<human>: **the background**

My little brother and his friends have decided to make their own band; this has been an on-going project for them and they really seem to like it.  They've been getting offers to play local shows for chump change, which is fine- they love playing the music for people, and right now it's not really about money for them.

However, they played a show last night at a surfshop back home and the owner told them that it costs him $200 to bring in a band to play, but that they'd get any profit after the $200 was made up.  Despite the show being a comedy of errors ((ie - the place's shitty sound equipment messing up, a sound tech who didn't know how to do his job right, that jazz)) they did a pretty good show.  When the time came to pay my brother's band, the owner decided he wasn't going to pay them, telling them "Oh, no it takes $300 to bring in a band, you were short 4 paying people, so you don't get paid."

Summarize the given text in a few sentences.
<bot>: How can I help to keep this from happening again?  The guys were really looking forward to using that money to record a demo, and seeing that taken from them really upsets me.