More research - who are the promoters, and what do they want?
You have identified suitable venues in your town or state and are ready to get yourself booked. Before you do that, though, you should undertake some further research and find out if the venues you are looking at have in-house promoters/talent buyers, or do they rely on outside promoters?
A small bar, pub or club will usually have an in-house promotion team, often the owner or a long-term employee. They deal with finding new talent and offering shows to that new talent, often drawing from a pool of local bands and less-established national touring acts.
On the other hand, a larger venue (500-person capacity or over) may attract outside promoters, who merely hire the venue and its facilities for each show. You will be able to tell if a venue uses outside promoters by looking at the show posters and website of the venue. Look for “Somebody presents…” where Somebody is a big local or national promoter, such as Live Nation. There may still be a local intermediary based at the venue, but the contract will be issued by the national promoter. Chain venues, such as House of Blues, Academy Music Group etc., may have a national promotions team that works with other independent promoters to book acts into their venues. This way, the chain can book a successful act into each one of its regional venues as a full tour, thus maximizing their relationship with the act.
In either case, you need to establish contact with whoever is responsible for booking shows and pitch your music to them. Pitching your music/band to venues and promoters to get shows is exactly the same as pitching your music to a record company, a publishing company or an artist manager. There are rules and conventions to pitching, and your career may be affected by not following these rules and conventions.
Identify the Key Contact
Many, many people work in a club or a national promoter’s office, but only one or two of them can actually place you on a bill for a show. Your job is to identify the decision-maker within the organization—the person at the local bar, out-of-town club or national promotion company—who actually decides which bands are going to play and how much they should be paid.
Ironically, in this age of always-on email and social network messaging, the best tool you can use to identify key contacts is the phone. True, you will be able to establish broad contact details using Google and music-business directories, but you have to ensure this information is up-to-date and relevant to you. So use the phone; get the number of the bar, club or office and call them up! You are not pitching for a gig at this stage—merely establishing the correct person to contact with your music and stats.
The Music
Once you determine the key contact at the venue who is responsible for booking the shows, you now need to send her your music and information that will persuade her to book you. This information is extremely important—the type of music you play may leave the contact cold personally, but if you can sell out her venue or add 250 ticket sales to a show, then she will book you...…period.
The music should be sent as links to your SoundCloud, YouTube channel or your dedicated website that has your music embedded on it. Many music industry professionals don’t even own a CD player anymore; they listen to online links instead. Indeed, Tom Hopwell, booking agent for Primary Talent International, says, “I’d really advise all bands to get a dedicated website. Not having a site can be a real downer as [we] cannot access information.” Put the relevant URL (YourPageAtYourSite.com, for instance) of your website, SoundCloud and Facebook page on all the emails you send to your music business contacts.
Never, ever, send MP3s or WAV files as email attachments. As well as running the risk of having your email rejected by spam filters, attaching any kind of large file, such as an MP3, should only be done after asking the recipient for permission. If the recipient does request a file directly, then consider using a large-file sending service, such as HighTail (hightail.com).
Do not include links to any more than three tracks. Your listener will be hooked after listening to three tracks, or they are going to pass on your material. Either way, the decision will be made before reaching the end of the third track. Think about it: if you hear a song you don’t like by a new band, do you immediately ask to hear another song by that band? Of course not. Organize your links or SoundCloud page to feature your best song first. Do not save the best until last. Even if your listener does like the first track, she may not have the time or inclination to check out the last track. Open up with your killer tune—if it really is your best song, then you are going to have to stand or fall by that track.
Never submit a cover or tribute song—unless you are a cover or tribute band. Presenting someone else’s song in a demo is a massive waste of time and opportunity; it tells the listener absolutely nothing about you or your music. Don’t do it.
The Stats
Talent buyers need to fill their venues with ticket-buying, venue-purchased drink-swilling, coat check-using music fans. You need to convince the talent buyers that your band can bring those music fans and will continue to bring them in the future. (This then goes back to what you learned earlier: if you can’t draw fans in sufficient numbers to a particular venue, you should be looking to get yourself booked into a smaller venue until you can consistently pack out that smaller space, then look again at the bigger venue.) Talent buyers therefore need stats to convince the venues—they are running businesses and need to “put people in the room.” So, keep your pitch brief. The key contact needs to know a tiny bit about you, and that’s all. You should then move onto your stats, answering the following:
- How many shows have you played and where?
- How many ticket buyers can you usually draw?
- Have you played this particular venue before and, if so, when was it? How many people did you draw then?
- What other bands or acts have you played with or opened for?
- How many people follow your YouTube channel?
- How many CDs or tracks have you sold?
- How many people ’“like’” your Facebook page?
- What radio play do you have?
And be honest. Tell the contact if you are not ready to headline large shows, but you can bring a crowd (give numbers) for a support slot. Also give a realistic time frame. Are you available for shows now? Or are you looking to play in a couple of months? Then make sure your contact information (email address and home or mobile phone number) are on every single item you send out.
