Nashville Venue Defends Merch Fees - The New Music Business Podcast
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ค. 2024
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Learn more about Brooklyn Bowl Nashville: www.brooklynbowl.com/nashville
Sara Barnett serves as General Manager of Brooklyn Bowl Nashville. A Nashville native who has been soaking up the local music scene since she was sixteen, Sara has a passion for hospitality and music. She brings her prior experience as the General Manager at Butchertown Hall and as the Assistant General Manager at ACME Feed & Seed for four years to her work at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville.
Since opening its doors, the venue has hosted shows from top artists including Elvis Costello & Billy Gibbons, Phil Lesh, Leon Bridges, Lainey Wilson, Baby Keem and more, has been praised by the New York Times and was named “Best New Concert Venue” at the 2022 Pollstar Awards. With shows of all genres from country to rock to rap and more, as well as special events and benefit concerts, Brooklyn Bowl has one of the most eclectic lineups across Nashville’s saturated live music scene.
00:00 - Welcome
03:51 - Welcome Sara Barnett, Sara’s experience in Nashville, Brooklyn Bowl’s place in Nashville’s scene
13:20 - LiveNation’s involvement with Brooklyn Bowl
17:50 - Taking fees from artists’ merch sales, revenue sharing, more on ticketing fees
25:50 - The venue itself and its many activities
29:20 - Talent buying at the Brooklyn Bowl
31:00 - Showcases, how Brooklyn Bowl serves artists in the local Nashville scene
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Edited and mixed by Mikey Evans
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Produced by the team at Ari’s Take
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Ari deserves a merch cut for doing this interview. Kudos to you Ari. This is great.
Ari, thank you for doing this & kudos for asking tough questions in a kind, respectful manner. Seriously, this should be taught at 'Investigative Journalism 101' 👏
As an artist who has also worked merch/sound/bar at venues of various types and sizes I can say with confidence bar sales have much higher markups and do substantially more revenue than band merch 99.99% of nights. When merch is cranking out sales, that ineluctably means the bar is doing better.
Man, I appreciate you conducting this interview. That venue is seriously predatory (Nashville Predators, I guess). I'm having to watch it a bit at a time because it's a little upsetting. Thanks again, Ari, for keeping it real ❤️
Just went there last night to see Angel Olsen.. Great venue, excellent sound... Thanks for asking the hard questions Ari.
A pie chart of income and splits (settlement form) for a typical show would be very interesting to see. I love your charts and maps, Ari, something like this for live shows would be nice for comparison.
You're a GOAT. Thank you for asking this. BTW, at some venues we play in the UK, we have to fill out a form listing all the songs we play. Since they're all original, it's all our songs. We then HAVE TO PAY A FEE to play our own songs! We never see this money again. It's supposed to go to the UK PRO, then (supposedly) gets sent to ASCAP.
Never happens.
The venue is supposed to pay that fee. Here in Norway, anyway…
There's no way you should be paying that fee to the PRO, thats the venue's job.
None of the festivals or venues here in the US have asked for this. Only in the UK (and only a few there). One venue also takes part of the merch money, so I've asked our agent to not book us there anymore.
32:00 Showcases used to be label showcases. So a showcase should be showcasing something or a project not just a concert.
The venue should receive the same percentage they invested into the creation of the merch.
My answer as a GM would have been: My responsibilities are solely focused on staff operations and facility efficiency. I do not make these decisions and simply work within the parameters set by upper management.
She shouldn’t have taken those “hard” questions on the chin. She didn’t make these decisions as far as Merch or ticket cuts. She manages staff and puts in the numbers.
Bro this channel fucking rocks.
Ari...your description of Broadway could not have been more spot on LOL. Not sure if you are aware of this but now down there they have "Tootsie School" where I believe in order to play Tootsies (and the other x amount of bars the same people own) you have to take their "class" and they also take a cut of your base pay...WTF??? Also, some of the bars are now making the setlists for the bands essentially telling them what songs they have to play. Crazy
Did I get that right? She said they take 15% because they don’t get much off of ticket sales, but then she goes to say that the venue does 90% of their revenue on ticket sales?
Really great job pushing her on fees. Not to mention, the service fees online, the venue will keep the majority of that. I tell artists, take 3.5% credit cards, sales tax, your seller(s), and 30% COGS off the top. Cause If it’s from the gross, then after 30% COGS, 15% venue, 15% manager, 7-10% tax, sellers, and 2.7-3.5% credit cards, it’s not even worth selling. While venues get concessions, 30-70% from service fees (ticket rebate), and sponsorships at minimum. Plus other revenue streams if they know how to sell memberships, venue upgrades, and parking. Lots of revenue streams for venues. No need to snag it from the artists.
So I saw this video a couple days ago and made my comments. I’m out on the road grinding and tonight playing at the Majestic Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s a live nation venue and they DO participate in the On The Road Again Initiative! I just received $750 in cash and $750 in gas cards - all on top of our guarantee!!!
I can say that it felt awesome to be notified that all the artists on the bill would be recipients on this initiative, not just as the headliner, but our opener also received the same thing! Essentially he tripled his guarantee just with this thing.
To me it’s amazing to feel loved and seen and heard! All venues who can do this should,after talking to the promoters, they have received tons of positive feedback and support….
My 2 cents of positivity
This is so great to hear! I'm from/live in Madison and Majestic is one of my fav venues of all time :)
@@coopersmith1446 yeah the majestic is awesome! Always has been! Sounds great, looks great, staff is great - and of course the PEOPLE of Madison are great!!!
Great chat!
16:41 was my favorite moment when the blood left her face after hearing that she shouldn't take merch money from artists. And she still wanted to defend the practice. Trash move on their part. Good interview.
I'm further in and kinda boiling as she makes a reference to "helping each other stay afloat..."
Damn. You have Live Nation backing you. The artist will end up playing your venue and perhaps go home with the realization that they just paid to play. I can't with these people. I don't feel bad for them.
I’d love it if we came up with a way to take 50% of ticket fees!!! Transparency is this biz is really bad…
A lot of the ticket revenue goes to fees and commissions. Stop taking what I made…
I've TM'ed and ran merch for a band that played BB Nashville as a support recently, and I'd rather just keep 100% of my merch sales rather than your "great hospitality", production staff, and drink and food tickets. Also should realize that most supports on tour only receive a fixed guarantee from the venue not a percentage of tickets. No matter the size of the venue the guarantee usually stays the same throughout the entire tour, and supporting artists still have to pay the same percentage of the merch cut as the headliner.
In turn bands should just do what they do. Mark down their merch then tack on their own "fees" and don't give the venue a cut.
Never going to a bk bowl show ever again 😡
that you tried to have a gotcha moment with her by asking whether she thinks it's ethical for the venue to take some of their merch is so stupid. Honestly, there's a perfectly ethical explanation for why they take a percentage of Merch. They are providing a secure place in which to conduct a business transaction that otherwise would have to be conducted out of the trunk of their car, or out of the back of their tour bus. The venue also takes all the risk on the show. If nobody shows up, the artist still gets paid their guarantee, sure they're never gonna get called back again, but it's the venue that leaves with the hole in their pocket. Ari, your way of looking at this is disingenuous.
These two have same haircut
OMG - I’m getting so triggered by this…
Nonsense.
Smug disposition. Gross.
💖💗Niece here ❤❤🩹