A Friendly Reminder on How Lubbock Concerts Are Booked and Promoted

I guess we need to go through this again and make it simple.

FMX does not promote shows, at least under most people's definition of promotion. We can rip that idea apart, but let's go through how your favorite (and non-favorite) bands come to Lubbock.

First, a band decides to tour and word gets out to promoters. The promoters then do their homework and look at the band's history in markets and whether a radio station plays them. Sometimes, they come right out and say, 'hey, radio station -- will you talk about my show a lot if I give you a bunch of tickets for your listeners and buy some ads?' More often than not, we say, 'sure thing.' But we do say, 'I don't think anyone will show up for that band' every once in a while.

That above is about as simple as I can make it. But let's look at some angles within that scenario.

Would the promoter bring the band anyway without radio support? Yes, sometimes they do. There are even some bands who do better with the image of not being a 'radio band.' Also notice in there, the radio station does not make money off of selling tickets -- at least not in the way some people think. We used to sell a few at the front desk and pick up the 50-cent service charge. It amounted to so little for so much hassle that we decided not to continue doing it.

So why do "the same ol'" bands keep playing Lubbock? It's because they make money here. Done. I don't know why this one is hard to understand.

Now, let's reverse that. Why don't your favorite bands play Lubbock? Because they don't think they'll make money here. I'm not going to name names, but some of the most requested bands have lost giant sums of money for promoters. Almost all contracts these days have very, very thin profit margins for promoters, so they're careful about who they promote.

I know a lot of this leads to frustration for a lot of people. I was actually forwarded a post that said a guy hadn't been to a Lubbock show since "Wes decided to oversell tickets." Well, guy, I'm sorry you threw away your life, because I have never sold tickets to an FMX event -- not once, not ever. (I did have a Hurt show at my former bar once, but it wasn't really a radio thing.)

The point is, if you're frustrated your favorite band hasn't come to Lubbock, you need to email them because they haven't made it economically feasible for a promoter to book them here.

I hope this clarifies the process. If not, I dug up this old video that explains it in even simpler detail, along with an inverted poontangle for illustrative purposes.