Payment Terms

One charge, for the full amount, at the moment you book. There is no second instalment, no balance due before the event, and no card kept on file to be charged later. Whatever is on the screen when you press the pay button is the entire amount MusicGigs will ever take for that booking.

That amount is two lines:

• The performance fee — the act's own price, exactly as quoted. The smallest booking we accept is $50.
• The service fee — 5% of the performance fee, with a minimum of $5. This covers card processing, holding the funds, the booking agreement, messaging and the dispute process. Card processing is inside this figure, so there is never a third line for it.

Those two lines are the whole total. MusicGigs does not calculate, collect or remit sales, amusement or similar taxes on a performance, and no tax is added to the amount you are charged. If an act has to charge such a tax, that is a matter between the act and the client to settle directly. A quote is valid for 7 days; after that the price has to be re-confirmed.

Payment is by card, or by any other method offered at checkout. You must be authorised to use the payment method, and by paying you confirm the booking on the terms shown on the quote, including the act's cancellation policy.

Your payment goes to MusicGigs, not directly to the act. We hold it and release it to the act on the schedule in section 3. That is what makes the rest of this work: if the act cancels, or does not turn up, or a dispute is opened, the money is still with us rather than already spent.

Funds held for a booking are not held in trust or in an escrow account in the legal sense, and we do not pay interest on them. Any interest earned on balances is ours.

MusicGigs charges acts a commission of 5% of the performance fee. There is no membership, no listing fee and no subscription. An act quoting $50 receives $47.50 of it. Commission is taken proportionally from each payout rather than in one lump, so the rate an act sees is always the same.

A booking pays out in two parts. The deposit portion is normally 30% of the performance fee — an act can set a different figure on a quote — and the balance is the rest.

• The balance is released 48 hours after the event ends. That is exactly as long as either side has to report a problem, so the money is still held for the whole of the dispute window.
• The deposit portion is currently released at the same time as the balance, 48 hours after the event ends. Early release of non-refundable deposits is a feature of the platform that is switched off at present; if we turn it on we will say so here and in the act's earnings page before it takes effect.
• If a booking is cancelled and the client forfeits money under the cancellation policy, that money is released to the act 48 hours after the cancellation rather than after the original event date. Once a booking is cancelled there is no event left to dispute.

"Released" means we send the money to the act's Stripe account. Stripe then pays it out to their bank on their own payout schedule, which normally adds one to two business days. We do not control that step.

Some bookings pay out entirely after the event, with no early release at all. Each of these is shown to the act on the quote and on the booking before the booking is taken, never discovered afterwards:

• First booking. An act's first booking on MusicGigs pays out in full after the event. This is stated during payout setup and again on their first quote. It is the single most effective protection against a stolen card being used to book a fake act and collect a deposit.
• A recent cancellation. An act with a reliability strike in the last 365 days pays out after the event until it ages out or is waived on appeal.
• A refundable deposit. If the act's own policy leaves the deposit refundable, it stays held. Their policy choice decides this, not us.
• Multiple dates. A booking covering more than one date pays out after the last of them.
• Payment review. If fraud screening flags a charge, or a chargeback is opened, the payout is frozen until that is resolved.

Card payments are processed by Stripe. Your card details are entered on Stripe's own payment page and go to Stripe, not to us. MusicGigs never sees or stores your full card number.

Acts are paid through Stripe Connect (Express accounts). Before an act can send a quote or be booked, they must complete Stripe's onboarding: Stripe collects their identity details, tax details and bank account, verifies them, and confirms to us that the account can receive money. That verification is Stripe's, performed under Stripe's own terms, and we do not see the underlying documents. An act whose Stripe account becomes restricted cannot be paid until they resolve it with Stripe.

Using MusicGigs to be paid means also agreeing to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, which Stripe presents during onboarding.

What comes back when a booking is cancelled is set out in full in the Cancellation & Refund Policy. In summary: cash refunds go back to the original payment method through Stripe; when a client cancels, the service fee is recorded on their account as MusicGigs credit valid for 12 months, applied to a later booking on request rather than automatically at checkout; and when an act cancels, the client is refunded everything in cash, including the service fee.

If money has already been released to an act and it later turns out to be refundable — after a dispute, a chargeback, or an error of ours — we will recover it. We may reverse the transfer, take it out of the act's next payouts, or invoice them for it. Acts agree to that when they take bookings here. A client is never asked to wait for us to recover money from an act.

A chargeback is when you ask your bank to reverse a payment rather than asking us. Please open a dispute or email us first: we can usually settle it in days rather than the weeks a card network takes, and a chargeback freezes the whole booking in the meantime.

When a chargeback is filed we respond with the record of the booking: the quote that was accepted, the cancellation policy shown at the time, the agreement that was confirmed at checkout with its timestamp, and the messages between the parties.

If a chargeback succeeds on a booking where the act performed as agreed, the act is responsible for the amount charged back plus any fee the card network imposes, and we may recover it from their payouts. If a chargeback succeeds because the act did not deliver, the loss is theirs. If it is our error, it is ours.

Acts are independent contractors, not employees of MusicGigs. We do not withhold income tax, and we do not pay employment taxes, unemployment insurance or workers' compensation on anyone's behalf. What an act earns here is their own income to report.

Payouts run through Stripe Connect, but MusicGigs pays the processing fees, which means Stripe does not issue you a Form 1099-K for what you earn here. If a tax form is required for your earnings, it comes from us rather than from Stripe.

Payments for a performance are payments for services, so the form that usually applies is a Form 1099-NEC, and the threshold for it is far lower than most people expect — on the order of a few hundred dollars of earnings across a whole year, not tens of thousands. Reaching it takes only a couple of bookings.

This is why the tax details you give during Stripe onboarding have to be correct and kept up to date: your legal name, your address, and your taxpayer identification number. If they are wrong we may be unable to issue a form you are entitled to, or may issue one that does not match your records.

Sales, amusement or similar taxes on a performance are the act's responsibility. MusicGigs does not calculate, collect or remit them, does not add them to the amount charged at checkout, and the total on a quote does not include them. An act who has to charge such a tax settles it with the client directly.

Nothing on this page is tax advice. Talk to your own accountant.