How to Settle With Four Bands at the End of the Night

One band is a conversation. Four bands is four conversations happening simultaneously in a corridor while everyone watches everyone else get paid, and the arithmetic is being done on a phone. This is where promoters lose money and reputations.

Decide the split model before doors, and tell everyone

Four models, in rough order of how often they're fair:

• Equal split of the pool. Simple, and right when all four acts are comparable draws.

• Weighted by slot. Headliner takes a larger share, supports smaller. The default for a bill with a clear headliner. State the percentages in advance — 40/25/20/15 is a typical shape.

• Guarantees for some, split for others. The touring act has a guarantee; locals split what's left. Workable, but tell the locals *before* the show that the tourer is paid first.

• Draw-based. Each act paid on the tickets they actually brought, tracked by a code or a name on the list. The fairest model on paper and the most administratively demanding.

The specific model matters far less than everyone knowing it before they play. Almost every settlement argument is really an argument about an expectation nobody set.

The order money comes off

Same sequence every time, and say it out loud as you go:

• 1. Gross. Everything through the door, including walk-ups.

• 2. Costs. Sound engineer, venue hire or rent, door staff, promotion — the agreed line items only. Anything not agreed in advance doesn't appear tonight.

• 3. Guarantees. Any act owed a fixed fee is paid before the pool exists.

• 4. Promoter's cut, if the deal includes one, at the agreed rate.

• 5. The remainder is the pool, split by whichever model you announced.

Show your working to all four at once

The instinct is to settle privately with each act. Resist it. Private settlements in a four-band night generate exactly the suspicion they're meant to avoid, because bands talk in the van afterwards and the numbers never quite reconcile.

Do it in the open: one sheet, gross at the top, each deduction listed, the pool, and each act's share. Four bands looking at the same piece of paper cannot have four different accounts of what happened.

When the night lost money

It happens. Two rules:

• Don't hide it. Show the same sheet. A promoter who says "we didn't cover costs, here's the sheet, here's what I can do" keeps working with those bands.

• Pay something anyway if you possibly can. Even a token payment on a bad night buys goodwill worth more than the money. Bands remember who paid them on the night nobody came.

If you offered guarantees you can't cover, you owe them regardless. That's what a guarantee means, and it's why they should only be offered against a worst case you can survive.

Bring a sheet, not a phone calculator

Musavise's gig tracker prints a settlement one-pager per show with the deal, deposits already paid and the balance due, then splits the night in the right order — costs and fixed fees off first, then the remaining pool divided among however many acts or people you name, with a tick against each as they're paid. Printed, signed, and identical for everyone in the corridor.

All of it lives in one free Musavise account — free means free, within honest limits, and your data exports whenever you want it. Create your free account; it takes about two minutes.