where they need to be, when they need to be, managing props, costumes, equipment, and any unusual production elements and lastly, scheduling PR calls with the promoter as a liaison from the company.” Whilst Stamptown isn’t solely a musical performance, its entire show is based on the performance of varying live variety acts, musical performances being a large part of that. Stamptown’s on stage and off-stage requirements make a tour managers role vitally important for the production to run as smoothly and successfully as possible. From a venues vantage point, this means communication is clean and efficient. Instead of conversations splintering across multiple performers and creatives, everything channels through one person who understands the show and the company inside out. Having this relationship between the tour manager, venues and artists is very important. This creates not just an enjoyable working environment, but it also creates a level of respect and efficiency between each working part of the event, ensure that it runs smoothly and successfully. 

Being a tour manager can come with both challenges and rewards. (Go.grammy.com) 4. lists some of the advantages being “Travel opportunities, Network opportunities, Job security and Variety of responsibility.” And a list of the disadvantages being “Long hours and workloads, constant travel, high pressure environment and a limited personal life”

The simplest tour can have a huge amount of administrative work, the completion of this will all be relied upon by the Tour manager and their team. Examples being, dates, times, prices, call times, departure times, flight numbers, budgets, press calls, transport, carnets, tax, international tax, insurance and contracts. It could become very overwhelming and very stressful.

However, on a more positive side, tour managers, unlike promoters have a more guaranteed payout. Promoters will be relying on tickets sales to earn their cut of the profit. However, a tour manager is paid a flat rate by the artists themselves, so regardless of the tickets sales per gig, the tour manager will still be paid. This does still come with a huge workload that can become very taxing on the personal life. According to Music Gateway, the working life of a tour manger can be anywhere between 6-8months on the road. So, whilst having the securing of long working hours and more of a secure payout, you would need to be someone who doesn’t mind spending 6-8months away from your home and your family.

Comparison: Role Comparison

In the world of touring musicians, the Promoter and the Tour Manger are both vitally important roles to ensure that the live musical events run as smoothly and successfully as possible. Both roles are there to make sure that everyone involved sticks to the clear arranged budget that is laid out beforehand. This is important to ensure the events are financially viable and can proceed as planned with no financial duress. 

A Tour Manager may focus on ensuring the budget does not run over its threshold allowing the event to make a profit and not a loss. In the budget sheet made for the gig at The Attic [Show – See Example] you can see that the band only needed to sell 68/190 tickets on offer which is only 35.78% This is definitely achievable with a venue that size and with The Critters having a largely Leeds based audience, they would be very capable of making breakeven. The Promoter may focus their attention more on ticket sales and smaller hidden costs with the venue. This is because the promoter relies on larger numbers of tickets to be sold so they can collect a larger fee. If ticket sales were to fall short of their breakeven mark, a promoter may get a very small fee, or perhaps no fee at all. In my final settlement sheet, you can see that this is potentially unlikely as the band made a profit of over £500. This is after the %cost of the promoter and the fee on the tour manager.

Whilst touring, both the promoter and the tour manager are extremely important. They both work to minimise costs and maximise profits whilst also making the experience run as smoothly as possible. In this instance I’d argue that both are as equally important as each other. The tour manager is making sure their costs as a unit are low and ensuring the band are in the right place at the right time, whilst the promoter is helping maximise tickets sales in a cost-efficient manner. A promoter may be more inclined to sell more tickets as their job security is lower, the work ethic of the promoter could arguably be larger and more efficient to have around. However, in the long term a tour manager will want the tour to go as well as possible. Even though they may be on a flat fee paid by the band, having a successful tour run will be great for future business and other bands/artists may be inclined to work with them in the future. Whilst having more job security, a touring away from your home can be difficult. Learning to adapt to a new city every couple of day/weeks will come with its challenges, whereas a promoter, you may just work in one city in particular. So, they’ll have more understand about their local scenes and venues in turn having a more comfortable and potentially flexible working lifestyle. Having said this, both roles are equally important to ensure these budgets are kept in check and ensuring the band are successful. 

Bibliography:

  1. (Resident)  https://www.resident-music.com

Budget and settlement sheets attached below:

Budget SheetDownload
Settlement SheetDownload