Contracts for Everyone
New to live event contracts and venue-speak? We’re here to help. We’ve put together a review of our most widely-used contract from the 2023 season, followed by a glossary of industry-related terms. Follow along with these documents:
Towards Transparency
Community organizers understand that legal language and processes are regularly used to systematically marginalize and exclude people from power. Apprehension around contracts, or even using one’s legal name, is 100% understandable! That said, we believe a good contract represents agreement, not disagreement. It’s an often-necessary guiding document that supports the production of great events. Our goal is mutual accountability—to ensure all parties understand and feel good about both the finances and shared responsibilities of all productions. We hope this resource helps people feel confident advocating for themselves and their community while working to share their creativity. We've even included a glossary of terms.
A Living Document / Resource
We’re open to suggestions on how to improve this guide. If you have ideas, please email Ben Sisto via ben@atac160.org.
Table of Contents
Terms and Conditions
Cancellation, Radius, Publicity, Backline, Indemnification
Contract Page 1: Basics
The first page of our contract is about basic agreement info. Who is doing what, when, how much do things cost, how are profits being shared, and so on.
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The title of your production. For example our annual fundraiser is “A Night at the Circus.” Your event may have a title, or may simple be the name of an artist or group of performers. This is what we refer to for all billing.
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Where your event will be. Most atac events are on our Main Stage / Theatre, but occasionally are held outside or in breakout rooms.
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Seems simple, but make sure it’s right! This is the day of the actual event and does not include setup or takedown dates.
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This is the agreed-upon per-ticket price; the cost of admission. Some events will have “ADV/DOS” tickets, meaning “in advance” and “day of sale,” with the former being lower to encourage early purchasing. We do our best to remain affordable while still paying our artists and staff a fair compensation.
We charge a per-ticket admin fee, which is retained in full by atac. For example, if a ticket is $10 and our admin fee is $X, the total cost of a patron’s ticket is $10+$X.
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This double-checks how the event will be talked about online, in press release, etc. Sometimes language like “An Evening with…” is added, or it specifies the order in which artists are listed when there is say, a “headline” act preceeded by “support” acts.
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We have a green room, but there are rules to it. We review potential usage and note them in this section.
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This will usually say “All House,” meaning that we provide full staff. Sometimes we will note if an outside artist has additional sound or lighting techs.
1. Event Basics
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The time you are allowed to enter the building. We have a big parking lot, and you can often come a bit earlier if needed. Load in is when all gear, merch, humans, etc come on in and start setting up. Our staff will be here to greet you.
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A Sound Check is when a band / performer gets gear on stage, plugs in, and works with our tech crew to fine tune the volumes, lighting, and all that. This usually includes a run-through of at least one full song.
There’s also a Line Check, which is a shorter version to set basic levels and doesn’t tend to include a run-through.
It is VERY helpful if, in advance of Load In, you have provided atac with the following:
Input List: All the audio-ins we should expect our mixer to support
Stage Plot: An overhead drawing of your stage configuration
If you’re unsure about these items don’t worry, we’ll also have you in direct contact with our Production Manager in advance of the event.
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This simply means the doors are open and the public may enter. This is the time you want to be ready, relaxed, and in a show-mood.
Generally, our “door time” is 30 minutes prior to the start of a performance.
If not provided by you, we will put some background music on to set the mood a bit for you, too.
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This is the range of time in which performances will take place. For example:
“8:30pm — 10:15pm”If it’s just one performance, we might say:
”09:00 PM - 1x 90 min set” or
”09:00 PM - 2x 45 min sets w/ 15 min break” -
We are pretty serious about this. Our staff, budget, and relationships with our neighbors rely on us keeping to this time. But we promise not to be rude.
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ROS means “Run of Show,” and here, we add in any super top-level, pressing, or otherwise contractable things everyone needs to be aware of. For example:
Performer providing pre-show background music
Disco ball to be on for full event
2. Run of Show
3. Tickets and Capacity
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Wow you’ve read this far? Congrats! Let’s keep going.
The Legal Building Cap is the maximum number of persons that can be inside at once. It’s inclusive of staff, performers, and fans, and there is no way to increase it beyond 150—it’s both the law and a matter of public safety. -
This is the number of spots the venue reserves from the legal capacity. It covers staff, our own house lists, press, etc and changes based on each event’s specific needs.
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The total number of people in your production who are not atac staff or the general public. For example, a three band bill where each act is a four piece could be (12), but it could also be (15) if each band had a helper on tech or merch or whatever else.
