Glossary

The function band glossary

The words a UK function band, an agency and a dep all use as though everybody already knows them — what each one actually means.

Agency

An agency finds work for bands. A couple planning a wedding, or a company planning a party, goes to the agency rather than to the band; the agency shows them a shortlist, takes the booking and passes the date on. In return it keeps a share of what the client pays. Most UK function bands sit on several agencies’ books at once, and each one has its own paperwork, its own booking sheet and its own way of saying when the money arrives. The band still plays the gig and still carries the equipment; the agency sells the date and stands between the band and whoever is paying for it.

Sync an agency booking sheet

Agency cut (commission)

The share of the client’s money an agency keeps for finding the work and handling the booking. It is usually a percentage of the fee, agreed when the band joins the roster, and it is either taken before the band is paid or invoiced separately afterwards, depending on the agency. The number that matters to the players is what the band actually receives, not the headline price the client was quoted. Confusing the two is one of the commonest reasons a split looks wrong: five people divide a figure the band never had, and everybody comes up short without anybody having done anything dishonest.

How a band fee is split

Backline

The amplification and drums a band plays through on stage, as opposed to the PA that carries the sound out to the room: guitar and bass amplifiers, keyboard amplifiers, the drum kit. At a function the backline is normally the band’s own, carried in the back of somebody’s car. Larger events, and gigs abroad, sometimes supply it instead and ask the band to say in advance exactly what it needs. Because backline is electrical equipment used at work, it is the kit a venue or agency most often wants a testing record for, and the kit worth listing with serial numbers for insurance.

Band pot

What is left of a gig’s fee once whoever sells or manages the band has taken their share: the money the players themselves are dividing. It is the honest starting figure for a split, because it is money the band has actually received rather than money the client was quoted. Out of the pot come the journeys — each player’s travel, paid back to whoever made it — and any cost that belongs to the band as a whole rather than to one person, such as a hired van or the car park. What remains after that is what gets divided equally between the people who played.

Work a split out yourself

Booking agreement

The written agreement between a band and whoever is paying: who is playing, on what date, where, for how long, what time they can get in, what happens if the date is cancelled, and when the money is due. An agency booking usually comes with its own version and the band never writes one; a band taking its own bookings should. It is not a formality. It is the document that settles an argument about finish times or a cancelled Saturday months later, and most clients are reassured rather than alarmed by being sent one, because it is what every other supplier at the event already does.

Quotes and booking agreements

Call time

The time the band has to be at the venue, as distinct from the time it plays. It is the one time on the day sheet people get wrong, because it is set by the load-in, the sound check and whatever the event is doing beforehand rather than by the music. A call time for a wedding is often hours before the first dance, and sometimes before the guests arrive at all, because nobody wants a band carrying speakers through a room during the speeches. If you copy one time off the sheet into your own calendar, copy this one and work the journey back from it.

Your gigs in your own calendar

Corporate function

A private event put on by a company rather than by a family: a Christmas party, an awards dinner, a conference dinner, a product launch. For a band the differences are practical. There is usually a production schedule with other things happening on the stage, an earlier finish, a stricter noise limit, somebody running the room who says when to start, and paperwork wanted well in advance — insurance and equipment testing records among it. Corporate work is also where a band is most often asked to hold a date, quote a price and send an agreement rather than simply turn up and play.

Enquiries, quotes and invoices

Day sheet (and run sheet)

The one page that says how the day works: the address, the postcode to drive to, where to park, the load-in and call times, when the sound check is, when each set starts and finishes, what the dress is, who to ask for on arrival and anything the client has specifically asked for. A run sheet is the same thing seen from the event’s side, listing everything that happens rather than only the band’s part of it. Agencies send one a few days before the gig; the useful thing is having it on your phone at the venue rather than in an inbox you cannot reach.

Day sheets on your phone

Dep

Short for deputy: a musician who plays a gig in place of a regular member of the band. Depping is ordinary and constant in UK function work — most players are in a couple of bands and dep for several more — and it is how bands cover holidays, illness and two gigs on the same Saturday. A dep is told what to learn, what to wear and when to arrive, and is expected to turn up knowing the set rather than reading it. The money side has its own convention, and it is the half most often left vague: the band pays its own member, and the member pays the dep.

