For many years, I provided audio gear and services for a charity event in the L.A. area. When I started doing it, I had crap gear and only a very basic idea of what I was doing. I was the quintessential guy in the band who owned the PA and charged them as such. As the years went on and I provided more and better gear and service, my price went up. Because it was a charity, I cut my normal price by about 25 percent.
After a decade of doing the gig every year, there was a big change in the makeup of the board that planned the event and I soon found myself on the phone with someone I had met once but did not know well who had been tasked with dealing with production and talent for the event. I felt for her because she had a hard job.
The head of the festival had decreed that since it was a charity event, all services should be donated. (Not to put to fine a point on it, but the large majority of those reading this will not be at all surprised that the charitable group was a church. For some reason, every church gig I have ever gotten involved with thinks everything should be free for them.) So, this person had the unenviable task of calling me and asking if I would mind putting in two full days plus prep, setup, load-in and load-out time and not get paid for it.
Without getting too deep into it, I respectfully told her I just could not do that, and that not only would I not do it for free, my rate needed to go up from the previous year due to rising fuel costs. She told me she might be able to get me half my usual (already discounted) rate, which I, again respectfully, refused. She told me she would have to see what she would be allowed to do and I never heard anything else. The festival went on, I'm told, with a PA brought in and run by a member of the parish.
And the next year they called again and-with the same people running the show who had insisted on a free system the year before-paid my requested rate without complaint or question.
So what is the point? I refused to drop trou to keep the gig, and the result was that I lost it for one year. That's the time it took for them to figure out that decent audio costs money and if the audio was not decent, then people would not come back. (Actually, I lucked out on that one. The cycle is usually that they cheap out one year, which leaves people with a bad impression of the event. Then they do it again the next year and see attendance fall drastically. And then they wise up the third year.)
Yes, I had the advantage of being someone who provides these kinds of services as a sideline, and I did not have rent to pay on a shop or have a payroll to meet. I do understand that those kinds of pressures can make some businesses take business at rates that make no sense at all, just to keep some cash flow going. I also understand-and hope that every FOH reader does as well-that this is a huge mistake that does nothing but hasten the demise of the cost-cutting business, but also severely harms the value of audio and production services in the market where prices are being slashed.
If you think that doing a gig for a stupid low price to get the business from a competitor is a long-term business plan, then you are sadly mistaken. Yes, there are times when a client who does not know any better is paying inflated prices for audio, and a new provider can come in and offer the same service or better for a much lower price. But this is not about the low price being wrong, it is about the low price offsetting the high price that was being charged wrongly by a provider without scruples. (I know, caveat emptor and all that, but I do believe that ethics apply to pricing as much as to anything else we do.)
How about you? Do you get hired because you are good, or because you are cheap? If it is the latter, have you ever been able to start charging the client what the services are really worth after doing a gig at way below market prices once? In an ideal world, we would all be getting gigs on a combination of our service, knowledge and quality of gear combined with a fair price. And it is not an ideal world. But if you are consistently the low bid, then stop and take a look.
What does that say about the value of your company and your services? Do you want to be the guy of whom promoters say "Call XYZ Sound. They're cheap."
Or would you rather be the guy who hears, "We need someone who knows what they're doing. Call XYZ Sound."
Thought so…
