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| Question: | Answer: |
| 1. I saw your event advertised on Sonicbids, do I have to apply through them? | We have an exclusive online booking agreement with Sonicbids for most of our events. We usually point out to artists that find out about our events through Sonicbids that they would not have found out about us if it were not for Sonicbids. We can accept mailed in applications though we are contractually obliged to charge more ($5 in our case) than the online application and this doesn't include postage. |
| 2. Here is our EPK - could you please review for your tour in the UK? | We don't book unilateral tours and we frown on unsolicited approaches unless the act is paying an application fee for one of our events. Also, for Sonicbids partnered events we can't review unsolicited submissions over the internet as it is contrary to our agreement with Sonicbids. |
| 4. Are international flights covered? | Not usually. We did this for our Oct. 2005 Tour and our organisation lost a lot of money as a consequence (the artists did not, we hasten to add!) We're always looking for ways around this and hope one day to indeed cover this on at least some if not all of our events. |
| 5. Are UK work permits provided? If I already have a tour in the UK but are not selected will CME Artist Services provide a work permit service? | Yes. Where applicable (i.e. if you are not an European Union citizen). We can process UK work permits for any international act performing in the UK regardless of whether they are on our roster or not. See Work Permits for more information and application. If you need us to provide work permits for another UK tour we can do that but there is a fee of £100 GBP per act with £25 per additional musician in the act plus a flat fee of £100 per act for contract (optional). Only licensed UK promoters and sponsors can process work permits for non-EU bands visiting the UK and CME Artist Services has a 100% success rate bringing in international acts over the last ten years and is authorised directly by the UK Border and Immigration Agency with whom they hold a Grad A Level Sponsorship arrangement |
| 6. Do the gigs pay? | Yes. Compensation for every gig of a minimum of £10 GBP per musician per gig. If there is money left over from an event this is distributed evenly among the remaining musicians. If you are on our artist roster the very lowest paying booking you will be offered is £100 (soloist or duo) or £200 GBP (band). |
| 7. How many acts on the tour? | 1-3. Total of 8-12 musicians typically, usually comprising one or two bands plus one soloist and / or duo. |
| 8. Is there an age limit? | No. If the musician is under the age of 18, a signed letter of permission from parent or legal guardian is required. |
| 9. I'm a musician resident <in some country other than the US>, can I still apply? | Absolutely! We were originally based in Chicago (now registered in UK) but have gone on to expand our remit internationally since 2005. If you are resident in the country one of our events occurs in you will still be able to apply. |
| 10. I don't see any hip hop <other genre not in past participants list> represented in past participants, do you accept applications from that genre? | Absolutely! We are not genre specific, though we usually exclude non-secular (i.e. religious) as our audience are rarely interested in it - our only requirement really is that the music is very good. Although we haven't had any Hip Hop artists selected there are a number on our roster. We've also had two separate RnB/Urban acts on tour recently (Ebony Tay and Green Tara). |
| 11. What gear should I bring? | If you are selected for an event we can discuss this in more detail, but CMEAS does provide a backline of PA, mics, stands, two guitar amps, one bass amp, full kit (though we ask drummers to bring their own cymbals and pedal- oh, and sticks!) Keyboards may be more problematic, though we should be able to provide a Korg CX3 (Hammond synth). We don't typically provide guitars but we can provide back-ups if needed (ask Sean of Mudfunk!). For some of the events we partner you will have to discuss your techinical needs with them but we require from our partners a minimum of backline and PA. |
| 12. I'm a guitarist with a foot pedal rack, can I operate this on UK voltage? | We'll provide adaptors / convertors on an as need basis. For simple pedals a UK 9V adaptor is sufficient (though, of course, we do have the same 9V batteries as the States). |
| 13. Can I contact venues on your venue list regardless of not being selected / or applying for your event/s? | We'd rather you didn't unless we have agreed to represent and / or recommend you (see review process above). However, if you do so without our blessing, we request that you do not mention us as a referral. |
