Gigging Musicians by the Numbers: Gig Offers, Band Splits, Merch Margins, Tour Budgets, Break-Even Crowds & the Payout Sheet

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Turn three kinds of gig offer into money for crowds from 25 to 300 fans – a flat guarantee, a door split after venue costs and a «greater of» deal – and find the crowd at which the door deal starts to beat the guarantee.
• Take the manager's and agent's commissions and the sound engineer off the gig fee, split the rest equally and by points, round every share down to the cent and find the cents left over for the band kitty.
• Work out the margin per merch item after the venue's commission and card fees, the margin %, how many units to pack for an 8-show run and what merch brings in per fan.
• Budget a seven-day run day by day – fuel from kilometres, beds from hotel nights, van hire and per diems for five people – and turn it into the cost per show that every offer must cover.
• Add the band's share of each ticket to the merch profit per fan, divide the fixed costs of each show by it and judge every date by its break-even crowd, the share of the room it needs and the safety margin of the expected crowd.
• Check a draft routing: days between shows with DAYS, a flag for drives longer than the daily limit, the rest days in the run and the date the last venue should pay with WORKDAY.
• Settle one show the way a tour manager does at the end of the night: total income, the manager's commission, the costs, the net to split and each member's payout after the cash advances they already took.
• Compare the eight shows of the tour by profit per fan, rank them with RANK.EQ, let a formula name the most profitable city and chart the profit by show for the next booking talk.