Karaoke Forums

Is it just me, or does it seem like as KJ's that way more is expected of us than what we're paid for? Right now, I have el-cheapo club owner I've been dealing with for the last couple years trying to talk me down on my rates again. He's mad because I charged him the money I told him I would charge him when his customers demanded I stay an extra hour. He thought I should "give back" since we've had some slow nights in the past. Like I said, he and I have gone back and forth for literally 3 years now. I would totally bail, but due to my financial situation I'm waiting for the smartest time if he doesn't beat me to it. Now back to my main point, bar owner expectations... In this particular gig, let it be noted that it's packed 9/10 nights we have karaoke. This particular owner thinks that when we don't have a crowd on night 10 that I owe him something. I've gotten that a lot lately. I KNOW 100% that it's my job to draw people to the bar simply with the equipment and service I provide, and advertising. What I also know is that most social network invites and posts I send aren't going to yield very good results most of the time. $3.50 longnecks don't help much either. My method has always been expanding the existing crowd through great shows and word of mouth. I have been doing karaoke for years and I can say that I have a "following", but I can also say that those people may not want to drive across or to the next town and risk a DWI on a weekly basis. What annoys me about it is that bar owners fail to see what it actually takes to do a show. They don't account for the cost of my equipment, music, website, equipment replacement costs, advertising, promotions, printing, phone, etc. They see a guy with some speakers, a TV, and a microphone. My thought is always "You can't even rent this (@$%&#!) for what I charge you and I come with it!! And why is it that I am supposed to have the all magical all powerful all knowing way to get people into YOUR place of business?"
So all this is meant to define what I personally offer and can absolutely guarantee. Myself, My Equipment, and the possibility of a large crowd for this much money. That's it.

If it were me I wouldn't have stayed as long as you have (couple years).
Look for a new show, it will never get better. Find the show, take the customers that do come in for 'your' show & bring them to the new place. Just make sure you get everyones contact info - email/Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc. And let them know where you are. The owner obviously is charging too much to build & keep a steady crowd to begin with!
I have a friend who hosted at a show, was only charging 10% of sales per night - some nights he told me he was ONLY making $10-20, but when the sales grew to where he was making $100-200 per night, the owner bitched stating he was no longer going to pay that much. My buddy walked! Now they have no clientelle even though they found a company that would work for $50 per night - apparantly their sales have dropped to below the point where he was making $10-20 (according to the bartender who was a friend of his - they are now talking about laying off most of the staff). He said they called him back shortly after but he told them his price is now a flat rate $125 per night (even though he doesn't have another show right now and needs the money). They declined. They also do no advertising, this was all on him.

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That exact thing happened in my area to a friend of mine. She built up the business on her night and the rest of the week was crap for the most part.
She was doing pretty good until the bar decided to do a flat rate. They agreed to $200 a night.

Down the road the business continued to build until someone came and bought the bar. They spent mucho dinero completely updating the place and it its really nice, but they canned the karaoke. New owner didn't want it.

They tried doing bands every Fri/Sat with included a $5 cover and a $10 member ship if you didn't have one. Increase in drink prices (trying cover recent expenses I'm sure) hasn't helped either. If the new owner would have left well enough alone they could have kept the business generated and still be making money.

Sometimes establishment owners think since they own the place they can run it however they want. Sooner or later time usually teaches them otherwise and it's usually much sooner then they anticipated.

Tell the owner that you will be perfectly willing to work with him, ask him at what number of people he thinks you should discount the show? Let's say for example that your "normal" median attendance is 100 for which you get let's use "$200" so if the number of patrons drops to 50 then you cut your rate in half to $100, the caveat to this though is that is the number of patrons goes to 150 then he pays double $400.

That will make him stop and think! Another method is use a base rate of $100 and then take a percentage of the Z at the end of the night (say 20%) over a given amount of sales ($600) so if the sales are only $600 you just recieve your base pay of 100 but if the sales are $2000 then you get your base pay plus $400 or $600 for the night. it is a win win for both you and the owner!

As a general rule, I don't haggle or barter with my rate.. it's the same money if the place has 300 people or 3 people.

Karaoke is like any other kind of entertainment.. sure, it will draw a crowd, but the crowd has to know where it is.[/i]

You could have Aerosmith playing in your club, but if you don't properly promote that fact, you're not going to get much of a crowd.

I was in a similar situation myself about a year ago.. I had a weekly club that was a slow draw, for a number of reasons.