What is a dep?What a dep costs and who pays

Dep pool

The list of players a band can ring when somebody cannot make a date, kept per instrument and built up over years rather than assembled in an afternoon. A good pool has more than one name for every chair, the numbers of people who already know the set, and some idea of who lives where — because a dep who drives half the country costs the band more in travel than one who lives near the venue. Bands that keep the pool written down and shared cover a dropped date in an evening. Bands that keep it in one person’s head cover it only when that person answers the phone.

Deps and cover

Deposit and balance

How a directly booked gig is usually paid: a deposit when the booking is made, which holds the date, and the balance at or shortly before the event. The deposit is what makes a booking real rather than a pencilled note, and it is normally non-refundable, which is exactly why the terms belong in the booking agreement and not in a message. Agency bookings often work differently again: the agency collects from the client and pays the band afterwards, sometimes weeks afterwards. A band taking its own bookings for the first time should be clear with itself about which of the two it is doing.

Deposits, invoices and reminders

Equal split

The usual arrangement in a function band: once the pot has had travel and band costs taken out of it, what is left is divided equally between the players who did the gig. Everybody is paid the same for playing, whatever they play and however far they came, because the journey has already been settled separately. It sounds obvious, and it is where most disagreements start, because a split done before travel quietly pays the player who lives nearest the most. Bands that write the order down — cut, then travel, then split — argue about it far less than bands that do not.

Try it with your own postcodes How band members get paid

Fee (gross fee and net fee)

The money a gig is worth, and the word that causes most of the confusion, because it can mean two quite different amounts. The gross fee is what the client pays: the headline figure on an agency’s website, or the price on the quote. The net fee, often just called the band fee, is what actually reaches the band once commission has been taken off. A split worked from the gross figure when the band was paid the net one leaves everybody short and nobody sure why. When somebody tells you what a gig pays, it is always worth asking which of the two they mean.

How the money moves

First dance

The song a couple dance to first at a wedding reception, and the one piece of music at the gig that absolutely has to be right. It is usually requested months ahead, often in a particular version or a particular key, and sometimes it is a song nobody in the band has ever played. Bands either learn it, play the original recording and come in afterwards, or tell the couple honestly that it is beyond what five people on a small stage can do. Whichever it is, the decision wants writing down against the gig rather than remembering, because it gets asked about repeatedly.

Setlists and first dances

Function band

A band that plays at other people’s events rather than putting on its own: weddings, corporate parties, birthdays, balls. The repertoire is chosen to fill a dance floor rather than to express anything in particular, the sets are timed to the event, and the job includes arriving early, dressing as asked and stopping when the venue says so. It is one of the few reliably paid corners of live music in the UK, and it runs on a great deal of administration — booking agreements, insurance, equipment records, deps, travel and a split — which is why the same questions come up in every band.

What the site does

Manager’s cut

The share a band’s manager keeps for finding and running the work, as distinct from an agency’s commission: a manager looks after the band over time rather than selling one date. It is typically a percentage of the fee, and it may vary with where the gig is or how it came in, so two gigs at the same price can leave different amounts in the pot. The players do not usually need to see the cut itself. What they do need to see is the figure their split was worked from, and that it is arrived at the same way every time.

Fee, cut, travel and the split

MU minimum

The Musicians’ Union publishes recommended minimum rates for different kinds of engagement — sessions, functions, theatre work, teaching — and revises them from time to time. They are a floor and a negotiating reference rather than a legal requirement, and function work is frequently agreed above or below them depending on the event and who is booking it. Knowing a published rate exists is useful when an offer seems low, and Union membership brings other things a working player uses more often, such as public liability cover. Check the Union’s own site for the current figures rather than a third-hand number. The Musicians’ Union is a UK body: outside the UK the equivalent is your own country’s musicians’ union or federation, and its rates are the ones that apply.

PAT testing

Portable appliance testing: an inspection of electrical equipment to confirm it is safe to use, carried out by a competent person and recorded with a label and a certificate. No law names a fixed interval for a band, but venues, agencies and event insurers routinely ask for records before letting equipment into a building, and a band that cannot produce them can be turned away on the day. What is actually wanted is the register — what was tested, when, by whom and when it is next due — kept somewhere other than a folder in one person’s car. PAT is the UK name for it; other countries have their own electrical safety testing regimes and their own intervals, so check what a venue where you are actually asks for.