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This is your guest list. It covers everyone you want to ensure gets in for free. Usually this is a conversation, and involves considering what artists, agents, and atac all hope to see as net profits. Expanded artist-lists cut into your potential profits, but as all events have different measures of ‘success’ we’re happy to talk it out.
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This is the number of tickets we plan on trying to sell. We get this number by subtracting Venue Holds, Artists & Crew, and Artist Comps from the Legal Capacity. It often works out to 100-130.
(Sellable) x (Ticket Price) is how we calculate the gross box office potential.
4. Finances
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This is how much money we think we might make from ticket sales. We take the Sellable number, and multiply it by the Ticket price. If there is an advanced ticket price that is lower than day-of-sale price, we base this on the lower number assuming an advanced sell-out. That way, everyone is just happier in the end if more money happens to come in at the door.
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In most cases, atac takes the first cut of GBOR (gross box office receipts; another way of saying “how much money actually came in). This covers our staff and whatever other needs we have determined through conversation with you.
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Now we’re getting into it.
Some artists get a “Guarantee,” which means no matter what, they get paid $X. If less than $X comes in at the door, it’s still on atac to produce the funds. This only tends to happen with events we’re booking in-house / curating ourselves.
The “Fee” may be a form of guarantee, but may include notes like “$X vs Y% of GBOR”. That is fancy-talk for “We will pay you a certain amount guaranteed, but if a certain percentage of the gross is higher, we will pay you that higher amount instead.”
There’s also a thing called a Door Deal, which may just read “The house (atac) gets $X for costs, and after that is made, the remainder is split 50/50” or something.
Let’s not forget Points, too. Points are where there is both a guarantee AND a percent of the “Backend”. See the next section for more.
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The backend is the money remaining from GBOR—remember, that’s the money made—and less House Fees, Guarantees, and any other agreed-upon costs.
For example:
$1,000 GBOR
$100 guarantee
$100 house fee
Result is an $800 “Backend”
There are usually agreed upon, percentage-based ways the backend is split. It will either go to atac and a promoter / artist rep, or to atac and several performers who each agree to a specific %. For example, a 50/50 split of the $800 backend would mean atac, and you each see $400.
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We will note what a show’s payout Potential is. This is like, the best-case situation. Sold out. Great night. This is the number we are all working towards, but is not the number you should expect to be paid.
5. Hospitality, Merch, Other Sales
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Some artists ask for meals or “Buyouts.” A Buyout means “If you can’t give us a meal, we’d like $X per person to get food elsewhere.” You will see this at bigger venues, with larger budgets. It is NOT typical for atac to offer meals or buyouts.
New show promoters / organizers: Be aware of this. When contracting artists for a show at atac, the hospitality portion is on you unless otherwise noted. Don’t promise people things we don’t provide.
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We offer artists complimentary tea, coffee, and water. We are legally prohibited from “comping” drinks, such as giving bands drink tickets redeemable for beer and wine.
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atac operates a small snack bar with beer and wine. We staff it, and we keep 100% gross sales. By law we can not serve hard booze.
A tip: Some venues—like bars and nightclubs—may offer a tier-based % of bar sales to offer incentives to promoters, especially when there is no/low door cover. For example, the promoter gets 10% of bar sales once $X is made; 12% once $Y is made, etc. This is NOT what we do, but good to be aware of.
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Do you have things to sell? Great! So long as they are legal to sell within local law, all you have to do is set up shop. You provide your own sales person, cash/bank and gear, etc. We can give you a table and some chairs. Except in rare, rare occasions, we never ask for a cut of your merchandice sales.
Contract Page 2: Terms and Conditions
Page two is all about payment needs, tech info, promotion, and a few common clauses used to protect the venue / space in the event of unfortunate (and unlikely) occurrences.
1. Terms & Conditions
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atac agrees to pay performers their full due balance, by check, upon
completion of their performance and
once ticket sales have ended and finals calculated
Note that payments can not be made without a performer or their authorized payee providing the correct tax forms; usually a W-9 for U.S.-based artists. You can get a blank W-9 here.
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Artists will only be paid upon delivery of a completed W9 form to atac. This can be done in advance via email (best practice), or in cases where there is no deposit, on the night of the performance.
If you have multiple artists performing and want atac to cut one check to you from which you handle payouts, that is fine. If each artist is getting a pre-agreed upon % of GBOR, we will need that info, plus a W9 for each payee.
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“atac reserves the right to cancel or reschedule due to poor ticket sales, weather, safety, or any other concerns.”
