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Crowdsourcing Concerts — the Future of Live Music?
New submitter roryed writes "Performer Jonathan Coulton, famous among some geeks for 'Code Monkey' and writing Portal's 'Still Alive' wrote on his blog, 'Salt Lake City, the last ticket link for the Nov/Dec tour, has finally gone up. The reason for the delay was that we were working on the details of this experimental ticketing thing called Bring the Gig.' Bring the Gig is a new form of crowdsourcing, much like a Kickstarter for concerts. The idea is to have fans put up the money to bring bands to their city by buying premium tickets. If the goal is met and the band is booked, general box office tickets are sold. If the show sells enough at the box office, or sells out, the original premium ticket holders get a full refund and keep their ticket, effectively seeing the show they helped bring for free. Coulton also writes, 'Could be a disaster! Exciting! Honestly I have no idea if this is going to work, but as you know, I am a scientist. I like to watch what happens.'"
I'm not optimistic on this working for say an arena or stadium concert, only the club circuit. Event promotion has a lot more than just selling tickets and bringing in a band. You have to advertise the act to sell the premium seats. If the show does not go on, the advertising money is gone. And it's difficult to get any kind of event liability insurance with a calendar date of "maybe" or an expected crowd of "it all depends."
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For a couple of years in Brazil. It seems to be working. http://www.queremos.com.br/
This model has worked REMARKABLY well in Rio de Janeiro. It's called Queremos!, and has managed to bring several bands that wouldn't come to the city otherwise. Their pricing model is precisely as explained in the summary, and so far all the gigs were completely sold and the first-comers received their money back. There is, however, some details to their practice that one has to note before trying this elsewhere:
1) Queremos allows other companies to buy up to 50% (IIRC) of those special tickets, so that they may distribute those tickets as part of promotions or similar.
2) Queremos allows fans to buy more than one special ticket but, seeing as that ticket is not a physical ticket, but rather a name on a list, transfering a ticket to someone is something you have to request to the promoters. This looks burdensome, but also protects the promoters from smart people trying to resell those special tickets at a profit.
3) The fact that the special-ticket holders are interested in a full house gig (because of the money coming back to them), they are going to help spreading the word of the gig a lot. You HAVE to capitalize on this - specially in the age of social media.
Because the biggest return you can get is a refund on your ticket purchase, it's not an "investment". If you could get back more if the event was a big success, it would be a public offering of a security. There are some short form public offering arrangements available under SEC rules, but you still have to file a basic offering statement and financial statements.
"Crowdfunding" schemes have to be careful of this. If the pitch is that you can make money, it's a securities offering. If the pitch is that you get a product if some funding threshold is reached, the Mail Order Rule applies and there has to be a refund, without your asking for it, if the product isn't delivered by the stated date, or 30 days if not stated. If the pitch is that you're donating as a charity, the laws about charity frauds apply.
In the early days of the Internet, many small companies were fined under the Mail Order Rule because they had online ordering that didn't stop taking orders even though the manufacturing and delivery end of the business couldn't keep up. (Now, everybody with a clue has the shopping cart system hooked to inventory control, so the order isn't accepted unless it can be filled.) Companies don't get to hold onto the money until they get around to filling the order. They can beg the customer for more time, but must, by default, refund if they don't hear from the customer.
Allowing them to see it for free is a formalized version of, "hey local fan, if you help us by putting up some flyers for our gig in your town, and telling all your friends and neighbors about it, we'll put your name on the list to get in free, or give you a free t-shirt, or a free signed copy of our latest CD, or maybe meet with you for a bit and take some photos with you after the show." Lots of small bands do this already; I don't really see much potential for abuse here.
What if the goal isn't met? Do I get a full refund, or will I be charged a "service fee?"
Will I get a refund at all?
What if the show doesn't "sell enough at the box office?" Does the band cancel the show? Do I get my money back?
From the FAQ:
OK, that's... that's actually kinda cool. Especially the "exclusive show" part.
Conclusion: I like this idea; maybe now we can get some half decent shows in the podunk, BFE, third-largest-city-in-the-state where I happen to reside.
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I believe "crowdsourcing" is quickly overtaking "the cloud" as the new and cool buzzphrase.
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There's a limited number of the "advance tickets," which are sold at a price that will ensure the band & club don't take a beating and lose money putting on the show. If those sell out, the band will commit, and "general tickets" will go on sale. If a certain number of "general tickets" sell, then the band and club will also be sure they won't lose money, and so the "advance" tickets are refunded.
This basically gives the die-hard fans (those who would be paying for the advanced tickets) a reason to get out there and help publicize the show - if you get a bunch of your friends to go, you get a free ticket. If you don't, well, you still get to see the band you love, and maybe there's only 50 people at the show, and you get to have a drink with the band and talk to them for a bit before or after the show.
Frankly, I think it's a pretty interesting idea, and I think it offers the right incentives - free ticket for the fans who get in early and help publicize the show and get more people to buy tickets. But, even if the general tickets don't sell really well beyond the "advanced" ticket group, the people who got in early can still get to see the band play, because the band would have its travel & production costs covered.