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This is where we tell you about our accounts as we want to be as open as we can about how PDM runs.

 

 

 

pdm:2010-11 accounts summary

 

We’ve reached the end of the PDM financial year, as it runs April to March, so it’s time do the accounts.

 

PDM Accounts Summary for 2010-11

Headlines are:  

·         It’s been a tough year with, we believe, the recession starting to bite. This has resulted in a lower average audience number (even when comparing like for like line ups from 2009-10) but with numbers holding up for more established local bands.

·         We have made a small profit on our standard PDM gigs.

·         Charity donations have remained stable.

·         The Rock & Metal stage at Luton Summer Festival was a great success and one of the most popular events of the Festival. We expect to repeat that again in 2011.

Here’s the summary of standard PDM work only, which is not including the charity shows.

Income was £856.04. Our income came from gigs. There were 14 standard gigs in the year (down from 20 the previous year).

Expenditure £823.31

This is broken down as follows:

Payments to bands - £611

Best of 2010 CD production - £99

Running costs £113.31

This gives us a small profit for the year of £32.73

Other expenditure was the Charity donations (LMHR, Kids In Action, Children in Need & The Pasque via LutonAid) where we paid out £304.16 but relevant income was only £121.49. The difference is because we sponsored a stage at LutonAid again this year and rounded up some of the donations to sensible amounts.

That there was an overall loss is not a bad thing as we carried a profit in the bank into the year of £539.05.Overall we now have £414.02 in the bank.

We have had to be careful to meet the running costs PDM, which have gone up in the year, but bear in mind that everyone running PDM does so voluntarily. That there was only a £32 profit from standard gigs shows that we’ve achieved this. As a consequence payment to bands as a percentage of gig income has fallen from 74% in 2009-10 to 71% in 2010-11. This is a direct result of lower audiences, as the number of people we need through the door to cover those costs remains the same, but a smaller audience means less money available to pay bands. Adjusting the figures to compare this year and last year like for like (as there were fewer gigs) there was a fall of 15% in the average audience per gig.  

One of the things we did to address this is to move from two gigs per month to one gig per month for the first part of 2011 and putting together stronger bills with at least one established local band (rather than bills made up entirely of newer or less popular bands where audience numbers are likely to be low). It’s early to compare, but the figures for the two gigs in 2011 when compared to the same period in 2011 show an increase in average audience numbers  up 80% to 42, compared to the 2010-11 whole year average of 26 and the 2009-10 whole year average of 39. It is early but this suggests that this policy may be working and means that new bands are likely to be playing to a larger audience than would otherwise be the case. As part of the remit of PDM is to help new bands get seen by audiences this may be an effective approach.

The Future.

It’s fair to say that we have survived, rather than thrived in 2010-11 and how this develops into the rest of 2011 will be monitored closely by the team. It is already obvious that we may need to cut back on the charity work that we do, especially where a show takes place on a day when we would otherwise have an income generating show. This is unfortunate and is something that we hope to be able to rectify in years to come. The annual Best of CD may also be stopped as it is an expense where we have had very little feedback from bands or audiences that it is something that is valued. Any reduction in costs or increase in income makes more money available to pay bands and will, hopefully, encourage established bands to play for us.

We will also look at other funding streams, grants etc, which may enable us to reduce the cost of the gigs to be able to better compete with the pub venues that don’t charge for entry to gigs and have access to Landlord or Brewery support.

The facilities, PA etc, at the Hat Factory are probably the best in Luton and an objective for the rest of 2011 is to, once again, make a PDM gig the first choice of new and established local bands. It’s time to balance the Not For Profit ethos of PDM with a tougher, more commercial, outlook to enable us to survive this down time and come out of the other end stronger. We still want to do things like a second shared single, run training for bands, support local band compilations etc but there needs to be the money there to do this. Raising those funds to add to the range of work we do has to be the objective of PDM for 2011-12 or we will become just another local promoter and we want more than that for us, and for the bands and artists we work with.

Included within this is aiming to make playing a PDM gig a way to access development opportunities, for example the Rock & Metal Night at Luton Summer Festival and we’re working with BBC Introducing to program some of the bands that have played for us on the Main Stage at Luton Carnival later in 2011 with their performance broadcast on BBC Three Counties.

Paul Curry
PDM
27th March 2011

 

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