1. The guy didn't put anything on the sign until nearly a month after I started, and when he finally did it just said "Karaoke Thursday" on a sign that did not light up at night, so it was impossible to read after 7 or so. That was the only promotion he did for this club.. a non lighted portable sign wheeled out beside the street.

2. The club had a sewage pipe burst and dump into the dirt floor basement. It was never properly cleaned and regularly had a general sewer funk smell that got particularly worse on rainy days.

3. The place looked like a dump from the outside, complete with the owner storing several inoperable vehicles in the parking lot out front.

4. Drink prices were on average about a dollar more per drink than other area bars. The bagged snacks/chips marked at the factory .99 cents a bag were sold for $1.25

5. My regular 'following' simply wasn't interested in driving an extra 30 minutes to this venue.

I stuck it out for about 6 months or so, but finally threw in the towel.. the guy was constantly coming to me at the end of the night crying about low numbers and asking for a reduced rate.. while my other shows are booming and club owners are giving me unsolicited pay increases.

My advice is to hang till you find another show to replace it, then bail.

The way I see it is this: The owners job is to find entertainment and give the customers what they are asking for. It is their job to get people in the door. It is OUR jobs as hosts to keep them there and to promote having a good time.

Thats as simple as I can put it. Some bar owners think that just simply by having karaoke, that it is a "magic wand" to fix everything. They don't know what it takes to build up a clientele. Just like every other worthwhile venture, it takes time and money and a whole lot of patience sometimes. But will it be worth it in the end? That is for us to find out, isn't it?

I don't mind doing advertising on my own and always do, but the bar has to do a certain amount as well. It's not all up to a kj.

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A real good possibility is that a lot of 'fly-by-night' companies come in offering to bring in massive numbers of people, then offer to do the show for $50. Of course, no big crowd, but that's the part that sticks in the owner's memory - karaoke brings in tons of people. Well, true, sometimes it does, but not without everything that it takes to do that - system, host's personality, efforts on the part of the host to increase attendance, etc. I do believe that a lot of owners look at other places where there IS great attendance at karaoke but they don't look far enough to realize that the owner and the host work together to bring in the numbers. Just lazy owners, I think, expect miracles from their karaoke hosting company.

Thanks for all the response. He actually does promote his bar and he usually has parties booked in his "Banquet Room" every weekend. However, I get penalized for that as he thinks that he's doing part of my job by bringing in people. Even worse, he has begun to split hairs and say that even though the people there stay all night, how many of them sing karaoke? I responded to him with "How many people were on the dance floor doing the Cupid Shuffle?" About 30 was the correct answer. What it comes down to is that I was WAY too nice when I started working for him because I wanted my foot in the door of the business. Now, having worked consistently on my own in this business for 3 years I can see that it just doesn't work on a sliding scale. Karaoke is something a bar owner either chooses to have or doesn't. It would be great if I could just re-neg on anything that wasn't good for me in business. Hey Staples, I only used about half of these page protectors for my karaoke books, can I get 4.50 back? I think I actually figured out his formula though. He says that he doesn't make any money on Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed. and that all of it comes from the weekend. That makes me his "catch up" guy. He knows that no matter how he does during the week that most likely he's going to make bank on the weekends with a couple bands and myself. He pays on average 100 bucks each to band members and charges a cover when they perform. It doesn't make sense that the bands make the bar more money than me, otherwise I'm sure he'd give my Saturday to the bands. So, I'm making him a ton of money on Saturday nights, and he's scared to pay me any more in fear that my rate will just keep going up... Which it should!! The bottom line is that he's a something for nothing kind of guy. If he's not paying half of what something is worth, he's not happy. I swear I could write a book about this . I can't wait to replace the income I get from him with something else!!

Well, I think you are onto something there. Use this scenario for him. The band plays how many songs at night? and takes how many breaks per night? Ok, now how many people are listening to them play? and how many are dancing to each song? People come to "listen" to karaoke as much as they do to "sing" karaoke, if not even more!

And to add to your "Staples" analogy, use this,, when he is printing on some paper and only used 5% of the page for putting ink on, can he get Staples to issue him a 95% credit on the paper not printed on? He can let them cut the words off the page if they want to.

Or this one,, because he thinks that he is only at half capacity on a given night, then can he only pay half his mortgage? or utilities? of phone bill?

Too bad hind sight isn't as good as fore sight!! Good luck m8