Okay that may sound very open-ended, but long-short is we are not trying to cancel on you. That said, if there is a hurricane or blizzard that would make it unsafe to be here, we’re not opening. In those rare cases we will do our best to reschedule with you.
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“In order to protect ticket sales, we sometimes ask acts to refrain from performing within X miles in X days. This is reviewed case-by-case basis. If a conflict arises please contact the venue ASAP.”
This is pretty common practice to ensure over-saturation in a market doesn’t lead to poor ticket sales. In other words, that you don’t book a show down the street for the day before your atac gig, especially after we’ve guaranteed payment or other resources.
We don’t have a hard “radius” (geographic region) we use here; but generally we ask people not to play around MetroWest too close to gigs here; to keep us aware of close events in Boston, Providence, and Worcester.
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“ALL PROMO MATERIALS MUST BE APPROVED BY VENUE. Performer agrees to publicize the event through their email list, website, and social media platform(s) using jointly-approved copy and visuals. Print and radio interviews are a plus. atac will promote the show via our email list, social media platforms(s), and website.”
We are serious about this.
It is on you to promote and get people out to the gig
We need to approve all graphics and announcement dates
Please CC us any time you do direct outreach to press
The goal is to ensure that once you’ve told people about the show, we have the time to get our website and socials in order. Nothing is worse than you saying a gig is happening, only to have fans confused about why it’s not on our website. The more we work together, the better the event.
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“Perfomers to supply stage plot or description of tech needs (instruments, vocals, etc) to production@atac160.org at least 2 weeks in advance of their performance date. We ask artists to control their output to max at 90 Db. atac will provide a sound technician and static theater lighting. If you require lighting design or lighting cues we can provide a lighting technician for a pre negotiated fee.”
The big take-away here is this: the more info we get in advance about tech needs, the better your event will be. Our techs work hard; help provide the tools that let them do their best work.
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We have drums and a piano and some other things you can use—but only if you ask! When you “advance” (review show details with our Production Manager), please let them know.
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This is a longer one, so let’s break it out into individual concepts:
Performer will defer to atac staff on matters of public safety and crowd control.
Performer shall fully defend, indemnify and hold harmless Amazing Things Arts Center, Inc. from any and all claims, demands, lawsuits, causes of action, loss, liability, injury and/or damage of any kind whatsoever including without limitation all claims for property damage, monetary loss, personal injury, equitable relief, and/or wrongful death. Whether brought by an individual or other entity or imposed by a court of law or by administrative action of any federal, state or local governmental body or agency that arises out of any acts negligence omission or willful misconduct in any way on the part of Amazing Things Arts Center, Inc. in the course of the event.”
The long short here, is performers agree to not hold the venue accountable if unfortunate events arise that are outside atac’s control, which result in any form of loss or harm to performers.
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“atac is a safe, welcoming community gathering place for all. We have a zero tolerance policy regarding discrimination and harassment. If any artist or member of artist's teams (PR, management, etc) is deemed to be behaving in ways that are intentionally or maliciously cruel to any group—especially already at-risk and marginalized communities—we reserve the right to cancel events, remove specific artists from lineups, or take other necessary actions to protect our communities and brand integrity. “
This is our “don’t be a jerk” clause and it is 100% up to us to determine if you’re being a jerk. We are a community venue and protecting our people is more important to us than tolerating bad behavior just to see some ticket sales, full stop.
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You have to sign and date the contract for it to be official. You can do this a few ways with us:
Print, sign, scan, and return the PDFs
Sign the PDF electronically and return
Reply directly to the email the contract was sent in, stating that you have read, understand, and agree to all terms and agreements
“Can we do $15 adv / $20 dos; 50/50 split from $1, with a 50 mile radius for a month on either side?”
Ah, booking-speak! Once you learn it, you’ll never look back. Until then, here’s a quick list of terms you might want to know. Some of these are regional, or even specific to certain genres. Just remember: every abbreviation or phrase means something important. Find something you’ve never seen? Just ask! Asking is always better than signing something you don't understand. You deserve the information that will make you feel confident about the contract.
Glossary
A—E
Advancing: Running through all production details weeks in advance. Tech overview, marketing plan, etc.
Adv/Dos: “Advance” and “Day of Sale” refer to ticket costs that change based on date of purchase
Agent: An individual officially representing an artist/group; usually with a focus on booking / events
Ages: Who is allowed at an event, by age. AA = All Ages. 18+ = No one under 18, etc.
