With this calculation every idea makes money.
Tommy

It's not about making money!!
It's about having influence on decisions.
It's about going to a concert you helped organising.
And it's an extra to give people the opportunity to earn back their 40 bucks and attend the concert for free.
Their 40 bucks is used to hire the artists they want and to hire a location etc..
People in the community can perform in front of 50k people, be the paid concert photographer...

All big organizers work together. A group can not go from let's say the US to Europe for one concert. They go to do a row of concerts.
So the influence is a little bit limited
T

The concept is a neat one, RobMaas, but you may have to figure out what your market is.

I agree with Tommy that the big bands have constraints.

Still, there may be indie groups or festival-type things you could organize in this manner.

I like your idea of having people subscribe and pay something up front, and in exchange, having some say in the program.

It might be a model that would help launch a new festival in an underserved market.

Wouldn't have to be just music concerts. Possibly theatre, like a fringe festival. Charter members would be chuffed if their venture turned out to be the next Edinburgh or Glastonbury.

I don't think you can organize big event in this way, but with the small ones it maybe will work, maybe...

"Once 25,000 people signed up you’re required to pay $40.."

hmmmm.. so this is resources pooling and eventually spend to something the crowd wants (i.e. concert)...but if the crowd helps promoting more than the break-even figure...one paid back his original fee? who will handle the money and organized this one? community based or national based entity? seems ok ..but its not this easy... its hard to collect money without the concrete service yet or product but a promise. Once you got the money are you sure the artist are available? Beside money is a hot commodity to to get idle for a while...a lot of possible untoward incident might happen in a collected big some of money if ever.

sorry, give me a good "foolproof" plan first.

@ Van Hees: Fair enough, the concert will be UK/US... - and you don;t have to attend the concert, you can be the organiser.
@ Jill: Constraints: I think this idea need to be set up by a large concert organiser and not on itself.
@ Saigon: if the crowds helps promoting they can make a little profit, they can put the tickets on eBay and see what people are willing to pay for the concert they organised.
BTW: I CHANGED THE PITCH

An interesting idea, but have you ever organised a concert? I have, many - though on a much smaller scale than you're proposing - and the effort, organisation and finance necessary can be immense. This is why event management firms exist - you need a lot of diverse experience and expertise to put on anything on this scale. Even with access to the big name bands, equipment suppliers, security firms etc I think it would be VERY difficult to put on a safe and successful concert - let alone make money - if every decision was made by a well-meaning but inexperienced crowd.

Like the idea. But think you would need to limit choices to make it managable.

You need to research the mundane stuff like venue licences, insurance, stewarding etc. before looking at mechanisms.

Don't forget crowd designed merchandise as a revenue stream :-)

Use artists whose music are licensed under "by-CC" (i.e. you can share it, edit it, and use it commercially) on Jamendo.com.

That would rock the socks. Sell lots of beer, cheaply.

and wine

so like a PledgeBank.com for concerts? The show happens if enough people pre-buy tickets?
It's an interesting concept. I recently saw Seth Godin speak in Phx and he came based on a pre-sold PledgeBank initiative where 100 people agreed to pay $50 if he came.

I would echo the comments of Allan and PhillipH - organizing a show for 20k people is a non-trivial task. heck, organizing a show for 200 people takes a lot of work. Perhaps there is a way to work with existing even promotions companies and just handle the pledgebank aspect, offloading the execution of the show itself to them. Sell them the rights to do a show that already has 5,000 pre-sold tickets and you'll have their ear. Note: your customer becomes the event promo company in that situation.

sean

Guys to let you know, someone has put this idea to reality check out: http://www.tennentsmutual.com/

No so bad idea after all ;)