50rpm is a not for profit music community based in the town of Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire. We set up 50rpm to promote music, comedy and the arts in our town as there was a lack of any kind of infastructure in the town for live music.
We hold our shows at the Georgian Hotel in Coatbridge. We have access to two performance spaces. We hold most of our shows in a 75 all seated capacity room on the first floor of the hotel. The hotel has no lift so this space is not suitable for those in a wheel chair or with walking difficulties. The other space has a capacity of 160 seated and is located on the ground floor with access via a ramp or steps.
50rpm is what happens when a group of music lovers decide to do something to keep live music and the arts in their hometown when they lose their local music venue to the creep of the developers.
The way 50rpm works is that it has 50 members who pay an annual fee and this gets them entry to all our standard gigs throughout the year. Members get a say in who we book and we run as a co-operative. For those who play at 50rpm, they get a great audience of real music fans, a top quality pa and engineer, a great venue, an excellent fee & top quality food and accomodation if needed. Having said all that, we have to work within a strict budget so there will be occasions when we just won’t be able to book acts we would like to as the figures just wont add up. In these cases we put on ‘Gold’ gigs where members get discounted tickets and have first refusal on additional tickets for friends and family before they go on sale to the general public. This way we can put on bigger acts in bigger venues when required and agreed by our members.
Although our members get entry to standard shows as part of their membership, we make a limited number of tickets available to the public at full price which can be purchased using the ticket link on each of the gig pages but when they are gone, they are gone.
We work with a mix of establish and up and coming acts, giving prominence to independent artists and using local talent for support slots.
We have a strong ethical take on what we do and only work with acts that share our values. We believe in giving something back to the community and run weekly music workshops for adults with learning difficulties and work closely with the Children’s Humanitarian charity Spirit Aid, local community charity Diamonds In The Community & East Kilbride & District Dementia Carers Group.
