Musicians and Venues Working Together

In an effort to assist live music venues, many of which pay for their overhead out of their own pockets to provide live entertainment, Seth Regan (Mankind Tracer in SL) and I have recently started offering venues something which we believe to be a reasonable solution.

The first idea Seth had was to only have one tip jar for venue and musician. Since the majority of audiences tip the artists considerably more than the venues, Seth offered to automatically split the tips he receives with the venue and remove the venue tip jar completely. This could work to the venues benefit in several ways.

The first benefit of splitting the tips, using only Seth's tip jar, is that at a concert with 60 people or more in attendance (Seth's average draw) it can get very laggy. This way, people only have to find one tip jar.

Another benefit is that there will be less "tip that, tip this" in local chat. This allows people to socialize more with less interruption.

During the week, we approached the venue, Ground Zero, owned by our friends Thea and GMetal, about this idea. They were both very open to trying a something new. We decided to try it out that coming Saturday.

After the concert, we all got together on Skype, discussed the outcome and worked out the numbers. We found that the venue saw a 33% increase in tips. Also, Thea and GMetal reported that several people expressed to them how they enjoyed the lack of "tip reminders" in local chat and it was a much more fun and relaxed show with greater audience interaction.

With this success, Seth and I didn't want to rest on our laurels, so we decided to revisit something we had discussed in the past: Sponsorship.

We then approached long time live music venue owner Liz Harley at Key West, where Seth's next show was scheduled. We asked if she was open to the idea of not only having paying sponsors to reduce the cost she pays Seth as a booking fee, but to also try the tip split as well. After informing her of the success at Ground Zero, Liz was very receptive to trying a new approach.

Seth and I got to work and found three sponsors for that show.

I'm happy to say that this show was also a success! The venue made good tips from the split. Further, the reduced booking fee kept money in her pocket. Liz was very pleased at the outcome, as were the sponsors and the idea of having sponsors was well received by the people attending the show.

We have decided to continue on with this model of splitting tips and getting businesses to sponsor Seth's shows. We are also continuing our brainstorming to try to come up with new ways to help the venues reduce their out of pocket expenses.

While this model may or may not work for every venue and performer, I felt it was worth mentioning to perhaps encourage more ideas but also to just inform that there are different ways to do things.

If you own a business (SL or RL) and would like to discuss sponsoring Seth's shows, please contact me by email brandy@sethregan.com or message in Second Life (Kalli Birman).