What Is A Rider?
- Connor Kelly
- Mar 23, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 16, 2019
No this isn't actually referring to anything to do with David Hasselhoff. A rider is a list of requests that in most cases you are contractually obliged to carry out in order to make sure everybody at your event can do their jobs properly. There are actually two kinds of riders used in live music events which I have outlined below:
Hospitality Rider
Now some of you may already know what an artist rider is and have heard such stories of divas asking for bowls of only green MnMs. An Hospitality rider is basically a list of things that the artist wants in order for them to perform, typical riders include things like food and beverages or a pre-arranged amount of money that the promoter will provide to the band to buy themselves a meal and some drinks. However this can include things such as guest list tickets, dressing room specifications, required time for for setup, sound checks, and meal breaks as well as insurance provisions and cancellation terms (McDonald, 2019).
Wooow...Aren't artist so needy?
Technical Rider
A technical rider is a little more boring but even more important! This rider contains information about the bands on stage set up, such as instruments, sound preferences and Stage Plot (Rosenfeld, 2019). This will help inform the sound and lighting engineers plan for the night and will also helps the venue calculate the load-in time and the cost of having you perform.
Now if you want to keep those divas happy then you are going to have to make sure you follow both riders specifications exactly, as normally these will be a contactual obligation between you and the artist booking agent (McDonald, 2019).
References
McDonald, H. (2019). What is a Rider in a Musicians Contract?. [online] The Balance Careers. Available at: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-a-rider-in-an-artists-contract-2460748 [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].
Rosenfeld, B. (2019). What's a Technical Rider (And Do You Need One)? - iCadenza. [online] iCadenza. Available at: https://www.icadenza.com/technical-rider/ [Accessed 13 Apr. 2019].
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