Boards
Booking a venue to put on bands at uni
I've wanted to do this for ages but never got around to it because I haven't got any experience at all. FInally bit the bullet and decided to do it!
Our university's debating society has the perfect space for it, they want to charge me £150 for the night. Is this reasonable? I have no idea of costs basically, and haven't even thought about booking bands/promotional costs.
Given that I'm going to be providing punters in need of a drink for 3-4 hours, and I'm not asking for any of the bar takings, could I stand to ask for the price to be lowered?
Any help with any other aspects of putting on bands at uni would be much appreciated :)
Putting on a band at uni should be no different to putting on a band anywhere else.
It's a bit difficult to get a handle on whether that's a reasonable price without knowing:
- the capacity of the room.
- whether it includes the sound guy's fee.
- what backline they have and whether you're going to have to hire anything more.
- where this university is (i.e. whether there's any other competition in terms of venues or gigs, and how easy it'll be to bring band there).
- what level of band you're looking to put on, in terms of whether you can charge £5 a ticket or £15.
- How much promotion the venue will do as well. For example, do they do their own listings submissions, listings posters, tweets, Facebook updates etc? A venue might be more expensive, but it might also bring in so many extra people that it outweighs the extra cost.
just want to say
maximum respect and good luck - i bet i'm not the only person on DiS who has thought about putting on a gig but never come close to actually doing it.
It's not hard to do.
The only challenge is not losing money.
haha
All I wanna do is break even, don't really mind about profit so long as I'm not losing money.
Even if you lose money, it's still fun.
If you're doing it at uni, look into setting up a society. Some universities give societies funding and it might also mean you get discounts on venue hire/printing.
Ah that's a great idea, hadn't thought about that
Cheers :)
I actually had some experience last year with booking bands for our end-of-year ball, but got gradually pushed off the committee because the acts I was about to book were apparently "not well known enough". I had Major Lazer or Disclosure lined up, we ended up with Example :(
I had a decent budget then though, now I'm just working out of my student loan, so any mistakes and it's me taking the hit!
Yeah, he hasn't got back to me about capacity. About 200 I reckon
Their backline seems decent, a friend played there and said everything was fine. Doubt the venue will do much/any promotion to be honest.
Ok who owns the room?
If the debating society is affiliated to this students union/association you should be able to use it for free if you are a society? Can you not just start a society and do it for free? They should also promote it if its a student-led event.