Private party fees?

[Dave Bryce]

So, for those of you who do the private party thing: How much are you getting (per man) these days?

 

I’m looking for rates ranging from something like an acoustic duo/trio up to a full-on five pc thing with drums.  Sound system yes, regardless of config.  Not sure yet how much time - figure two to three hours of music.

 

Talk to me…

 

dB

 

[Moonglow]

One of my bands has a house party coming up in September and I should be getting $135.00. Gig is about a 30-minute drive.

[Coker]

A friend of mine used to ask the address and use Google earth to see what kind of house the hiring party lived in while they were on the phone to “tailor” his rate accordingly.

[timwat]

I've gotten as much as $3000 for a jazz trio date, similar context. 

 

Ironically, I was approached by the client in the middle of a $50 a man trio gig in a restaurant (so much for "$50 gigs devalue everyone").

 

My suggestion from this anecdote is a fundamental business principle: The only way to determine fair price is to find out what value the client places on your services. There is no "standard" rate.

[ElmerJFudd]

Location location location. 
 

I’d set it at what’s worth your while.   $100 at least to load the car and leave the house then per hour.  A club date is about $120-160 or more an hour near me. 
 

Comparison, half hour lesson for kids in the house is $40 these days.

[timwat]

.

[Dave Bryce]

In my neck of the woods, I’m feeling like $250-300 per man may be about right.  Big house… 😏

 

OTOH, there are bars around me that wanna give a band $300 total for three sets.  There’s one that wants you to play two consecutive nights for that - I’d rather practice at that point.

 

dB

[Montunoman 2]

I try to get $200 a man  but will negotiate down to about $125. I try to get double for myself since I set up  and load in  in EVERTHING by myself but the guys will usually  help me tear down and load out . Sometimes I work through an agency that pays us $3000- $4000  for a 6 or 7 piece band. These usually cooperate events in hotels and big PITA to set up for!  

[Polkahero]

1 hour ago, David Bryce said:

In my neck of the woods, I’m feeling like $250-300 per man may be about right.  Big house… 😏

 

OTOH, there are bars around me that wanna give a band $300 total for three sets.  There’s one that wants you to play two consecutive nights for that - I’d rather practice at that point.

 

dB

Aren't you out in LA?  That's all they pay out there?!

[D. Gauss]

8 minutes ago, Polkahero said:

Aren't you out in LA?  That's all they pay out there?!

Hell, i'm in NYC and it's even worse.

[miden]

Probs won't help, being as I am in Oz, but my fees are $300 for a 3hour which is about par for around here. Some folks charge a lot more, but I reckon $100 an hour is fair...Charge the same for a private party or a bar/club/pub

[Mighty Motif Max]

Solo gigs vary a bit depending which region I'm in...back home, small town Minnesota, the going rate is $50/hr. Where I go to college, it's double that at $100/hr...this is all for a solo piano/vocal/other instruments gig, not trio work or larger; I'm not sure what the rates are for that since virtually all of my paying gigs (i.e. not church stuff) are solo gigs.

[zephonic]

I haven't booked gigs myself here, but as a sideman I usually get $250-300 for a private party, typically two or three 45-minute sets. Agency stuff pays better, $400+, if the bandleader doesn't pocket the difference.

[HammondDave]

Back in 1970 I earned $100 a night playing behind strippers. Fifty years later I get paid $100 a night playing in front of drunks who could care less about the music. Anyone who does this for the money has to have their heads examined.

[David R]

Just played a gig in small town Illinois and a drummer/bar owner told us he was getting $1000/musician for wedding  gigs in the area. I guess supply and demand has a lot to do with it too.

 

Montreal has seemingly maxed out around $400/musician.

[ElmerJFudd]

10 minutes ago, HammondDave said:

Back in 1970 I earned $100 a night playing behind strippers. Fifty years later I get paid $100 a night playing in front of drunks who could care less about the music. Anyone who does this for the money has to have their heads examined.

Truth.  