| 14. Why do you book so far in advance? | Apart from London, most British venues book at a minimum of 5 months in advance and often a year. If there is one thing that cobbles previous CMEAS participants from organising their own UK tour effectively, it is a basic lack of this understanding. For example, the Oct 2005 tour booking started in Sept. 2004. What many acts fail to appreciate is that it is the good 'ole British pubs that book the furthest in advance (as an example we attempted to book a Dec. 21st 2005 date in a Norwich pub in Jan. 2005 and it was already gone - this is a rather extreme example, but you get the idea). |
| 15. Is there any way to be represented by CMEAS other than through Sonicbids and / or this specific event? | Yes, several. As well as applying for a specific event you can also apply directly to be a member of our artist roster. Also, because we encourage musical exchanges, we will work with quality acts outside the remit of a particular event if they have something to offer us in return (good 'ole barter system). If you have a steady gig base, we can help match you with an act or acts that also have a good gig base and also want to play in other locations. They may, for example, be in another country or another part of your country. What we don't do is work with acts that want us to do everything for them and nothing in return ("we're really good, book us in England!") - we believe that attitude to be contrary to our philosophy of mutual musical collaboration, and is certainly shortsighted and rather conceited. |
| 16. I'm interested in offering our gig base in return for a tour in the UK - what should I do? | Great! That's what we're looking for! Check out our partnership page for more information or go straight to our contact page and put 'tour exchange', or 'partnership' if you are offering something else (e.g. workshops, residency etc) in the subject line, tell us about your band, give us a link to online examples of your music, what you have to offer and what you would like in return. We will then review your act and get back to you. |
| 17. How many CDs will I sell? | This varies depending on the affluence of the places we play. Typically about 1-5 per show in the north of England and 4-10 in the south. |
| 18. T-shirt sales? | We used to say not to bother but since the last three tours in 2006 totally proved us wrong with strong sales from Big Baby Ernie, Wabash Cannonballs, and Gandhi bring at least 20. |
| 19. Stickers? | Yep! We still have Big Baby Ernie stickers on the overhead beams on the main walkway at Lancaster University and Ghettobilly stickers on the condom machine in the Bell at Bath toilets. |
| 20. How long are the sets? | In pubs, for 3 acts typically 45 minutes. Half an hour if 4 acts. Late night closing venues 45 minutes regardless. Bear in mind that British pubs mostly close at 11pm with live music starting at 9pm (8.30pm - 10.30pm on a Sunday). This arcane law changed on Nov. 24th 2005 to allow 24 hour licenses and has had no dramatic impact on the status quo (as yet). |
| 21. Visas: What if the artist is not an EU or US citizen? | It is the artist's responsibility to determine if they have the correct visa for their visit to the UK, or any other locations where we're hosting an event. The artist should bear in mind that they may need a visa that specifically allows them to work in conjunction with the work permit. Commonwealth (e.g. Canada, Australia etc), EU and US citizens do not need special visas to enter the EU unless they plan to leave and return more than once during their work period. |
| 22. If we are selected can we arrive before/leave after the tour starts/commences | Yes. We only ask that you ensure you are present for the duration of the tour. Typically, you will not have a problem with UK Immigration if you arrive less than 14 days before, or leave a less than 14 days after, the tour. However, CMEAS will not guarantee to pick you up for the start of the tour at any other location than the nearest international airport to the first venue nor to cover your costs to that airport (or the first venue on the tour) on the official start and end date of the tour. |
| 23. We have applied for a number of your events and we still have not gotten selected. Is there any chance that we will? | Since we have started partnering with Sonicbids we have had a number
of superb acts apply for our events. Some of these acts (Fluttr Effect,
Meg Hutchinson, Bob Cheevers, Cafebar 401) were not selected the first
time around but were either selected for a subsequent event (Fluttr
Effect, Meg Hutchinson) or were booked by us in the UK either as a
complete tour (Wabash Cannonballs), part of a tour they already had
going (Bob Cheevers, Miss Quincy Sideshow), or as an exchange for
a tour they helped organise in their own country (Cafebar 401, Ghandi).
