Support Our Work

Paying for the Show

 

The first of these posts is just going to be a simple outline of what goes into making one of our shows happen. The point of this isn’t to complain about the work, putting on shows is something we love to do. Getting on a stage of any size is a privilege and we’re only able to do it because of the support of showgoers that pay for tickets.

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The point of this is twofold. We are hoping to shed some light on what goes into making a show happen for anyone who is thinking about putting on or performing their first show. The second is to better communicate with our community about our needs as an organization.

 

Venues

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If you regularly attend Aesop’s Sound Fables events, something you may have noticed is that we have, for the most part, jumped around from venue to venue for different shows. This is not necessarily by design, one of our goals since the beginning has been to find a semi-steady home for our project. However, it’s been a real challenge to find a long-term relationship with a venue that makes sense for both parties.

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Most venues take either a flat fee for use of their space, or a percentage of the door revenue. Usually people in New York call it a room fee. That fee typically goes towards paying show staff. Usually, a sound technician and a door person. 

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Most venues that we’ve played at are bars. So, that ticket revenue really doesn’t even begin to cover the other overhead expenses of running a venue. Venues rely on food and alcohol sales to cover rent, insurance, other staff, equipment, and all the other myriad expenses that come with running a venue. Artists don’t typically get a cut of bar sales in New York.

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A handful of venues, like Pine Box Rock Shop, don’t charge any room fee at all. Which is great! The only problem with that arrangement is that typically they don’t offer show staff and musicians or promoters are responsible for hiring people to take care of that. 

 

Room fees at the venues we have played at so far are typically around $175-250. While this may not seem like much, these venues usually cap out at around 50-60 attendees before the show sells out. 

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Our first show was at a music venue in Bushwick. The event sold out a couple days before the show and we had a wait list at the door. The sound technician and other people with the venue were professional and incredibly helpful. The booker at the venue was communicative and helpful. 

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The problem was, pre-sale tickets were only $5. It was our first show and we really didn’t know if anyone was going to come. The total revenue was about $350. The venue took $150, leaving $200 to take home.

 

Social Media and Promotional Expenses

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Venues don’t typically offer very much help with promotion, so another expense to consider is the need for promotion.

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We print fliers and hang them around at local businesses around Brooklyn. We also use this email list and post frequently to Instagram. If ticket sales are low we will often DM new followers. 

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Even so, algorithmic social media limits our reach in a pretty major way. For instance, we have over 3,000 followers on Instagram. However, I posted a reel yesterday that was only shown to about 300 people. Will some of them buy tickets as our show dates get closer? Hopefully.

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All this is to say, that we also run paid ads on Instagram that direct people to ticket links. Usually we spend about $50-100/show on that. One strategy we are trying with this run of Spring shows is promoting a season of spring shows, rather than just one single show. We had some success in October promoting a whole month of Caligari screening, instead of just a single event.

 

For that first show, we spent $50 on an Instagram ad that reached several thousand carefully targeted people. It led about 80 people to Purgatory’s ticket page and undoubtedly helped us sell tickets. 

 

Take Home Pay and Hidden Labor

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Ultimately, we had made $150. That was to be split between the four musicians on stage that night who had committed to four rehearsals and the show itself. I decided to forgo paying myself and Venmo’d $50 to each of the other 3 with a heartfelt and sincere thank you.

 

I was incredibly grateful to them for helping to make my vision a reality. It was a special night and it brought people together. There is no substitute for in-person connection. There is nothing that compares to the instant connection of experiencing a great performance together. There is nothing more satisfying than being able to offer that to people.

 

One of our musicians works nights at a restaurant, she took off work and sacrificed a night’s pay multiple times to make the show happen. The others gave up quiet nights at home they could have spent with friends, partners, or other projects. 

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We were able to put on a successful show because of those sacrifices and commitments people made. We also benefitted from unaccounted for labor. The hours I spent designing fliers or other promotional graphics, drafting social media posts, researching social media ads, having a printer at work to commandeer, hanging fliers, and writing the score itself.

 

Moving Towards Sustainability

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That first show was well over a year ago now and we’ve taken steps to improve our show finances. The main thing we had to do was raise ticket prices to the $12-20 range. 

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This has been a bit of a mixed bag. For some shows, it generates more income and lets us pay musicians more fairly. For others, it depresses turnout to the point that the finances are about the same as the first show. Beyond that, raising ticket prices is somewhat in conflict with our mission of providing cheap accessible arts events for everyone.

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With just 20 subscribers at $5/month, we could cover half of last year’s expenses. That’s the difference between struggling to break even and having the resources to fairly pay musicians, book better venues, and grow this project into a lasting artistic community. Plus, your membership comes with one of our exclusive Aesop’s t-shirts.

 

Building New Networks of Support

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What has been more inspiring has been a series of meetings I’ve attended in the last couple weeks with other event organizers. Last Tuesday I stopped by Secret Riso Club in Bushwick to help with folding and distro for Gunk, a monthly indie showpaper physically distributed across NYC. Thursday I visited Boshi’s Place for Hidden City’s event organizer meetup to network and discuss some of the challenges event organizers face in New York. At both events, I bumped into Joe Ahearn, cofounder of Withfriends, and spoke with him about his own organizer meetups at Secret Riso Club.

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All this to say, I’m encouraged by new networks that are being built and opportunities for collaboration. I’m hopeful about the future and where all this might go.

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Hope to see you at a show,

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Mike