Billy Moses

Spotted Owl Productions:

In advance: If you aren’t willing to sell tickets, do not ask to play any of my shows. After you play a good amount and I trust you, I’ll start to hook you up. But if I have little to no experience with your band, don’t count on it. I put in work and put together the line ups and shows that I do, so I except to do your end of the deal and sell tickets to ACTUAL PEOPLE… I don’t make shows high presale to be greedy, I do it to not lose money, honestly. Call it whatever you want, its the only want [sic] to make sure the show is completely successful. Don’t mean to sound like a dick, but thats [sic] how it has to be. NOW, if you’d like to play one of my shows (Including PARLIAMENT FEST) text me at *** *** ****.

Spotted Owl Productions took to Facebook Thursday night to publicly bash local bands who aren’t able to sell enough pre-sale. “Pre-sale,” a dreaded term used in the local music industry, representing a number of tickets that a band must sell before a production company or music venue will allow that band to play.

To be a considered as a “limitedly successful” band, bands need to proform at music venues to gain recognition and notoriety, they’re often told to sell pre-sales as high as 50 tickets at times, promoters make the prices of each ticket ten dollars, however, I’ve seen prices as high as twenty. Venues charge promoters about 1,000 dollars to let ten bands play, and the pre-sales of two or three bands easily make enough money to cover promoter expenses — leaving the promoter, like Spotted Owl Productions, a nice chunk of change, about 4,000 dollars in “fuck you” money.

What Spotted Owl Productions doesn’t understand is that bands, especially in the Southern California area, are in an economic crisis and that it is a hell of a lot more difficult to sell a twenty-dollar ticket than one might think. One twenty-dollar ticket often means for some people, filling up their gas tank to get to work and back, food in the refrigerator, oh, did I mention rent?