It is only fair to point out that if you get positive encouragement from us that is good whereas if you do not that is not so good and you may want to change/improve your EPK before applying again. Although we like receiving application money we do stress that if you don't get a high mark from our peer review you may be wasting your money applying again unless you have a profoundly improved EPK (focusing on the audio to start with). |
| 24. We have applied three times for your events and have scored highly in your peer review. Is it true that the next time we apply CMEAS will pay for our application including Sonicbids' commission? | Yes. If you are deemed that wonderful by our peer review, we want you to play on our events, or book you on a tour on your own, or work out a partnership. We will cover your application fee for any next event you apply for if you have already applied for three and passed our peer review. |
| 25. What does "pass your peer review" mean? | If you are in our top 10% of peer reviewed acts that means you are, effectively, a finalist for the event you applied for. You are then a part of our artist roster with a one year effective membership. |
| 26. We received an email telling us that we were in the top ten finalists and that CMEAS would pay for us to apply for another event. Is this true? | Yes. All top 10 finalists are notified by email and offered this. We don't want to crowd out other acts from having a chance but on the other hand we wish to maintain extremely high standards at the venues we book (even though, at this stage, most of them are music pubs in England, college bars, and medium sized clubs in the UK or mainland Europe). You are then a part of our artist roster. |
| 27. I have just paid $25 to apply to one of your events. Can I expect the usual form letter rejection? | No one has actually asked us this, so this is a bit of a pitch really, but it explains our philosophy so we've put it in there! We figure, as musicians ourselves who have also applied for a bunch of stuff through Sonicbids (shortlisted for most, accepted on one, form letters all the way except NXNE) that it is only reasonable to take your submission and money seriously. In effect, we view an application fee for an event as an application fee to be part of CMEAS Artist Roster. Granted, we have a lot of superb acts that we've shortlisted in the past and there's no way we can accommodate all of them in one touring year. However, those that are persistent do end up getting real material help from us (see FAQ number 22 above) and we are always itching to figure a way to get the other acts that we enjoy more involved. Even if that means simply networking them with like minded acts. Our philosophy is to move on from self centered worship of one's own music, a conceited focus on nothing but one's own creative puddle, but to swim in a far vaster realm of with folks whose music will slake your thirst as yours does theirs. |
| 28. Can an act selected for a CMEAS event be considered for other events if they apply for them? | This hasn't happened yet (though we've booked several acts on tours that didn't make our final selection but scored highly on our peer review and we've rebooked previously participating acts on their own tour) but in theory, yes. However, we do not expect acts that have been selected for a tour in the UK, for example, to apply for another UK event. In practice that act will already have garnered a tour base by being selected the first time around. That said, Big Baby Ernie who were selected to take part in our Oct. UK Tour also applied for our 2007 Costa Rican tour and did end up in the top ten (Banooba from NYC were selected for this event in the end). Also, we like to encourage new talent. However, as we start to increase the number of international events that we organize it is reasonable to expect previously successful applicants to want to take part in those events too (to date we've had one query about this). |
| 29. If we apply for one of your events does that mean we'll be considered for all open events? | Alas, no. However, each application is viewed as an application to our exclusive artist roster where you will have the opportunity to exchange gigs with other acts on our roster as well as be offered events and booking opportunities not listed on the public site. |
| 30. I have just paid $20 to apply for one of your events. Where does the money go? | For Sonicibids events they take a 30% commission of application fees. The remainder of the fees collected go towards the event itself, CMEAS operating costs, investment (and servicing company debt from tours that lost us money). Generally, the tours just about break even for us though sometimes the tour makes a loss (though CMEAS always guarantees artists at least a £10 per diem per musician as well as one full meal and accommodation). Each year, however, we also try to improve the services we offer by purchasing or improving on equimpment (PA, drum sets etc) as needed. Also, almost every tour ends up costing us in equipment repairs (so please be nice to our stuff!) Any tour profits go into this investment. We also sometimes need to take a percentage of gig guarantees to ensure tour costs are covered (for example several gigs might not actually pay but the venue is providing food and accommodation) but this in no way affects the contract agreed between tour participants and CME Artist Services. |
| 31. I notice that on your latest tours you no longer offer gigs in London. Why is that? | Every London show we've done has been a waste of our time and the artist's as well as being extremely expensive to our company. Un'paless you are an act with an international following the London circuit is not for you. It will be 'pay to play'. The last show we did in London (May 7th, 2008) was at the Cuban Bar in Camden Town. The sound was terrible, there was no guarantee (there never is unless you play the pub circuit on the outskirts of London), the artist's sold less than 5 CDs between them, we had to pay for food and drink. We had to pay two lots of congestion charging to drive our bus into central London. There was no accommodation so we had to pay for that too. We had to pay for parking. The bar manager had the cheek to ask for free CDs from the musicians after providing us nothing at all. And this was a 'generous' gig in the sense that the venue didn't actually charge us room hire, sound guy rental, and PA rental. The event still cost our organisation over $1000. We haven't given up on London but we are only going to book there on reasonable terms. That $1000 could have gone to improving the experience for the musicans and that is our number one goal for all our events. |
| 32. What is the address of CME Artist Services? I did not see it on the website. | We do have a bona fide office address in the NW of England. If it was posted anywhere on this site we would probably receive about 50 CDs/press kits a week! Once we have started an arrangement with you or your artist is on our roster then we have no problem letting you know where we live. You might even end up crashing at our offices while on tour (it wouldn't be the first time - our neighbours love us!) |
If you don't see your question here, email us and we'll answer it for you and, if relevant, include it on this list. |
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