Guarantee versus door split
A guarantee is a floor and a split is a ceiling. On a first tour in a new city, take the floor — a great night on a split still pays less than a mediocre one on a guarantee when nobody knows you yet.
Pro edition
Tour Sheet.
The public page tells a listener what each night is. This is the other side: what the run costs, how a show settles, and the two contract lines that decide whether a bad night is survivable. Figures are for a solo or duo run in 150 to 500 capacity rooms.
The day sheet
| When | Whose | What |
|---|---|---|
| Load-in | Us + venue | Door, parking, stairs. Ninety seconds of information that saves twenty minutes. |
| Line check | Sound | Not a soundcheck. Confirming every channel makes a noise before the room is full. |
| Soundcheck | Sound + us | Thirty minutes, and the last five are the monitor mix. Skipping the monitors is why a set goes flat. |
| Merch set | Us | Before doors, not during support. A table built at 21:00 sells nothing. |
| Doors | Venue | The number in the contract, not the optimistic one. |
| Support | Promoter | Their set length in writing. A support who plays fifty minutes moves everything. |
| Set | Us | On-stage time and length agreed at the advance, published on the site. |
| Settle | Promoter | Before load-out. Nobody settles well at 1am with a van double-parked. |
A 250-capacity room, 210 tickets sold at $24
Settlement, to $2,916.
| Line | Amount | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Gross box office | $5,040 | 210 paid. Comps and guest list are not in this number and never should be. |
| Less venue rent | −$900 | A flat hire on this kind of deal. On a door split it is a percentage instead and the arithmetic below changes shape. |
| Less production and staff | −$650 | Sound, lights, door staff. Ask for this itemised at the advance rather than seeing it for the first time at settlement. |
| Less support | −$250 | Paid, always, and paid before us if the night is short. |
| Less agent, 10% | −$324 | Of the net, not the gross. Which of the two is written into the contract is worth reading carefully. |
| To the artist | $2,916 | For a good night in a room this size. Divide by however many people are in the van before deciding it is a lot. |
Two of the six lines are negotiable at the advance and none of them is negotiable at 1am. Ask for the production estimate in writing two weeks out and the settlement stops being a surprise, which is the entire skill.
Merch
| Item | Figure | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Venue cut | 10–25% | Standard, and it is on the gross, not your margin. Ask which before you price the shirts. |
| Cash sales | Usually exempt | At many rooms the cut is only taken on card sales. Not a trick — just something nobody tells you. |
| Who counts | Both of you | Count in and count out with a venue person present. It protects them as much as you. |
| Seller | Not you | You cannot sell merch and talk to people after a show at the same time, and the second one is worth more. |
| Float | $150 in small notes | The most common reason a merch table underperforms is having no change at 22:40. |
| Card reader | Two, charged | One dies. It always dies on the best night of the run. |
What a twelve-date run costs
| Line | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Van and fuel, 12 dates | $1,850 | Roughly 2,600 miles on this routing. The single largest fixed cost of a run this size. |
| Accommodation | $2,100 | Nine nights. Three are with friends, which is the only reason this number works. |
| Per diems, 3 people | $1,080 | $30 a person a day. Small, and it is the line that keeps people human by date eight. |
| Agent, on net | $2,400 | Across the run. Worth it if they are routing well and expensive if they are not. |
| Merch stock | $2,300 | Bought up front and recovered across the run. Unsold stock is not a loss, it is next tour. |
| Contingency | $800 | A tyre, a broken string, a cancelled date. It gets used about seventy per cent of the time. |
2 lines worth reading twice
Force majeure and cancellation
Who pays what if the show does not happen, and by when. Two sentences, and it is the difference between a bad week and a bad year.
6 ways a night loses money
- Production costs seen for the first time at settlement, after the room has emptied.
- A support act whose set length nobody agreed, pushing the headline past curfew.
- The merch table built during the support and taken down before the encore.
- No float, and forty people who only had cash.
- A door split accepted in a city where nobody knows the artist yet.
- Settlement attempted at 1am, standing up, with a van on a yellow line.
Percentages and deal shapes vary by country and by room. Nothing here is legal or accounting advice, and a contract should be read by somebody whose job that is before it is signed.