Free gigs for charity and exposure - would you?

impmann

Exposure - is basically bollocks. No such thing.

A colleague was playing in an aspiring new music band, who were travelling all over the country to do gigs "for exposure"... and would play to half a dozen people in a shithole pub. The only thing it exposed is how corrupt the promoters are...

If you really want 'exposure' create a video of your band playing, stick it on Youtube and buy yourself some likes/subs to get it bumped up the listings. 

Charity gigs - my rule is, if everybody else (including the venue and bar staff) are doing it for nothing, I'd consider it. Otherwise... not a chance and you are just devaluing yourself if you do it.

Trude

It does depend on the setup though, and you have to judge each one on its merits. I took a low-paid community festival type gig last summer because it was right in the middle of a busy town square on a bank holiday weekend, with proper stage and sound crew. I dropped a card in to a nearby music pub before I played, and got booked as soon as I came off stage. Now it’s one of my regular venues and they pay decent money.

ScreamingDave

We’ve done quite a few charity gigs, usually directly for friends, or friends-of-friends, who are directly involved with organising the event, but even then I’ve become increasingly tired of how badly we get treated. 

Just stupid things, like being promised we’ll be fed and nothing actually being offered on the night: that happened twice at events organised in aid of the same charity. Not that I actually need to be fed, it’s just the broken promise that’s galling. 

One gig the organiser got up and made a speech thanking everyone even remotely involved in the event, except us!  Then she came over to us, obviously after someone had pointed it out to her, and she just made some pathetic excuse for why she didn’t thank us, rather than just apologising. That one, hilariously, turned out to be an event this woman had organised to raise funds for her taking part in a trek to the North Pole, but she wasn’t actually raising anything for charity at all!  She just wanted to finance her trip!

So, really I just get tired of ending up feeling mugged off. The sad thing is, these are gigs we’ve done, not because we wanted “exposure“ or to gain anything at all, but just to help out people we know have suffered a personal tragedy, but we end up resenting them.