Selling tickets to events is one of those contentious things that rappers whine about. We all crave this utopian state where our name on the flyer is enough. We make the one social media post and boom a large posse pulls up.
I write this from the ripe pre middle aged PRSPCTV of 35 years on this Earth. Sade is playing, I write this listening to these sad love songs, preparing for our album review. Unrelated? Only to you. This the journey. Album sales, Sade and me going about being 35 again all make sense to me.
Most of the artists I know in my age group are unwilling to sell tickets. There are many reasons why people dodge the activity, but my theory is that it’s hard. It is time consuming and offers very little reward outside of the right to do the show.
I know my value bro
I saw someone post about how their stats dwarf other rapper’s stats, and they need to check themselves. I often question what stats as I rewrite this part to be less combative. Do streams and monthly listeners mean these people are pulling up and putting money into your shows and brand?
If so, this isn’t about you.
I hear stuff like, “I know my value”. Usually, these folk have discovered a Vaynerchuk, or one of his clones, or found out someone else is charging for something they want to charge for.
All this is normal. Go get yours boo. You may perceive your value however you perceive it. Just as I know the value that I provide.
If people agree with your value, often where a dollar amount is used to determine an excgange, they will pay that amount confirming value.
This is obviously a complex thing that goes deeper than I’m worth this much pay me. Other things to consider:
What is the market value of the work you do?
How many people do the work you do? (cough cough, designers, cough cough)
When people pay you, what benefit are they really getting?
I do freelance work. My main selling point is that by paying me, I save you Googling. Pay me and like that TurboTax commercial, go do anything else that’s less boring.
Or spend 10 hours learning the thing like I did.
Types of value
Money is a measure of value. There are three main types of value out there that contribute to a price.
Utility Value is the common one. This based on if the product/service is useful in some way. The sound engineer makes me sound better. The air fryer makes cooking supper go faster.
There is more to value than utility. In fact, utility is the cheapest form of value from my PRSPCTV. There are two other value types that add real flavour and increase the price.
Status Value is when the gain comes from reputation points. All engineers provide the utility of making your vocals better. Saying that you signed the wall at MakeWay adds more value. Now there is this belonging to the shared experience of making music there. Your status in the scene increases by recording there.
This lets MakeWay charge a higher price than an engineer who does not have a decade old niche in play.
Sentimental Value is when your emotions are impacted. Everything to do with nostalgia is sentimental. So is love, family, and all the mushy gushy stuff. You want to really increase your value, figure out how to play into sentimentality.
I rarely hear the “I know my value bro” crowd talking to me about value with the big boy jargon. So now you can be more specific on how you are valuable.
Concerts cost money to throw
You may be going, Holden, come on, we all know that. I don’t think many of the rappers I perform with understand that promoters may regularly lose money.
Some events are big wins. Others are losses. One thing is for certain, if an artist does not sell tickets to a show, do they even matter?
If you follow the consensus of angry underground rappers, no one cares about quality at shows. There is this idea that promoters never pick the right people. That if all the opening acts are dope, than bing bang boom it’s going to be perfect.
Most people don’t care about the openers at a concert. This is not limited to Hip Hop. The people who open for bigger people are there to gain fans off the reputation of the person we are opening for.
We gained hella fans off our effort on Friday. But to be real we were one of many acts of equitable skill in this city.
The opening acts are all interchangeable. End of the day people are buying tickets for the main guy. What value does a promoter get off booking you unless there is some money to be gained.
It sounds super sellout-like to the ignorant but frankly if the promoter cannot turn a profit, why will they keep throwing shows? The people on the show all share a responsibility in the success of the event.
Selling tickets is part of the job
Everyone wants to be independent until they must sell stuff. Then they want a manager to go do all the work for them. I been there and acted like that.
Now I sell pickle related items, peep the shop on this very site.
I had way lower self esteem when I was younger. Since I didn’t believe in myself, I chose not to learn to sell. I think anyone saying they don’t want to sell has a self-esteem issue. Believe in yourself King, we got this.
You throw an event; it is you responsible for making that money back. You make a song? It’s on you to recoup that investment.
My strategy is to keep putting myself in front of more and more people. Living a more and more interesting life so that over time I can collect more and more people who want to finance me.
As you collect people who finance you, you can sell more tickets. It does become easier over time.
Either you learn to sell tickets or you learn to make money and pay for them yourself. Anyone mad at this probably isn’t selling a lot of tickets or lacks funding.
The music hobby gang and the music business are entirely different things. Most people like the hobby side.
Does music quality even matter?
Of course it does. However, what matters at a live show is different than what matters on social media.
The more I perform live, the more I find myself using repetitive hooks. I’ve slowed down a lot. There are more spaces for me to breathe or throw in ad libs.
People like singalongs. If you need proof of that, go to any karaoke night. A lot of times I hear people perform and in the moment it’s dope. After the fact I remember none of it.
People are often drunk and high when they see you live. If you live in Quebec, you can’t even be certain they speak English well. Some artists have incredible pens, that require a great understanding of English to appreciate.
Those same artists often struggle to simplify in front of live audiences relying on their ultimate wit. Live, not sober, with people dancing around, I don’t care how amazing your bars are.
Are you making me feel shit is all that really matters. Are you engaging and keeping people captivated with your energy? Are you saying things they can connect with?
Do they want to say the bars you are saying? I have seen the crowd choose not hold down an artist a lot.
This whole section is to say that what matters for a live audience, especially at scale, is different than what we normally talk about.
Often what we criticize for being corpo-nonsense slaps heavy live.
You want to get booked, prove you are worth it
I’ve had people who I booked who I know can pull people to a show. They instead chose to not put effort into helping my show. Those people are all on a list I keep track of to be honest.
Virtually anyone else gets booked before them at my events moving forward.
Since I lost money every time, I have done this, my PRSPCTV is one of how does putting your name on a flyer bring people.
All of a sudden I realized, as artists, we need to convince these promoter people we can sell. That’s what they care about. We sold real good for Paul Wall, so we are going to be invited back to the next one.
If your music is really that fire that your name alone pulls like 30 people, then none of this is about you. I also know you know that. I wrote that sentence for the people who are going to pretend they can do that.
I know approximately how many tickets I can sell to a show at this point. That’s how I start chats with promoters.
It’s worth stating, I perform a lot. I know what I can sell if I put my mind to it, knowing I have all these other shows to deal with. Maybe that is not something you can manage, but a lot of people can.
Stop this “you can’t do that” nonsense all of you project onto those of us hustling.
I want to see us all win
I am on a mission to understand how the industry of music works. When we speak of business, we need to know talking business means. We need to start talking about making people money off our talent.
This then leads to us making our own money. Our chats should be, how we can earn more money combining efforts. Making and promoting music costs a lot of bread, so trying to dodge that part is something I’m bored of.
Let’s just get our dollars up. Let’s learn how to sell tickets. Let’s turn this city’s underground into a wave people travel just to see.
Imagine bloggers from other cities pulling up at Blue Dog just to talk to DeusGod or something.
You may not agree with everything I wrote here and that’s okay. This is how I see the game based on everything I’ve learned. Hopefully someone gains something from this kind of article.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone