How To Book Shows

INDIE MANUSCRIPT: How To Book Shows

Book Shows

Hope all is well. This is an informative article created to be a resource to assist you in your career advancement. 

So often I get asked “how do you book shows?”. Most assume it’s based off of connections. Yes, networking is an integral part, but these are new formed connections that I’m forming as I go. I’m in concert with venues working towards a common goal. In this Indie Manuscript I will provide tips on how to book shows. 

As a new act, or an emerging one, booking local shows is vital to advancing your career and harnessing a viable fan base. Being able to perform enables you to :

1. Improve you craft, develop a live show.

2. Connect intimately with your listeners.

3. Identify your demographic and get a sense of thier interest. 

4. Gain traction and leverage your following, (add to your resume for future shows)

5. Gain revenue. 

Do Your Research

How do you make this happen? Well, research. First you want to find local venues whose goals align with yours.

Most cafes, restaurants, boutique, and sport bars depend on acts like you to bring in traffic. Most venues have stages, mics and backlines to provide entertainment for their customers. If you can assure them traffic, most will open up their space for you to perform. 

Where do you research? Fortunately, we’re in the digital era and have many resources to facilitate in this area. The best approach is to look up local venues and make a pitch to them independent of any third party. That way you form a direct connection that you can build upon. But, they’re a few sites that can help you with finding local venues and promoters looking to book acts. 

1. Sonicbids (https://www.soncicbids.com) great platform to book gigs worldwide. 

2. Indie On The Move (https://www.indieonthemove.com) great database to research local venues that host indie acts.

Stats Are Facts

How do you make a pitch to a venue? After doing your research and gathering the necessary information such as venue capacity, nights open to host events, and the preferred genres that frequent that space. You will have the information to formulate your pitch via email or phone. 

When constructing your pitch be weary and pay attention to the way I addressed you in the start of this article. You want to have your greeting in place, introduce yourself,  and inform the recipient of your intent, all in your first two lines. 

Then you want to give them the stats. Stats are imperative it establishes what you can bring to the table. If you’ve performed in other local venues before great! List the venues where you performed and estimate how much people attended each event. Then provide a realistic draw of how many people you anticipate attending the future event with their venue. It could be as many as 15-20 people. Once you’ve done your research you‘ll be able to estimate a good amount of foot traffic that would be appealing to the venue. 

Don’t, I repeat don’t go and book a venue claiming you can bring in 200 people when you only know 10 people that’ll show up. You do severe damage to your reputation. Most venues refer to one another when booking talent. Often, these venues use the same booking agents to book the talent for their venues. So select a venue that best suits what you can draw. STATS ARE FACTS! 

Links To Your Music

Lastly, provide links to your music, and previous events. Let them know how successful you anticipate the upcoming event to be, and why it’s beneficial for them. Close out your email with your contact information. That pretty much sums up your pitch. Then you wait for a response. 

If this article informed you any way push the like button, leave a comment, and share it with other musicians. If you have any more questions or more to add leave it in the comment section.