Post: Promoters and Venues – What are Agreements on MusicIDB.com
Agreements on MusicIDB.com are flexible arrangements that are modifiable exclusively by the people who put on shows. They are meant to clarify certain terms of a performance of an artist. We did not want to use the word “contract” because many events change based on unforeseen conditions, but we hope the people who put on shows, and the performing artists will work together to have a reasonable understanding with each other before.
MusicIDB, Inc does not play a role in the negotiation between promoters and artists, nor any disputes between those parties. Users of MusicIDB.com are solely responsible for managing their agreements with each other.
Promoters & Venue Managers
When you’re ready to book a show, you will need just two things, a basic agreement, and a venue. When you first visit the “Show Agreements” page from your left-side control menu, you’ll see we have three default agreements available for your consideration as a “start” for your own customized show agreements.
What should be clear to you is how these can be customized, ideally you’ll create an agreement that is generic enough to work for every show, or a few various kinds of agreements for various kinds of shows.
For example you might have a Local Shocase agreement, in which you clarify that the first 3 bands are paid $75 and the last two bands are paid $100. You might also have a Cover Band agreement where you offer $800 for a band to bring their own PA and Sound engineer and that they should do at least three sets of 45 minutes each starting promptly at 9pm, with 15 minute breaks between.
To create a new agreement,
- Click “My show agreements” at left.
- Find one that’s closest to what you want to modify (or if you intend to start from scratch, pick any).
- Click “Duplicate” and click “Save”.
- Click “Rename” to enter a new name for the agreement.
- Click “Edit” to enter your own text.
Once you’ve created a “gig” around one of these agreements, you can edit that particular show’s agreement by clicking on the agreement in the Event Details box. For instance, you may want to specify a particular load-in time for this show.
As soon as you’ve completed the “Book A Show” wizard, artists will be able to see your gig in the gig list, and they will be able to either say “Book Us”, meaning they fully agree with the agreement, or they’ve clicked “Inquire” and asked for some more information or want to negotiate terms from their rider. You’ll be able to now update the agreement of this show to be specific to this artist. For example perhaps one band will only accept the agreement after you’ve promised them a particular set time during the night.
You can continuously change the agreement as your conversation progresses with the artist, but you cannot “approve” and thereby “book” the artist until they accept the agreement. Once an artist accepts an agreement they are available in the “Book Us” box with the “Approve” button in the control bar.
If you change the agreement after you’ve booked the artist and chosen a set time for them, they’ll need to agree with the updated agreement before you can re-approve them. However you can always message back and forth without interrupting a booking status and you may “come to an agreement” in this way, though we recommend keeping the “terms” clear in the “agreement” itself.
Artists
The concept with the agreements, is for you to understand the terms of the event, and have a sense of how compensation will be handled. Often this is “figured out after the event”, and we don’t suggest that this is necessarily a terrible as its often hard to predict “what will happen” at a show. With local artist showcase type events, there are situations, as you probably know, where sometimes there is a small crowd, and therefore limited resources that have be balanced between the bar, the promoter, production like PA rentals and a sound engineer, and the artists. Sometimes its best to be reasonable and work things out to whatever seems most fair working with the promoters after an event.
That being said, we strongly encourage you to ask promoters to update an agreement with whatever you feel is important to you and the success of the event. Perhaps you’ll be driving an hour to get there, and if the venue can provide a pizza it would make it much easier for you to get set up properly for the event without trying to figure out where to get food.
When you respond to a gig, with either the “Book Us” or “Inquire” buttons, or when you respond to a message from a promoter, you’ll have the option of deciding whether the agreement is “agreed” or “pending”. Understand that if you choose Pending, you are at a disadvantage to artists who have responded that they are agreed, because the person booking the show can click “approve” right away for an artist who has said “book us” and/or has “agreed” to the show agreement, but the promoter will have to get your approval by updating the agreement per your request in order for you to agree and for him to then be able to “book” you.
Visit our “PlayPen” to experiment with booking back and forth. (Coming Soon).