YEP ITS UNFORTUNATE, BUT THAT is just the way it goes sometimes.
Sqew and I had the same problem with Ground Control in Bloem.
Every day we'd have someone come up to us asking "When is the next GC gig? Please hook up another GC gig."
We hosted these gigs for almost five years, at least 4 times a year. Everytime we had one though, we couldn't afford to pay artists, because we were financing it from our own pockets. Luckily all the artists were also our friends and understood what we were trying to do.
We had to take care of venues, sound, marketing (did this ourselves though) and everything else, just because everyone was always nagging at us.
Come the day of the event though and shit turns foul. You have about 500 people show up, but only half of them are willing to pay the R20 cover charge at the door. The other half stay outside and tell you shit like,"Come on man, you know me, I'm at all of the gigs."
Yes you are, but you never pay to get into them you f***.
Out of all the events we hosted, we only ever made a profit twice, which we shared with some of the artists, or ploughed into the following ones. VEry often we ended up losing money, but I think it was all worth it though, because now the scene is established and there are lots of other cats doing what we used to do.
PACOFS is much more willing to rent out a theatre to a hip hop crew now, since we broke ground. So in the end, it is important for artists to get paid, but not until the scene is of such a nature that everyone can eat. First work on establishing yourself and making a good name, then you can demand that paycheck.