Free PAT register template PAT testing for bands

PLI (public liability insurance)

Cover against a claim if somebody is injured or something is damaged because of what the band did: a cable somebody trips over, a speaker stand that goes over on a crowded dance floor. Most UK venues and event organisers require it before a band can play, and will ask for a certificate showing the level of cover. Individual membership of the Musicians’ Union includes public liability cover for many players, and bands can also buy it as a group. Like equipment testing records, it is a document that gets asked for at the worst possible moment if it is not already to hand. Public liability is the UK term and the UK arrangement; the cover exists elsewhere under other names, through other bodies.

Rider

What the band asks the client or the venue for, set out in advance. The technical half covers stage size, power, whether a PA and backline are provided and how much room the drums need; the hospitality half, for a function band, is usually somewhere to change, somewhere to leave cases, and something to eat and drink for people who arrived in the afternoon and play at nine. A rider is not really a list of demands. It is the information a venue needs in order for the evening to work, and sending it early prevents most of the problems it describes.

Set and set list

A set is one continuous stretch of playing; a function band typically plays two or three across an evening, with the lengths fixed by the event rather than by the band. The set list is the running order for each one, chosen to suit who is in the room and what time it is — and it changes on the night more often than not. Keys, tempos and who counts a song in belong with it, which is why a set list scribbled on the back of something at four o’clock is worth rather less than one the whole band can read on a phone at nine.

Songs, sets and setlists

Sound check

The rehearsal of the sound rather than of the music: line by line through the PA, then a song or two with everything on, so that the engineer and the band can hear what the room actually does. At a function it is squeezed into whatever gap the event leaves, which is why the call time is so much earlier than the first set — and at a wedding it often has to happen before any guests are in the room and then not be touched again. If the venue has a noise limiter, this is when you find out what it will tolerate.

Statement

A written account of what somebody is owed for a period, gig by gig: what each one paid them, what travel came back to them, what expenses were reimbursed and what the total is. In a band it is the difference between being paid and being paid an amount you can check. A statement showing a single number at the bottom asks everybody to take the arithmetic on trust; one that shows the working does not. It should also record what has actually been paid and when, so nobody spends a fortnight chasing money that arrived before they started looking for it.

How band members get paid Your own statement each month

TBC (to be confirmed)

A date in the diary that is not yet a booking. An agency has offered it, or a client has asked about it, and the band is holding it while the enquiry turns into a yes or a no. The practical rule is that a TBC date is unavailable for other work but is not yet money, so it belongs in everybody’s calendar and nowhere near anybody’s accounts. The trouble starts when a date sits as TBC for months and nobody asks about it; a band is better off chasing it and losing it than holding a Saturday in high summer for nothing at all.

Enquiries and quotes

Travel and mileage

What a player is paid back for getting themselves and their equipment to the gig, normally worked out from the round-trip driving distance between their own home and the venue at a rate the band sets for itself. That rate is the band’s own arrangement for dividing its own money. It is not the same thing as any rate published for tax purposes, and the two should never be muddled. Travel comes out of the pot before the equal split, so that the player who drove furthest is not quietly subsidising the one who lives nearest. Where two share a car, only the driver’s journey counts.

Travel worked out from your own postcode Work a split out yourself

Verified dep

A dep a band has already used and is willing to use again, kept on that band’s own list rather than found from scratch every time. The point of it is the second and third booking: somebody who already knows the set, already has the dress right and already understands how that band’s money works needs telling far less, and whoever is ringing round can see at a glance who has actually played with them before. Keeping the list per band matters too, because a player who is an obvious first call for one band may never have played a note with another.

Wedding band

A function band working the wedding market, which is most of them. The evening has a shape that barely varies — guests arrive, a first dance, two sets with a break, something to finish on — and the band is one supplier among several, working to a schedule somebody else has set. The couple usually book a year or more ahead, care enormously about two or three particular songs, and have never booked a band before in their lives, which is why a wedding band spends nearly as much time reassuring and confirming as it does playing.

Your own booking page

Where the words turn into money

Most of the arguments a band has are about the order these things happen in: the cut, then everyone's travel, then the split. You can put your own fee and your own postcodes in and watch it happen, or read how a member is meant to be paid and what a statement should show them.

Work out a split How band members get paid If you play in a band How it works