Announce: The date all parties agree public promotion of an event will begin
Avails: Dates an artist, or sometimes venue, has available for consideration
A/V: Audio / Video. Sometimes shorthand for the technical needs, or staff, of an event
Backend: Profits—usually shared—remaining from sales after guarantees and fees are met
Back of House (BOH): Backstage, green rooms, kitchens, and other staff / artist-only areas
Billing: The specific rules on how an event is described; the order of acts, “A Night with…”, etc
Board: Shorthand for the venue’s main sound mixer
Booking: Planning live events, tours, etc. Agents may say ‘routing,’ venues may say “talent buying”
Box (Office): The physical and/or online point-of-sale for tickets at a venue
Capacity: The legal maximum number of persons allowed in a given location
Challenge: When a venue is holding a date for an event, but a 3rd party inquires about the same date
Cold Call: Contacting someone with no prior introduction; or to an info@, booking@ type address
Comps: People who don’t pay a cover. Could refer to a house Press List, an artist’s Guest List
Contract: A formal agreement outlining terms and conditions between two or more parties
Curfew: When performances need to be over by and/or reduce to a certain volume at
Deposit: A partial payment made to a party in advance of an event or performance
Doors: The time a venue is officially open to the public
Embargo: A restriction on the dissemination of information about an event to the press or public
EPK: “Electronic Press Kit” (artists’ media, press quotes, photos, reviews, etc) Ideally all in one folder
F—K
First Hit: The exact time the first act of an event is scheduled to begin
Food and Beverage (F&B): Usually refers to a venue’s capacity to serve food, drinks, etc
Force Majeure: a common clause in contracts freeing parties from liability under certain conditions
FOH: Front of House; where the public is. May refer to certain staff, to a sound mix, or other things
Guarantee: A pre-agreed upon fee paid to an artist regardless of how much income a venue makes
Green Room: A place for artists to sit, relax, store personal items, etc over the course of an event
Gross Box Office Receipts (GBOR): The total amount of income generated from ticket sales
Gross Potential: The potential amount of income an event could earn from tickets, F&B sales, etc
Ground Transport: How a traveling artist is getting from point A to point B (cab, train, etc)
Guest List: Everyone coming in for free / reduced charge. Pre-approved by arists, mgmt, and venue
Hard Out: The time everyone, except venue staff, must be completely out of the venue by
Holds: A date that is placed “on hold” while parties work on an agreement
Hospitality: The agreed upon food, drink, or other items a venue provides to performers
House Fee (or Take / Cut): The cut of revenue the venue retains, usually off ticket sales alone
Indemnification: A clause regarding potential compensation stemming from third-party claims
Input List: All of the outputs a performer is sending to the venue’s sound mixing board
Kills: The total number of comps / non-sellable holds deducted from legal capacity
L—P
Line Check: A quick test of sound levels and signals, but not a full multi-song run-through
List: Shorthand; see Guest List
Load In: The earliest time an artist / crew can begin entering the venue with equiptment
Lodging: Where an artist is staying / if part of a deal
Management (Mgmt): Different than an artist’s agent; a party who also helps oversee PR, money
Merch: Merchandise. Everything a venue, artist, or other party is selling (shirts, bags, etc)
Merch Split / Percent: Some venues take a cut of artists’ merch sales. It is a generally disliked practice
Monitor Mix: The sound the performers hear when on stage
Offer Letter: Essentially a contract from a venue to an artist outlining the scope of a booking offer
Plus X: When someone on a guest list has permission to bring an additional guest(s)
Points: Another way to describe the Backend Percentage an artist may be entitled to
Presenter: Like a promoter, but sometimes more of an organizational / venue ownership role
Promoter: The person(s) most-responsible for getting the word out about a given event
R—Z
Rental: When a party pays a fixed fee for the full use of a venue; usually for private events
Rider: An official document outlining an artist’s Hospitality and technical requirements
Routing: The process of planning a tour or set of dates including travel time
Run of Show (ROS): A detailed list of what is happening when, where, and who is involved
Security: The people who keep you, venues, and artists safe. Thank them, and don’t argue
Sellable: The number of actual tickets a venue is able to sell for a given event
Set List: The songs / things an artist is doing as part of their performance, in order
Set Times: A list of who is performing when, and for how long
Sound Check: When a performer checks all gear, lights, runs through songs, and dials it in
Sound Engineer: The head tech overseeing all sound mixing
Split: Shorthand for the ways money, usually the backend, is divided among all parties
Stage Plot: An overhead drawing of a band’s on-stage setup with notes on gear
Ticket Fee: An administrative fee, often placed by venues or 3rd parties, on top of ticket costs
Venue: The place where the thing is happening
Walkout Potential: Another term for an artist’s total potential earnings after closeout