[AnotherScott]

For my main band, our minimum for the kind of thing asked about in the OP is $250/man, for gigs where no one has to travel for more than an hour to get there. There are things that can (and usually do) make it more, but that's minimum, for a casual "come and play in our backyard" kind of thing. If it's at a "venue" (or someone's "estate"), if we have to bring more than the bare minimum of gear, if the load-in might not be simple, if we have to learn specific songs, if we have to do things like emcee, manage music for the breaks, etc., all that kind of stuff puts it in the "special event" category (weddings, etc.), and then it's $350 and up. A lot of stuff is more than an hour a way, so then that also raises these minimums. And anything in Manhattan is pricier, since parking, difficult loading/unloading, tolls, time in traffic all become issues. In fact, personally, over the years, Manhattan has transitioned largely into "you can't pay me enough." Unless maybe you're Jeff Bezos.

[16251]

1 hour ago, HammondDave said:

Back in 1970 I earned $100 a night playing behind strippers. Fifty years later I get paid $100 a night playing in front of drunks who could care less about the music. Anyone who does this for the money has to have their heads examined.

So, did the strippers care about the music?

[Bill H.]

35 minutes ago, 16251 said:

So, did the strippers care about the music?

When I did this in my youth, yeah. They were also big flirts. Some of them had dangerous boyfriends though, and I remember getting a specific threat from one wielding a knife. 

[TommyRude]

Not only googling the neighborhood, but googling the person throwing the party.  If it happens to be a rich tech exec, probably can charge a bit more (a lot more!)..  But probably more than the location / person, the $$ will vary based on the rep of the band.  Rich folks will care more about the quality and entertainment variables, making sure their guests have a great time, and they'll pay big $$ to verify they'll accomplish that.  So, good rep + rich party thrower, $500 - $1,000 per man is not unreasonable.  Not so rich, $300/man for sure.  Kinda like wedding prices methinks.

[EscapeRocks]

For my band, it depends on the type of "private party", meaning not open to public.

 

Locally, individual Private Party we get between $3.5K and $4.5K we provide production (we contract our go to sound and light engineer) for a 90 minute show.

Locally means a 100 mile radius

Outside of that radius, the price goes up.

 

Corporate Shows, we normally get between $7K and $10.5K, depending on the size  of the company and their budget.

We've played for national residential and industrial fire safety equipment manufacturer's annual shindig at a wonderful resort out here where they brought in a huge ProCO Sound company

It was us and a couple guys from the Whose Line Is it, Anyway tv show.  That got the upper range

Corporate show are maybe once a year..they're not our bread and butter

 

We've also have 2  private country club shows lately,   getting about $3K for 90 minutes, they provide production.

 

Compared to typical nightclub shows where we get between $1.8K and $2.3K for 90 minutes to 2 hours  (we don't do the 4 hour bar gig...nothing wrong with that, but the places promote us as a show since we're a tribute band). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dave Bryce]

14 hours ago, Polkahero said:

Aren't you out in LA?  That's all they pay out there?!

 

Thousand Oaks (NW of LA, Ventura’s county)…and we do get more, sometimes.  Did one for $500 per man in June.

 

Thanks so much for all the replies!  VERY educational.

 

dB

[EscapeRocks]

I want to make it very clear that it's taken us years to get to the point we get called for the big shows.

We've been together for 17 years now.

We've played all the "we get paid whatever the door brings in, $50/man" shows.   There's a couple places like that in the area we will play now and then, as they gave us our start when we were the new kids.

 

One thing we make sure to do at every non-private show is to promote the idea of live music, always thanking the audience for supporting us, and any other band that's out here doing this.  We will also shout out the next weekend's band.  Venue owners love us when we do that.  So they invite us back and offer the $$$ to get us.

Over the last 17 years, we've found that NOT being dicks (no egos) on the scene goes a very long way towards fostering a good reputation, which leads to more bookings, and the ability to get more money.

We treat the venue owner, staff from servers, bartenders, and cleaning staff  with respect and make them feel part of the band for that day.

Same with the sounds staff when the production is provided.  We always send an input list and stage plot, and when we get there we ask what they need from us, then get out of their way.

 

These days we specialize in the municipal shows... a lot of festival type shows, which are a ton of fun. Things like Sounds of Summer Series, Concerts on the Lake,

 

Anyway  sorry to go off tangent a bit.  

[Stokely]

Interesting to hear from all of you, I'm assuming we come from all different situations and areas.

