Hello Planet Earth,

I just got back from a show at the Blue Note in Cincinnati. Allow me to elaborate on the show's overall situation. It all starts with an email from BIG TIME ENTERTAINMENT. They say "hey we wanna get a show together with you." Little do you know, they're ripping you off like a mother fucker. Just to tell all of you boys and girls out there who are wanting to get into a music scene about pricing. I, myself, don't care much about dollars and cents when playing. I just want to play. the only thing that ever bothers me is when people are trying to take advantage of my services as a musician.

Through the years I have understood how different places pay you. A few things go into consideration. One, if you are playing somewhere and they intend on taking a large cut off of your money then they better be promoting the hell out of the show. Second, how many people are YOU bringing to the show. The more you bring, the happier the venue is. There are many other circumstances that apply, but hopefully you get the gist by now.

Now let me go on to tell you how our deal with Big Time Entertainment unfolded. Once we got there, we gave them our ticket money we'd sold (25 tickets @ $8 a piece = $200). So then the chick (who wasn't the girl we'd been setting the show up in the first place with) tells us that we get a dollar per ticket we sell. That sets us at making 1/8th of our ticket sales. Of all the times I've gotten screwed out of money by bars, the worst has to have been 1/5th of the door sales.

By the time we get up to play (which is an hour and a half past our designated time slot) all of the fans that we brought an hour down to Cincy from Dayton are kinda cranky, to say the least. Problems with no one actually running the show played their part in our time slot getting messed up. (Example: no one let the third band know that they were supposed to play after 25 minutes of listening to house music.)

What I'm trying to say, in all, is that if you book a show with Big Time Entertainment you can expect the following-
-Getting screwed out of money
-Having one hell of an unprofessional show
-No one actually running the show
-Pissing off all of your fans and buddies you brought get mad as hell
-Wondering if a career in music is even worth it if you have to deal with people of such a low moral caliber

(Also, possibly...
-the venue not backing you up
-nearly getting in the middle of a gang brawl just outside that venue)

That might be all I have to say on the subject... musician beware. Stay away from scams by educating yourself. Wish I would've before I had to experience all of this bullshit.

http://www.wig-out.com/&pay-to-play.htm

...just google//yahoo//or anything- big time entertainment scams.... scams will even pop up before you have a chance to type it in..

Good luck to everyone who has to swim through seas of this shit to get to the shores of people who don't suck and try to take advantage of you. Cheers and bottoms up.

-Alec