CONCERT BUSINESS BASICS

Joe Carsello takes us on a conversational tour of an iconic rock club. We will pull together all the topics we’ve learned about in previous workshops to see how they interact in the real world.

You can’t sell the tickets if the fans don’t know about the show. We will dive into how to get the message out effectively in a rapidly changing digital environment.

Merchandise is one of the primary revenue sources for touring artists. This workshop will dive into the deal structure between artist and merch company, best practices to maximize revenue and profit, and look at innovations in the industry.

We’ll look at Jen’s methods to efficiently handle large volumes of information including settlement sheet, settlement advance, bus driver processes, and more.

Jeremy Holgersen (agent, United Talent Agency) Randy Nichols (manager, Force Media Management) and Jeremy Weiss (CI Companies and LAUNCH Music Conference) join Jen to give advice to new artists.

Jen and Jim Digby, Director of Touring for Linkin Park, will dig into this topic with tangible takeaways for all levels of touring.

Tour Managers Lisa Brownlee & David '5-1' Norman join Jen to dole out advice to the young guns getting started in the production field.

Jen will outline the typical qualities and characteristics of the most common venue types from small listening rooms and clubs up through stadiums and amphitheaters.

Mike Yanoscik, Tour Accountant at Gelfand Rennert & Feldman joins Jen to discuss the factors that go into a tour budget for a theatre or arena level tour.

Tour Manager Frank Fanelli joins Jen to look at the details that go into creating a tour budget for a club level tour.

We've covered the structure of the deals and laid it all out on a spreadsheet. NOW we get to dig into each line item of the show expenses. As a tour accountant, one of Jen's favorite people to settle shows with is Sean O'Connell, VP of Operations for Live Nation Colorado. Sean will join Jen in walking through each item category and discuss how to budget, how to calculate and how to verify each expense.

This is a lecture-style workshop with Jen's favorite spreadsheet tips and tricks. We’ll look at a variety of spreadsheets Jen created for different purposes, build a basic settlement spreadsheet live and talk about spreadsheet best practices. Even if you aren't settling shows, spreadsheets can make just about anyone's life easier, more organized and streamlined.

Now that we have the basics down, we can have a deeper conversation about routing with people who live it for their career. We get into routing in pre-COVID times, and discuss the possibilities for the future. Jim Digby, Dave Shapiro and Adam Weiser join Jen.

This is a lecture-style workshop to learn the basics of routing and some "homework" for you to try it out yourself.  You'll leave with an understanding of the factors that contribute to tour routing and never have to ask "who threw darts at a map?!?" again. Future agents and all roadies - this one's for you!  

This workshop will focus on the Promoter Profit and Versus deals. We’ll look at the situations each deal is used in and work through the calculations. Be prepared with paper, pen, and calculator - we’re calculculating these deals by hand.

Before we can get into the details of the upcoming topics, we need a broad overview to get us started on our Concert Business Journey. This workshop will be a lecture-style story of how a tour gets on the road. This foundation is key to understanding where all the different parts fit together.