talkmagic.co.uk

what price would you pay for a teenage disco.

just thought i'd ask as I'm getting a few "i wan't a party for £50" crowd and I'm just checking I'm not overpricing my services, after all iv'e got to pay for my jag and the van and the morgage you know.

ps anyone else being flexable on there prices due to the shocking state of the costs thease days.

I have a minimum fee of £300 plus vat - and that is a bare minimum. I don't see why it should be cheaper for kids / teenagers / old gits / whatever. They are paying for a service.

If they only want to pay £50 then politely tell them they need to be a little more realistic - you can't even hire the equipment for that.

Mind you - I am talking London rates here.

I don't really know much about discos but around here a fairly decent band would charge around £200-£250 so I'd personally expect to pay a fair bit less for a disco. But as I said, i don't really know all that much about disco prices

A decent band round my way would charge at least £500.

ah that's London prices for you I guess.

down south were mostly on london prices so I'm not underselling myself.

a duo band here would charge £300 min for pubs and £400-£500 for small to medium venues and since i combine magic and a full mobile disco entertainment show, my starting £250 is on par with others and thats for two entertainers.

an average childrens / teenage party runs for 3hours of solid hard graft whith action songs and such, so thanxs for confirming I'm not being obtuse with my quotes.
iv'e decided to ask them for there budget first then if its not enough i can politely tell them that they can't afford me

thats what i like about club /coporate do's they don't pussy foot around regarding there budget.

I charged £60 for an evening as a DJ when I was doing it through university, but I was doing it all on the cheap. I ran a number of rock and metal nights where we'd borrowed a lot of the equipment from a local in the area who liked being able to come to nights where he'd hear music he liked, but didn't have to DJ.

I believe if you hired him out for the night it was about a hundred up which provided you with a decent soundsytem, disco lights, dry ice, UV lights.

Totally Mental wrote:I have a minimum fee of £300 plus vat

Right I definetley need to get good!

For an hour long kids show you need to be charging around £95 as a minimum. If you're working for longer than an hour, then your charges need to increase pro rata. £50 is really taking the p*ss. Trouble is if you accept one gig at £50, then everyone else espects to pay £50.

A lesson I learnt off my father (and I learnt precious few of those) was to always aim at the top end of the market. The end of the market that doesn't feel the "credit crunch". You can spend all your life running around chasing £50 gigs, or you can decide to be a bit of a snob and work only for those folk who can afford £300 a go and not blink about it. Those folk tend to be more civilised anyway. The £50 gig will give you more grief than the one you're worried you may have charged too much for. Guaranteed.

TheAlkhemist07 wrote:

Totally Mental wrote:I have a minimum fee of £300 plus vat

Right I definetley need to get good!

Not really. Just have the b*lls and the desire to "go for it". Most of your contempories will always worry that "they're not ready yet" or "not good enough yet". My first gig was with a marked pack of bikes and a gimmicked set of handcuffs. Sometimes you just need to decide to do something amazing with your life. I love what I do. It's the best job in the world.

As an inverted supermodel, I will not even get out of my bed for less than a fiver.

Bigtone53 wrote:As an inverted supermodel, I will not even get out of my bed for less than a fiver.

surely you mean "i will not get into bed for more than a fiver?"

what with you being inverted and all...

You must drive a hard bargain Lommy, I tried finding a reasonable band to play for the girlfriend's birthday last year, was struggling to find anything for less than £250 never mind decent!

£50 is way too low, as mentioned, you could barely hire the gear for that much even if you wanted to do it yourself.

Typical charges up here in rural Shropshire/Wales are about £250 for a mediocre disco, and about £300 for a band.

They're starting prices.

I hired a local comedian recently for a corporate event for a client, and he weighed in at a hefty £400 (that included travel costs).

Prices are and should be based on making a comfortable living off two performances per-week it seems. Then, if one week you only get one—or no—bookings, you're covered.

Of course, you have got to be worth the money to command a higher rate.

It helps to sit and break down your costs, because to my mind £50 doesn't even cover travel and getting dressed up, let alone the cost of equipment, music and 'ancilliaries' such as smoke/bubbles/light bulbs.

I'd also have thought that a disco would cost £200 to start and a note to others on what Totally Mental wrote in that as far as I recall it is illegal to charge VAT unless you're VAT registerted and you need to be turning over in the region of £40K+ to register for VAT.

I'm sure someone will give more clarity on this and by the way, I'm not commenting on Totally Mental etc. - just clarifying for other who may think of adding VAT onto their charges