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

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).

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.