100 bucks for the band? Enjoy your shit bands coming to your house giving you upper deckers and pissing on your bed
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How do they create this video if they don’t actually have any staff present at the event? A multi-camera, 4K video isn’t cheap to produce, but somehow I doubt this is such a one. 720p webcam and a shitty electret mic?
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I guess we should be impressed they disrupted the music industry by being substantially worse. It didn’t seem possible.
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I mean it’s clearly not possible for a startup to bullshit their numbers but that sounds like total bullshit.
It sort of defeats the purpose of a house concert: you really like a band that doesn’t make much money so you open your house to a concert, the band takes all the money and you get to look like a cool dude and enjoy the music for free (minus a ton of wine and cheese).
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I’m going to start a competing company that offers the musicians $150.
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Could be BS. But the “start up” is also said to be 10 years old. And in the UK. Just because I haven’t heard of it doesn’t make it not true.
“The 10-year-old startup was born in London out of frustration with pub-goers talking over the bands. Now it’s throwing 600 shows per month across 430 cities around the world,”
And from the website, it apparently isn’t actually just living rooms - 20 person capacity is the minimum space for “hosting”, with options for 20-49, 50-99 and 100+. Also, each event features 3 bands. Now I’m unsure if that means the bands all split $100 or if each band gets $100. Either way, the payout is low.
(A 10 year-old start up? Really? Does that just mean it’s still unprofitable and is sucking down VC cash faster than it can earn revenue?)
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The music business has always worked like this. Just substitute “agent” for “gig economy tech startup”.
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I don’t know if you read the article linked, but this was literally in the techcrunch story:
“The argument was that bands got exposure, and it was a tiny startup far from profitability.”
It’s like they’re trying to be the embodiment of shitty artist funding.
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This is like the Fyre App, but without Ja Rule.
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I was in a band when I was in and just after college and guess what, we played for less than this all the time. Friends having a party? Cool play it and get some new fans. Bar needs you to open and will pay you $1 for each person that comes to see you play, opening for some barely known local band at 7:00 on a Tuesday? Cool. 6 people showed up and our 7 piece band got paid 6 bucks. Sweet. But hey guess what, 10 people who showed up early for the other band saw us and 2 of them liked us. In few years time we were selling out 1,000 person capacity places on a regular basis and making money. Selling shirts and cds. Everyone thinks this is crazy but you need to play to get fans. And you you need fans to make money.
All that being said I’d much rather play for free than get $100 from this shit company. Not to mention if the host is willing to pay that much for a show the band would figure out a way to get that money directly without this company involved.
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Uber for hookers!
I’m confused as to how this adds ANY value to the band, host, or audience above the traditional method of “I like this small indie band; I’m gonna email them and see if they want to play a house party.”
Or maybe I’m not all that confused. Seriously, folks, if you like a band that you think is small enough that they would play a house party, contact them directly. You can have the same experience, and they get all the door.
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As a booking agent (and house concert host) I feel compelled to respond to this. I don’t think that there is any comparison with the services I provide for my clients and what Sofar Sounds is doing. My goal is to find those shows where my artist clients can earn as much as they possibly can. This allows them to make a decent living!! I am currently representing 25 artists and bands from six different countries… they are all full-time performing musicians and they all depend on house concerts for a substantial portion of their income. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of house concert venues in the USA, Canada, and Europe… you certainly don’t need Sofar Sounds (or any other organization that wants you to pay them money up front) to help you find them. The information is all out there on the internet… all it takes is due diligence and perseverance!! Most house concerts here in the USA give ALL of the door receipts to the performing artists. My clients are happy to pay me a small percentage of their income for my expertise in finding work for them, and I’m happy to help them make a living doing what they love to do.
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Very much this. It’s highly unlikely that bands would do house shows, it’s usually something done by solo artists who need turn up with nothing more than a guitar, maybe a small PA, and any other instruments they play live.
I’d guess some bands might do house shows for special occasions, like weddings, but I think it’s mostly the folk/ roots type of bands, because they can get away with minimal amplification.
This setup is screwing over musicians in exactly the same way that Spotify, it’s an obscene business model.
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I mean, it’s pretty easy to stay unprofitable even if you’re making extracting tons of revenue, right? Can’t you just pay yourself and your shitty friends huge salaries and bonuses then walk away when the model starts to tank?
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Yeah…there are definitely industries where it’s normal for a start-up to take more than ten years to stop being a start-up, but this is clearly not one of them.
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Uber Wed: rent a spouse for life. Spouse gets 50 cents on the hour, Uber gers 100,000 lump sum per spouse.
Uber Med: Who needs ambulances? We have Uber! For a whole dollar above minimum wage you can run your own ambulance and Uber takes the profits… win win.
Uber Gov: Tired of elections? Try Uber. It’s not like your elected officials aren’t already working for us, but this way we can pay them less.
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Hasn’t Amazon yet to turn a “profit”, because Bezos pumps every cent back in to the company to keep growing, while paying himself more money almost all the people on earth?
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