Unlock Touring Success: How Centtrip Saves the Financial Strain on Musicians

As touring costs rise, many musicians are rethinking whether to tour at all. Here’s how Centtrip can help.

Costs for touring artists have soared since Covid. A combination of higher energy and fuel costs, higher general inflation, competition for tour professionals and venues, and, for UK acts touring abroad, Brexit related visa and cabotage costs have all had an impact.

Overall costs are up by 35%, according to the Music Managers Forum quoted in UK Music’s new report, This is Music 2023. One music venue has closed each week in 2023 and the year has seen over 30 festivals cancelled. The Association of Independent Festivals reports that one in six UK festivals (more than 100) have closed permanently since the start of Covid.

Artists are desperate to get on the road to meet demand from fans but, to make the sums add up, they need careful control of costs.

Centtrip can help by:

· reducing exchange and currency-related costs of overseas spend

· improving visibility, control, and empowerment over on-the-road expenses

· maximising value when repatriating tour receipts.

Centtrip also saves admin time and cost with API system integration, expense management and receipt capture, and a single, secure, any-device login to multiple artist accounts.

What does that mean for you and your artist clients?

Reducing exchange and currency-related costs

Every time you use a standard, domestic credit card overseas, your card issuer levies a Foreign Transaction Fee (usually between 2.5% and 3% for UK-issued cards). Some debit cards will also levy a fixed spending charge on top of the percentage fee. That means tour-related charges like hotel bills, meals, entertainment, emergency expenses, can all cost you 3% more than they should.

But using the Centtrip prepaid, multi-currency card, all your card payments can be in local currency, based on our fair and transparent exchange rates.

Paying by bank transfer is similar. The exchange rate offered by banks is often between 2% and 5% higher than live-market rates. And, they typically charge between £25 and £40 in transaction fees for a single SWIFT payment. At Centtrip, we offer highly competitive exchange rates and transaction fees.

Improving visibility, control and empowerment

Centtrip simplifies the complexity of managing multiple, independent artists. We provide real-time visibility and control over multiple cards, accounts and assets, with client-controlled limits, alerts, and functions on a per-card level.

That means the cardholder, tour manager and business manager can all see exactly what’s being spent as it happens.

Our award-winning app lets cardholders instantly capture and annotate receipts so that nothing gets lost. Seamless API integration means that all that detail can be imported directly into your accounting system.

Accountants hate cash, but sometimes it’s simply unavoidable. The Centtrip Cash Manager feature, along with client-controlled ATM access, helps you keep track of cash as well as card transactions.

We also have the highest transaction and balance limits on the market, so your people are empowered to handle challenges and opportunities as they arise, wherever in the world they are.

Maximising the value of international tour receipts

It’s not just expenditure that needs managing. Whether your artist has touring (or streaming) income in another country and currency, or they’ve just sold their songbook for $100 million, foreign exchange fees can have a significant effect on what finally hits their bank account.

The Centtrip currency desk can help you plan ahead and have a strategy that minimises transaction costs and exchange rate risk.

Many accountants and business managers work with our currency experts as an extension of their finance teams. This gives them access to market knowledge and expertise “on demand” as they plan and execute a currency strategy.