Earlier this week Killarney Festival of Food & Music withdrew plans to create a "brand new stage for emerging Irish talent" at its event, citing the costs involved. The organisers blamed negative reaction to the plans on "inaccurate reporting" and said they planned to pay participating acts "a good fee" – more than they would receive at any other festival.

In the interests of accurate reporting, here’s a look at the figures involved in its now-defunct proposal. It also, with luck, will give an insight into how this type of approach has become so prevalent that it has morphed from a festival short cut into an accepted business model.

The festival is expected to be worth up to €6 million to Killarney, according to the organisers. Bands were to be given slots on its Actbacker stage according to how many tickets each act sold. Acts had to sell at least 50 day tickets to qualify. The more tickets they sold, the higher their slot on the bill.

The Killarney festival is in the business of making a profit by staging a big entertainment event. Day tickets cost €76 for adults and €41 for under-18s. Assuming that they sold an even split of these, bands would have needed to sell at least €2,925 worth of tickets to be in with a chance of even the earliest slot. They would have got 30 per cent of that money; the rest would have gone to the promoter, for staging, lighting and sound. This would leave our act with €877.50 and the promoter with €2,047.50.

That doesn’t sound bad for 45 minutes’ work, so what was wrong? Divide that lump sum by five band members, crew or both and we’d be down to €175.50 each. Then there’d be several hours of waiting on site either side of the performance, so it wouldn’t be long before it became the best part of a day’s work. There would also be transport costs, so petrol money would take a chip out of each person’s cut, as would other standard expenses, such as food and drink. (Only main-stage acts are typically given a catering allowance.)

Then there are those staging, lighting and equipment costs that the promoters were so keen to cover. Bands on smaller stages are typically provided with a backline (meaning basic, general amplification, microphones and a drum kit, if you’re lucky). Most bands will bring their own individual amps, and all will have their own instruments. These are not inexpensive.

A guitar, for example, with enough tone to cut through in a substantial live set-up will cost at least €600, and probably closer to €1,000. Factor in amps, leads and other accessories and your equipment outlay per member will easily double.

Even with equipment costs, these figures may stack up fairly if we we’re dealing with a day’s labour, but art performance is far from that. It is highly specialised, and the work is infrequent. It takes years to learn how to play an instrument and longer again to learn how to communicate enough with other musicians to play in a band. Then there are the countless hours spent rehearsing and writing material in rehearsal rooms that with luck come free, via an unused garage or a vacant decent-sized shed.

Particular to the Killarney proposal was that the act was responsible for selling the tickets. So that’s many more hours of hustling friends and family, on social media and in person, to buy tickets. (Smart band accountants may have taken the tough decision to also hit their balance sheets with an “impairment charge” to cover the loss of goodwill towards their act for hassling their core target audience to buy tickets. This would hike their liabilities but should push the band into the red, which – good news – would mean no income tax to pay. It would also bankrupt them.)

The promoters argued that the stage would “create a platform to promote new acts”. As the band would have personally sold the tickets to most of the crowd it’s hard to see how they would gain much extra exposure beyond their existing fans.

Killarney Festival of Food & Music is far from alone. Few festivals, if any, pay up-and-coming acts to perform, instead offering them a weekend pass or, for the truly parsimonious, a day ticket. (I have yet to meet an individual who pays to enter their place of work.) They know that few acts will demur to play without pay, as there is little legally they could do.

Or is there? Discontent in the UK has led to a number of legal challenges to zero-hour contracts, and in the US there is a groundswell of opposition to internships, with many taking class-action suits against their former alleged employers.

Of course, acts at a festival are not employees, but there is a clear pattern of not paying musicians at these events – and this has now become the business model. Organisations such as Imro, which fashions itself as “Ireland’s music champion”, have been almost silent on this issue. (Imro did not respond to requests for a comment.)

In recent weeks my colleague Fintan O’Toole has argued that artists should go on strike. The logistics make it unlikely, but refusing to engage with exploitative business practices dressed up as “opportunities” – and being sure to highlight such occurrences – is a strong step in the right direction.