After The Song’s inclusion on the BBC Radio One playlist resulted in a non-stop tidal wave of gushing texts from their listenership, the British Broadcasting Corporation have gone and done the honourable thing and invited Pure-Horse to play on the BBC Introducing Stage at Reading & Leeds.
“I simply cannot believe we’re on the same bill as [insert the name of a no doubt male fronted caucasion indie band here]”, gushes the drummer, who has now been staring at the infamous yellow and black poster for the best part of forty five minutes.
“I’ve attended every Leeds festival since I was sixteen years old, you know. I… I’ve seen some things”, the guitarist whispers the latter part of this sentence into the middle distance, their eyes darting from side to side as if recollecting some post traumatic stressful experience that happened deep into a mosh pit that was being soundtracked by an American Nu Metal sextet.
“Do we have to camp? I do not want to camp. I am not a camper”, the bass player has taken the landmark news of their first major festival invitation quite badly, their anxiety insisting on focussing on their inherent fear of The Great Outdoors. Secretly they hoped that by the time they’d ever play a festival, they’d be big enough to bypass the smaller stages and instead go straight to the main stage, where therein lies tour busses, off site hotels and fully functioning toilets.
“I think it’s time I invested in my on stage look”, muses the singer to no-one but themselves, “I knew this day would come. I need a cape.”
Pure-Horse’s set is unquestionably a triumph, the crowd they draw being bigger than those of the two acts playing the surrounding, larger stages. Each new audience member joining the rear of the rabble asks “who is this then?” to those in front of them, resulting in some misinformation making its way to the outskirts as the effect of Chinese Whispers snowballs. “I think they’re called ‘Pursehouse’, but that can’t be right, can it? That’s an utterly stupid name”, one punter shouts to their circle of friends. Thankfully, the singer remembers to address the awestruck faces in front of them as they make their way off the stage.
“Thank you Leeds! We’ve been Pure-Horse! Find us on Myspace!” a joke to which the congregation of mainly late teenage concertgoers wholeheartedly don’t understand.
So when do they get paid? Approximately nine months.
Remember the post a couple of weeks ago about their headline tour? Well, it works rather similar to that, but with a different tariff. The current festival tariff at the PRS is 2.7% of gross ticket sales, so again, let’s do some hashtag quick maths…
- You play a festival with a 75,000 person capacity
- The festival sells out (well done them)
- Tickets are £235
- 75,000 x £235 = £17,625,000
- 2.7% of £17,625,000 = £475,875
- That £475,875 will be split between songwriters who wrote the songs performed by all the bands across all the stages (weighted in favour of those on the bigger stages with the prime time slots, as they’ll have the bigger audience)
To give you an idea of the kind of money available, here are some example figures that Sentric artists have received over the years from playing at Reading/Leeds:
- BBC 1Xtra Stage // £205
- The Lockup Stage // £264
- BBC Introducing Stage // £324
- Festival Republic Stage // £416
- BBC Radio 1 Stage // £903
- Main Stage Stage // £2,236
Hopefully by now, you can see there’s real money to be made from performing your publishing copyrights live, be it in local pubs, on national tours or during festival slots. Just be sure to register your gig claims as soon as you’ve played them in order to receive your royalties as soon as possible. Luckily for you, the Sentric system is set up to make gig claims an absolute walk in the park, so be sure to check out the ‘Gig Details’ section of your Sentric Music account.