TimR

The pubs are suppliers to customers. There's no reason why once you are on their system, the money can't be transferred instantly. Either on this thread or another, this is going to have tax implications for band leaders whose bands turnover more than £1000 of gigs in a year. At £250 that's 4 gigs.

Dealing with transfers is fine. Invoicing and waiting for payment isn't. Pubs don't invoice their customers.

Just be careful with the apostrophes. Steve Brownings Band Steve Brownings' Band Steve Browning's Band All would be technically correct, but still plenty of opportunity for disagreement over the band name. 😆

Still playing. A friend of mine travels quite a way to see them.

I don't think it's weird and unreasonable. You're probably just fine tuning your Bellshill radar. Depends on what you are looking for when joining a band and how many bands are looking for you. If you're able to filter out bands that filter you in all well and good. I signed up to Bandmix and put a fairly open CV on it. A few weeks later I spotted a band looking for a bass player like me. Maybe a lot of people don't actually look that hard through the 'available' ads before posting wanted ads. If you're ending up with a blank list then you're going to have to compromise, or go and kiss some frogs to see what happens.

https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/459125-maybe-everyone-in-the-usa-isnt-dim-after-all/

3% on a £20k motor is a lot to swallow. Guess that's why Amazon have just said no.

Amazon are stopping Visa in next few days. They did a deal with Mastercard. So there must be something about not charging. But a friend of mine tried to buy a car and there was going to be a surcharge for that.

I think the £1k turnover is a response to the pandemic isn't it? I've never heard of it before. It's to encourage people into business and reduce the amount of paperwork. If you're doing pub gigs at £50 a gig and doing 2 a month then you're nowhere near it. It's only really going to make a difference if you're playing lots of function gigs and at that point you're going to need to keep tabs on the Financial side of things. If you are claiming tax for car use, you have to do it one of two ways, you can't do half of one and half of another. ie you can't claim the car as a capital expenditure and also claim per mile. If you own the music equipment personally then you don't have to include it in turnover, if its part of the business then you then have to include any profits and losses from sales. I suspect deciding which of the basses you personally own or not would get complicated. It sounds to me like an awful lot of work to try and claim a few quid if you're not Self Assessed already.

That's intended for business expenses. Not personal expenses. If you're continually trying to offset your PAYE against your 'hobby' expenses that's not right.

Because, unless you're trying to make a business out of it and turn a decent taxable profit, the HMRC aren't interested. Its just classed as a hobby if you're continually making a loss. I'm not sure how you get a cheque from them. I'm not sure that's correct.

We used to call it semi-pro. It kind of relates to providing a professional service and be in demand enough to be paid, but it not being your main profession.

I think regards payment for pub gigs we also need to understand the 'amateur' musicians' role and the costs of equipment. You can now purchase a pretty decent PA for a few hundred quid. And a lot of the pub musicians have well paying day jobs which mean that costs of gear and transport are incidental and heavily subsidised as part of their day job. Musicians Union rates apply to professional working musicians within the industry. Your plumber who plays bass guitar will be using the money he got for his Friday night emergency call to pay for his van and £3,600 coffee table top bass.

Well. It was a rush on supply. There were plenty of drivers. Some bloke who should have known better said that there was 90% of fuel availability. What he neglected to say was that's the normal availability, but no one normally notices. Once the whole country had filled up their tanks with fuel they're never going to use, the 'crises' suddenly was over.

Like Warner Bros?

It doesn't work on any level. If a judge finds in favour of the image being child pornography; everyone who owns a copy of the CD gets put on the sex offenders register. Who knows what happens to any company that published or hosted the image...

I think we have discussed this already lots of times. The Pubs have entertainment budgets directly from the breweries. It seems to be a standard fee. £250-300. The pub doesn't have to cover your fee by selling more drinks, it's a separate payment. However, the landlord, if he's got any sense, will put on the bands that will draw a crowd and buy drinks, because he makes his money selling drinks. Unless, he's a massive Elvis fan and just keeps hiring an Elvis impersonator knowing his locals will be there anyway. I guess anything you negotiate over that fee, the landlord makes up himself. Now that it's mostly electronic payments it's going to be difficult for that to happen.

Weird. The deepest discussion I ever had was naming a few of the typical songs from the list. In fact the only time I've had discussions about what songs to play have been wedding or function sets. But even then usually the client had already seen us and knew what they were getting. The worst gig I ever played was a Royal British Legion gig where the 'Entertainments Officer' kept coming up during songs asking the band to play Beatles, rock and roll and Elvis. Despite us having the dance floor full all night playing our standard disco sets. Again, afterwards, people came up and said what a great night it was compared to the usual bands who just played Beatles, Rock n Roll and Elvis...

Other cheaper delivery food is available...

I've never had a landlord specify the songs in a set. In fact most pubs and audiences have commented on us not playing the tired 'old favourites' and like it that we play songs from the last 10 years that appeal to younger audiences. I suspect they just don't want a 70s Glam Rock band. That's a pretty specialist niche audience.

I'd argue its the creative endeavour that's increasingly missing in pub bands. People are paying big sums to watch bands play in Stadiums and for West End productions. Not so for pub bands and am-dram local productions. That's mainly the fault of the idiot-box cheap deliveroo food, which appeals to the lazy, but also a lot of pub bands have lazy set lists.

It's not really about how much the band gets paid, it's about how much the band are paying a dep. If you're desperate to play that gig, then you'll have to pay the going rate for a dep. Which if you're a 4 piece band getting paid £250, it may mean established members getting paid less than 1/4 each to make up the shortfall. Unless you're getting someone 'adequate' to fill in. The best course of action for regular pub gig band is to get a regular set of musicians that can cover your set. I used to have this argument all the time when we were pricing wedding gigs. What happens when half your band go down sick the day before, and you've agreed to do a wedding for £500 as a favour to a mate...

In the UK, the only discussions I remember at the time were over whether a baby should be allowed underwater like that. No one said anything about it being naked. But that may be a European thing. Lots of baby and swimming experts concluded it was fine. Anyone who has taken their baby swimming will attest to the fact that they naturally hold their breath underwater like all mamals. I suspect it would have caused a huge Twitter storm though if Twitter had existed and the few Millennials around had been old enough to type.

Maybe the difference is; in the UK the solicitors have several duties towards the court as well as the client. Taking a case that's clearly frivolous wouldn't be acceptable. So the case probably wouldn't have made court.