QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT HAVE * YOU MIGHT HAVE QUESTIONS *
QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT HAVE * YOU MIGHT HAVE QUESTIONS *
If i BECOME a MEMBER, do i have to go to all the shows?
Au contraire.
Membership means you bought a block of tickets. And you can blow them all in one night if you want with your friends, or use them just on yourself, in this season and in future seasons.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF BECOMING A MEMBER?
Pre-purchasing a block of member tickets gives you a few advantages out there beyond the satisfaction of supporting the mission:
1) No ticketing fees. Wowzers. Just RSVP to hold your spot and bring your token in.
2) While general admission tickets vary in price from show to show, you will generally pay less if you are using member tokens — sometimes much less.
3) For now, at least — as a member you can RSVP for a show but if your plans change, you can un-RSVP without losing your token. This model gives you more flexibility but actually hurts the Secret Planet bottom line … and if another pandemic were to happen, this wouldn’t work at all. But at the moment, it’s pretty much a best case scenario for members.
HOW MANY CONCERTS are in a season?
As we wrap up Season One, lets take a quick count: We produced 12 events between June-May 2023-24. I think that’s more than we expected. In addition, there were approximately five Satellite Shows that members can attend.
It was a busy first year, IOW. It’s possible year two will have fewer self-produced events and more satellite shows, and the Almost Spring Weekender is definitely coming back.
BORDERLESS & DIVERSE. That’s a big tent. what will the curation be like?
Secret Planet is a couple of things — first and foremost, it is a Western Mass music share series curated and organized by Edo Mor, who is typing out this F.A.Q. and feels odd about writing this in the third person.
So I’m switching to first person. If you like other events I’ve curated in Western Mass over the past five years, such as the Laudable/Collider series, Collider!Fest, Barbès in the Woods — then you will like this.
Secret Planet is also a “We”, not an “I”. It’s a Secret Syndicate (shhhhhhhh) of friends/colleagues/music presenters in NYC, DC, New Haven and Pittsburgh — including the founders of an annual event in NYC that is also called Secret Planet.
As a group, We (now a proper We) are loosely discussing what would be cool to present, and how to successfully run a taste-based music series in our respective towns and cities with symbiotic hyphae connecting us. To some extent, We are also watching and waiting to see if Edo’s music-share concept is dead on arrival or if it is potentially a working model in other cities.
WHAt if the season is over and i haven’t used all my tickets?
This is where music shares can have some advantages over farm shares.
Your tickets won’t decompose, or even get shrively and lame like carrots do — so you can just use them the following year. Or the year after that. Or you can speculate on Secret Planet music shares and buy twenty of them in the first season, hold on to them for twenty years, and see if they’re worth several times what you paid! We don’t recommend doing this, actually — except that we do recommend doing it because it will help launch the first season.
HOW DOES THIS HELP TOURING MUSICIANS AND LOCAL VENUES?
Lets pop into the factory for a sec and I’ll tell you how the sausage is made.
Like farming, the live music business is risky and unpredictable. So it has become standard in the industry for artists to accept what are known as “door deals”, or a percentage of revenue from tickets sold. This minimizes risk for the music venue — and while it sounds sh*tty and abusive (What if only 10 people show up?), there isn’t really any other normal way. Venues have tons of expenses, and if they took a risk every night they probably wouldn’t last out the year.
The thing is, you can’t apply for visas, book flights, and set up a two-week US tour with door deals. It’s financial suicide. If there were public funding for the arts, it would help presenters offer the kinds of guarantees that emerging int’l artists need. European countries offer a better model, with 10-20 times more spending in the arts than in the US.
This ain’t Germany though, and we aren’t going to wait around for politicians to fix this. A Community Supported Music model provides the presenter (me) with the financial security, up front, to go ahead and give artists the guarantees they need. This security for them adds a welcome Western Mass stop for the artist on their tour. The strong ticket pre-sales assure a mostly full house for the music venues, and now we have a thriving music scene. And we did it together!
all i want to know is, will there be dancing?
There will definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely be a lot of dancing.
Promise.
We do like the occasional mostly sit-down concert in the season and there will always be some seats, but the regular vibe will be get+up+and+dance+please.