Dear Musicians,
These are tough times for our public health, our profession, and our communities. Please check your Hire Notes dashboards and keep in contact (electronically!) with your team to stay up to date on schedule changes, cancellations, and the associated financial updates.
We have been monitoring the pandemic as it evolves and responding to inquiries on a case by case basis. So far we have been able to respond to increased support requests and handle issues in a timely manner, and we expect this to continue. We are proud of you, our community, and especially the contractors/bandleaders who have handled issues proactively, professionally, and quickly. Some of you have taken bold steps like refunding clients even when not obligated to, or paying out ensemble/bandmembers even for cancelled performances.
By using Hire Notes, all of you are protected by the contracts you put in place on your performances. Since contractors/bandleaders can customize contracts, the particular ones applicable to your performances can be found on your performance pages. The base template performance contract from Hire Notes protects all of you, and the Hire Notes Terms of Use protects most of you. These contracts include the following protections:
Protections for musicians: Patrons are responsible for establishing proper conditions for performance, including that musicians shall not be required to perform in any manner which would endanger or risk their persons or their instruments (source: performance terms)
Protections for patrons: Patrons can cancel performances if they suffer documented illness or death, or if they cannot meet the above requirement due to acts of God. Before a cancellation due to an act of God, patrons and contractors/bandleaders must attempt to reschedule the performance in good faith for a 90 day period starting a week before the original performance date (source: terms of use)
Currently ~1/3 of performances impacted by the crisis are being cancelled, and ~2/3rds rescheduled for a later date. Weddings in particular are almost all getting rescheduled. Wedding season bookings for this year, however, are not proceeding at the same pace and volume as last year. Productions, corporate events, and conferences are much more likely to be cancelled. We can only hope public life will recover by the fall and we will be monitoring this closely. For now, we recommend these best practices for handling a client COVID19 issue:
Safe ways to maintain the booking income: Offer clients to reschedule to a later date, or to convert past payments into future credits. If they are intent on canceling, consider asking them to donate the performance cost to your group. This has already worked on at least one occasion.
If you cannot find a mutually acceptable resolution: Please escalate any disputes to our customer support as usual and we will handle them according to the terms
We are working on helping everyone face this situation in the following ways:
Customer Support: We are waiving requirements to send customer support proof that a patron is agreeing to a performance update like timing before we amend the contract. We are responding to support inquiries faster even under a larger load
Hire Notes 2.0: We are launching a new version of our platform that has already been in the works for quite some time. This version's goal is to give you even more control of your performances, including with customer support-free performance changes. Please preview it at https://app.hirenotes.com/login to make sure your information has been ported over correctly. We will be switching over next week.
Stay Tuned: once we complete the launch of the new version we will get started on initiatives that can help with this situation
We are asking of you to identify proper sources of information and follow local regulations and guidelines to keep yourself and your community safe:
Follow CDC guidelines to protect your health and to stay home or seek care if you are not feeling well. If you are not feeling well, suspect you have COVID-19, or are confirmed as a COVID-19 patient please email us: we can help take care of finding subs and responding to clients until you recover
Follow local rules and regulations, especially on shelter in place orders, lockdowns, or limitations on events and assemblies
If you are being asked by patrons or other musicians to potentially put any of these at risk, please email support@hirenotes.com asap
In these tough times, the health and well-being of our community is our top priority. The show must go on, only once it's safe. Until then please take care of yourself and your loved ones. We look forward to continue providing you with simpler and better tools for managing your bookings and performances, and expanding our new improved 2.0 platform. You can always reach out to support@hirenotes or to me directly using email or in-app chat with questions on any of these issues.
Thanks,
Shaheen