{"id":1462,"date":"2019-12-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sofarsoundsblo.wpengine.com\/blog\/articles\/how-money-works-at-a-sofar-show\/"},"modified":"2024-03-29T20:47:20","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T20:47:20","slug":"how-money-works-at-a-sofar-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/articles\/how-money-works-at-a-sofar-show","title":{"rendered":"How Money Works at a Sofar Show:\u00a0A Closer Look at our Expenses and Evolving Artist Compensation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/articles\/new-artist-dashboard\">Check out our update from February 2020 for more information on changes to artist payments.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve been talking to many of our Sofar artist alumni in the past year, gathering feedback and input to help us prioritize the tools and resources we\u2019re building to make sure we\u2019re focused on the things most important to our artists. In February, we\u2019ll be introducing a series of new features and improvements, one of which is a change to artist compensation at bigger shows.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, we want to share details about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/articles\/business\/8546671\/sofar-sounds-breaks-down-cashflow-pledges-70-percent-future-profits-artists\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how money works at Sofar Sounds shows<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s a common question we receive, so we want to answer that for everyone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The average net income split between artists and Sofar is currently 63\/37, with 63% of the net show income going to the artists. Our goal is to move from today\u2019s 63\/37 average profit split for our standard show format (3 artists and 20-25 minute sets) to 70\/30 across Sofar-operated cities, in favor of the artist.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>All the details are below, including a breakdown of typical show expenses and how we plan to evolve our artist compensation starting in February 2020.<\/p>\n<h1><strong>Let\u2019s get into the details:<\/strong><\/h1>\n<h2><strong>How Sofar cities work<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>There are a few different types of Sofar cities \u2014 most of them (about 375) operate independently. The majority of these (~90%) put on shows that are free to attend, then pass-the-hat to collect money for show expenses and artists, with $0 going back to the business. The rest of the independent cities sell tickets online and pay artists a flat guarantee ($100 per act in the U.S.).<\/p>\n<p>Beyond those cities that operate independently, there are ~30 that are Sofar-operated and host the majority of our shows \u2014 here, we also sell tickets in advance and pay artists a flat guarantee, but have small local teams of employees who book, organize and run all the events. Most big cities in the U.S. work like this, including Boston, so let\u2019s use that as an example.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/1665185445featuredimage.avif\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The average net income split between artists and Sofar is currently 63\/37, with 63% of the net show income going to the artists. The expenses above cover the local team and show costs. They don\u2019t include centralized company costs, like the team that runs the website, ticketing and event booking systems, small marketing and finance teams, and others that make sure the shows happen and artists get paid.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Evolving artist compensation<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Another question that has come up in our conversations with artists that we\u2019ve been thinking about a lot: can Sofar pay more when we sell more tickets? Shows where we sell more tickets than average do help us offset the cost of shows where we sell less than average, but we\u2019re figuring out how we can pay more for larger shows. Our goal is to move from today\u2019s 63\/37 average profit split for our standard show format (3 artists and 20-25 minute sets) to 70\/30 across Sofar-operated cities, in favor of the artist.<\/p>\n<p>Starting in February 2020, we\u2019re doing two things:<\/p>\n<p>Increasing artist compensation for larger shows, while still guaranteeing each artist $100 for the smaller ones.Creating an artist advisory group to help make sure we\u2019re focused on the right features and improvements. We\u2019re discussing a few different approaches for the compensation increase at our standard shows with that group now and will share those details by February when we roll out the changes.<\/p>\n<p>Going forward, we\u2019ll review artist compensation every six months, get feedback from artists and our artist advisory group, and share findings and any adjustments.<\/p>\n<p>We see this as a small step in a series of improvements to how Sofar works for artists. A few others that we\u2019re working on:<\/p>\n<p>Improved artist website, online application and booking\u00a0Streamlined booking request system for touring artistsMore ways to turn audience members into fans through merch sales and social followsMaking it easier for artists and photographers to connect, and for show photos and videos to reach more people<\/p>\n<p>Sofar exists because of our artists. Three-quarters of Sofar\u2019s full-time employees are musicians \u2014 that\u2019s why we\u2019re all here. Sofar put on about 10,000 shows this year. That\u2019s a great place to start. But it\u2019s just the start.<\/p>\n<p>If you have any thoughts or questions, reach out to <a href=\"mailto:artists@sofarsounds.com\">artists@sofarsounds.com<\/a> \u2014 we\u2019d love to hear from you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Check out our update from February 2020 for more information on changes to artist payments. We\u2019ve been talking to many of our Sofar artist alumni in the past year, gathering feedback and input to help us prioritize the tools and resources we\u2019re building to make sure we\u2019re focused on the things most important to our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}