How Concert Tours Work

Think your band is ready to start touring, or are you not sure whether a concert tour should be in your immediate future? Planning and performing during a music tour are complicated and time consuming. Probably the first thing you'll want to do is make sure you can answer that question with a strong "Yes!"

To reach a decision, you'll want to consider factors such as:

Miley Cyrus and the Rolling Stones aside, if you expect to make a lot of money off concert tours, you're likely to be disappointed. By the time the venue, concert promoter and ticket vendor take their cuts, equipment rentals and crew are paid, and transportation and living costs are covered, there may not be as much for the band as you'd expect. That's not even considering sliding CD sales and the move to digital music.

Limited profitability is nothing new for touring bands. Gerald Casale, a founding member of Devo, recalls that band members only earned $12,000 each from the new wave group's Freedom of Choice tour, which grossed $2 million during the group's heyday in 1980 -- and the take would have been even less if T-shirts hadn't sold well. The group began touring again in 2004 [source: Billboard].

If you've decided you're ready to tour, the next step is preliminary planning, probably led by your band's manager. Here are some questions to consider:

Once you have considered these basics, you need someone who can connect you with your audience. Perhaps your band has a music agent who handles your bookings. But whether you do or not, you or your agent needs to work through a concert promoter, or tour promoter, to put together a tour. Let's look next at what concert promoters do and how to work with them.

You could try to set up your concert tour, but you probably wouldn't get very far. Tour venues work with -- or are even owned by -- concert promoters, also known as tour promoters. You'll usually need a signed contract with a tour promoter to set up a tour.

A tour promoter organizes a live music tour and makes sure it's profitable. That can include presenting, advertising and even financing concerts at arenas, clubs, auditoriums, festivals and other special events. The promoter finds the talent, the venue and on-site labor, and then handles advertising, marketing and possibly even ticket sales for the tour [sources: Berklee College of Music and Full Sail].

The biggest national promoters of music tours are Live Nation and AEG Live. Live Nation has begun signing major performers -- including Madonna, Nickelback, Shakira and Jay-Z -- to multi-year 360 contracts that can cover virtually all of the artist's output. This includes everything from music, concert tours and merchandise to endorsements and broadcast rights [source: Bloomberg].

Don't expect a 360 contract or a contract from a major concert promoter. These companies want well-known stars whose value should hold for the contract length -- which, in Madonna's case, is 10 years. Taking a chance on an up-and-coming band may be far too risky financially [source: The American].

Instead, your band's manager or music agent will sit down with a regional promoter to discuss the terms of a live music tour. Here are some ideas for finding a concert promoter:

Once you've found possible promoters, have your manager or agent contact them with information about your band, including genre, background, previous club and tour experience and a CD of your music.

If a promoter offers your band work through your manager, the next step is hammering out a contract covering the tour. The standard contract is the American Federation of Musicians' AFM Performance Agreement. Riders can be attached to handle specific tour details. While the contract itself is usually short, covering payment, profit splits, dates and locations, the rider may be 10 pages or more. Here are some details covered in a rider:

[source: Donald S. Passman and Randy Glass]

Price isn't the only important part of a tour arranagement. You also need to agree on a tour schedule. Keep reading to learn more.

Once you've worked out a price, split percentage and other concert details with the concert promoter, you still need to agree on a daily work schedule for your band's concert tour.

Take a careful look at the schedule the tour promoter offers for the music tour. You'll want to make sure that:

Keep in mind, too, that concert tours involve a lot more than setting up, rehearsing and playing for an audience. A promoter or record label is likely to want the band to also do local promotions and interviews with media, meet with fans and sign autographs. There may be even more demands on band members' time.

You'll also want to be open to schedule changes. While the beginning of the tour may be thoroughly mapped out, the rest is likely to be more loosely scheduled. If not enough tickets are sold, one or more of the concert venues may drop out and be replaced with a concert in some other location. And if the tour turns out to be really successful, it may even be extended with additional concerts [source: MusicBizAcademy.com].

Make your requests regarding the schedule, but in the words of Mick Jagger, "You can't always get what you want." Concert promoters are in business to make money, after all, and they want to keep a band working, not taking days off.

With schedule set and contract in hand, you're ready to get on the road again. Right? Well, not quite. You'll need a production manager and tour crew to take care of the logistics and set-up the equipment on the road. Keep reading to find out more.

Even though a concert tour contract probably provides for some local crew at every stop on the tour, you'll want to have your own crew that travels with the band from venue to venue. This tour crew is invaluable because, unlike the local crew, they know the band, its show and its equipment, and they're there every step of the way to make sure the concerts go smoothly.

Here are some crew members and their responsibilities you'll want to have with you on your tour:

[sources: Berklee College of Music and John Vasey]

As you hire crew to fill these positions, look for people who are:

Finally, if you're looking to make it on the concert scene, here's some advice from insiders:

And a final word of advice: Be sure to explore all the potential revenue streams (such as band merchandise, fan clubs, licensing for TV shows and video games, and more) to add to tour income [source: The American].

For lots more information about concert tours and related topics, check out the links on the next page.