Whats your experience of getting gigs and how venues approach live music

[KingPrawn]

Evening all.

I'm posting this question as I am genuinely interested in your experience of booking gigs and how you feel the current climate is. I am essentially a weekend warrior, so I'm not talking about you cats who have the cream gigs. I play in a few bands, locally in the Midlands and have noticed a huge change in venues' attitude towards booking live bands. It used to be that we could go out as a 4/ 5-piece or more, depending on the style of music and get plenty of gigs and maybe £100 a head. Over the last few years, I have experienced more and more venues that are booking solo artists with backing tracks for a sub £200  fee, above a full band. We played a festival in the summer, and all the acts before us were solo with backing tracks. I get why the promoter does it, as it's cheaper for the venue/festival. I felt it looked awful as an audience member. A lone individual with a music stand and an iPad on a stage the size of an articulated lorry. I just worry about the live band experience and what will happen to it. I'm not against backing tracks; they have their place. It just feels a bit poo 

[martin8708]

I occasionally trawl through the Facebook Musicians available page for our part of the country, and it’s filled with duo’s and solo singers who play along to backing tracks . 
The big advantage is they can fit into the corner of small pubs / eateries and provide background music /entertainment.

Bigger bands need bigger venues , generally come with noisy guitarists  /power drummers and generally need to be paid more .

Payment over here on the Isle of Wight has always been poor , your lucky if you can get £200 for a gig , so going out as a five piece band does not allow you to quit your day job .

 

Having played in two duos , ( No backing tracks ) the whole gig experience is much easier from accepting bookings ( without wondering if the drummer will turn up ) setting up / breaking down and interaction with the audience.  Plus you get a bigger share of the gig money .

[NJE]

I have found there are a lot of bands out there, and a lot of them are incredibly average and will play for very little. Often live music can be a draw for pubs but equally I have seen bands clear a room, so it’s hard for a venue to keep paying out big sums when there could be no benefit at all.

 

A half decent solo vocalist with backing tracks is going to sound better quality than a rubbish band, cost the venue less and take up less room. Ultimately it seems like less of a gamble.

 

In genuinely don’t believe many people care about the live music experience at a pub level (which is my level) I think a lot of the time a band just happens to be somewhere they like drinking, it’s not the reason they are there.