Online concert series. How much to charge for tickets?

Here’s the thing. You should not work for free. People in the creative professions often face the dilemma of working for exposure and demanding pay.

It’s a tricky balance, but the art and design community has got it pretty close to ideal — they do not work for free. Even if the client does not think the artist’s/illustrator’s/designer’s skill is good enough (then why are you asking them to do the work?), even if it’s just this one thing, even if it’s for a friend of a friend, even if they say “but you enjoy doing it”.

They had to spend time honing their skill, the got the supplies, and they invested hours of their time in the piece someone else needed — this is work and it has to be compensated fairly.

With the music community, things are less cut and dried.

Musicians end up playing for exposure, to reach new audiences, to engage with their fanbase all the time.

And while that might be a solid approach, online concerts are hard work, they require a lot of preparation, often investment, and it’s the time you could spend doing something else, e.g. earning a salary to pay the bills. This is why if a musician or a band wants to do music professionally, they need to look at it like a business venture — and how to monetize it.

Online concerts are a great way to monetize, and you can easily offer fans cheaper admission ticket options and introduced bundled ticket tiers to allow those who can afford and want to support you more to buy more expensive and profitable for you tickets bundled with merch or pre-show access or song dedication, shoutout, and whatnot.

To make sure your online ticket price is fair, here are all the things to include in the show budget (link to our blog post detailing all of this in more detail):

• hours (how many hours you spend setting up your show, rehearsing, promoting it, managing responsibilities and keeping track of progress, coming up with ideas to improve the show, communicating with fans, decorating, ordering online that thing, crafting the playlist, etc.) multiplied by your rate per hour
• amortization (the wear and tear of everything involve in the show — instruments, makeup, costumes, etc.)
• rent and the like (you are doing all of the above from somewhere, which means you are paying the electricity bill, the internet bill, rent)
• ad budget (even if you just asked your designer friend to design one poster – see the intro)
• travel and other costs (if applicable)
• platform fees

Add up all the costs that you’ve determined for your show and you have your total minimum budget. You can add in some overhead for unpredictable expenses as well as actual profit, and now that’s the ideal lump sum you want to get through ticket sales.

All you have to do is distribute the amount between the types of tickets and remember to offer more than your bare minimum — online concerts are great in this regard as you can offer a lot of seats without venue limitations!

Want more info on this and ticket type ideas? Proceed to the original post on our blog with more details and info on this right here!