I'm in Florida and I also have been in a band for quite a while (10 years and counting).  It has indeed taken a while to "move up", though we never intended to become a pro band.  We are older and all have, or had, day jobs.   Bottom of the heap when we started (putting aside free benefits for exposure, did a couple of those) was 300 bucks a night for the band, six members and we brought and ran the PA.  These days,  we are five members and almost every gig is 100 bucks a person, with the occasional big event or occasion.  We've got some periodic gigs now down in the resort areas that pay more.

It does take a long time to build up relationships around town, sometimes of the bad kind when you encounter abject jerks booking bands at various places.  Most of our members--I with kids am the slacker--get out and about seeing and hanging with other bands.  Not only has that gotten us gigs, it gets you a pool of subs when you need them.

Private parties almost always pay more than our regular gigs, sometimes a lot more.  I don't think we've done one for less than 200 a person, and NYE or other holidays it tends to be a lot more.   That said, I don't book the band and how much we charge probably depends on a lot of factors.

No to be forgotten--big tippers.  Several times we have made as much in tips as we did for the gig.   We are doing a private party for one such known big tipper and his group, and I reckon daddy gets a new pair of shoes after that one

What's kind of jarring is that in the late 80s I played every weekend in a "frat band".  Not sure that is still a thing, but many frats at many colleges would hire bands for the weekend around the Southeast at least.  We'd roll into Knoxville for example and you'd see nothing but big trucks (we used Ryder) in front of every frat house.  Anyway, we were the lowest-paid such band and we made 1200 a night....in 1989.   Some bands we knew made more than 2 grand.    Now, we worked our asses off for that, our PA was monstrous with a heavy amp rack, distro box that had to hook into the mains, and lots of big lights with trusses.   Quite often we'd get back home at 7am after a four hour ride home.    Oh, to be young, tough and stupid again

[MAJUSCULE]

When I’m contracting, I ask for $200 for the first hour and $100 for any subsequent hours, times the number of musicians.

[Delaware Dave]

We double our club fee for private parties.  They are usually an inconvenience; typically no stage or poor stage, no overhead covering, bad electric, special request songs that have to be learned; alot of inconvenience.  So the doubling is the 'inconvenience fee".

[timwat]

1 hour ago, EscapeRocks said:

I want to make it very clear that it's taken us years to get to the point we get called for the big shows.

We've been together for 17 years now.

We've played all the "we get paid whatever the door brings in, $50/man" shows.   There's a couple places like that in the area we will play now and then, as they gave us our start when we were the new kids.

 

One thing we make sure to do at every non-private show is to promote the idea of live music, always thanking the audience for supporting us, and any other band that's out here doing this.  We will also shout out the next weekend's band.  Venue owners love us when we do that.  So they invite us back and offer the $$$ to get us.

Over the last 17 years, we've found that NOT being dicks (no egos) on the scene goes a very long way towards fostering a good reputation, which leads to more bookings, and the ability to get more money.

We treat the venue owner, staff from servers, bartenders, and cleaning staff  with respect and make them feel part of the band for that day.

Same with the sounds staff when the production is provided.  We always send an input list and stage plot, and when we get there we ask what they need from us, then get out of their way.

 

These days we specialize in the municipal shows... a lot of festival type shows, which are a ton of fun. Things like Sounds of Summer Series, Concerts on the Lake,

 

Anyway  sorry to go off tangent a bit.  

 

This is gold. Aspiring or current band leaders should be required to study this. Not off tangent one single bit.

[surfergirl]

We were the new kids, 19, prior to the lock down, so the more established bands got all of the better paying gigs. We got the ones that couldn't afford to pay much. But the ones we got where more our people, so it was ok with us, even we got paid in Starbucks gift cards sometimes. Now there just aren't any parties for us to play.

[Shamanzarek]

Did a private party on Saturday two forty-five minute sets $500 a man for a four-piece tribute band. We have been doing parties for these people two to three times a year for the last seven years.

 

A couple of weeks ago played a 70th birthday party with a five piece dance band. Two sets $300 a man.

 

A week earlier the same band played two sets at a private home on the Jersey Shore for $200 a man.

[Polkahero]

FWIW, we get $200/gig no matter if it's a public or private event.