 It's really strange. I started this channel a year and a half ago, you know, right before live music shut down, and since then I made well over a hundred videos. But we've never had a chance to talk about growing your fan base with live shows, which, until right before that, was probably one of the most effective ways to do so. But since that whole quarantine thing has happened, it's been useless to focus on this part of music promotion. But if the comments of my videos, forum and discord, which, you know, are all linked below, are any indication of where we're at now, it's time to start booking shows again. You all clearly want to know more about how to grow your audience with live shows. So in this video, I'm going to talk to you about all the things you're missing about booking live shows and teach you how to book shows that grow your audience fast and book shows that are well above the weight class that you should be competing in. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from zero to ten thousand fans, and this is Muse Formation. So one of the reasons the subject of booking live shows is often so messy, and there's such bad information out there, is that so many dorks have one experience, they book like maybe three or four shows, and then they run to one of the dozen or so music blogs, who will print an article from literally anyone who sends them one. And I'm not exaggerating about this. And then that information gets passed on his gospel, and then what happens is one of these nerds who makes YouTube's hires a research assistant to write their videos for them, and then they parrot the same bullshit that some idiot did with no experience, and it spreads like wildfire as fact. So let's start by dispelling some of the bad information that floats around so you can understand the best way to book shows today. Many years ago, I worked at New York City's most prominent punk, hardcore, ska, indie rock, whatever we're calling it, concert promotion company Anthony Trance presents. I booked hundreds of shows over the years for top national touring acts at some legendary New York City and New Jersey clubs, where we'd be tasked with filling a certain night at a club. Now, some of you are already like, what the fuck, there's concert promotion booking agencies that don't just work inside the club as an employee, which brings me to my first point. There's no college course book, or for that matter, YouTube video that all the promoters watch and learn how to do their job. This means that what each booking agent wants to see to book you can be totally different from venue to venue, even within the same city and the same genres. And their standards are all different, and they do things totally different from one another to suit their own needs. Some venues and cities have a few different concert promoters fill the nights, and those promoters may book out a few different venues themselves, whereas others only use in-house employees to book them. There's no rules, and the key is you have to talk to the other musicians to learn the landscape in each town where you're trying to book in. This means, and God, this really pains me to say it, that some want to see EPKs. Granted, in most of the cooler genres, they don't give a fuck about EPKs. And what I mean by this is that a lot of the underground DIY show promoters are going to laugh at your EPK, whereas more formal events are going to think you're unprofessional if you don't send one. And a lot of promoters in the middle are just going to want to link to YouTube or Spotify. Some are even going to ignore your links and look at a site like Next Big Sound and other analytics software and see what your numbers are. And they're going to make the decision on whether they want to even listen to your music at all by simply looking at this graph and seeing if you have enough followers. Next Big Sound shows the amount of streams you're getting on sites and your followers on social. If you're not in the range they're looking for for the slot they're booking, you're not going to get listened to. Since like much of the music business right now, many people are now only looking at data instead of actual talent or charisma. The point is, unlike what all these blog and YouTube grifters say, there's no one size fits all of what works to get on a show. And it's extremely genre dependent. The best advice I have is if you're looking to book with more formal promoters, having a solid EPK can be good. But for most people starting off in more underground and DIY type venues, having a solid Spotify, SoundCloud, Bandcamp or some site where things are going relatively well with a good pitch, which we'll get into more later. And most importantly, a video of you doing a charismatic performance where people enjoyed you, as opposed to the deer and headlights imitation I see so often, it's going to be far more helpful to get the gig you want if you have that on your YouTube channel. Of course, if you want to get booked by a promoter, the number one thing to do is be regularly present where they are. If that means handing out fires at their other shows that are similar to your genre and being a presence. Sometimes it means going to the after hours bar or a party to hang out and be a part of the scene that you're in and make sure that you're putting out fires and making people know who you are because truly proximity and the promoter seeing your name and face around is the ultimate hack to getting booked since they see you as part of the community and someone out there doing what matters since the important work really is oftentimes showing up. This truly could bypass everything from having to hear you or to write an email pitch or send an EPK since it shows you doing the work that actually matters since the hustle of promoting shows is a lot of the battle. But since we're talking about the pitfalls of booking, we need to talk about the R word and no, I'm not talking about the one that people use to describe the way Tom McDonald raps. The R word I'm talking about is rejection, which I would argue messes up more musicians than writing bad pitches or having bad numbers or just being a bad fit for a booking. Rejection from a booking agent is not a permanent no. And so many artists give up on ever getting booked somewhere. And this is actually why they don't ever grow or get good gigs is they give up the moment they are rejected. There's one thing in the music business that has an overabundance and that's gigs. And because there's such abundance of gigs, that means there's plenty of opportunities and rejection does not mean rejection forever. Concert performers are so used to the persistent artists that hit them up every month. They think of everyone as those artists and are often so flooded by them, they can ignore the people who only write once a year since that's usually assigned to them that you won't be enough of a go-getter to go out flyer and promote the show since you're not showing the go-getterness to even email them on a regular basis. And if you're casually listening to this video, now's the time to pay a little attention for a minute or two. Musicians look at rejection all wrong. Instead of seeing it as they aren't good enough, you should see it as more progress on the way of getting what you want. Author Stephen King famously posted hundreds of rejection letters on his wall for his early novels since he saw it as the path to get where he is today. He knew he'd have to go through a ton of rejection to become the humongous, ubiquitous artist he is now. He's one of the best-selling authors of all time and he would hang up each rejection letter as a reminder he was getting closer to getting where he wanted to go. Now, something tells me as not the best looking guy he may have got rejected a little bit in the dating world and learned this lesson beforehand, but who am I to be calling anyone not the best looking guy? Since 13 year olds come on this YouTube channel and keep saying the same about me when all they have on their channel is a video of them humping an ottoman like this. Where was I? Okay, let's remember Stephen King is a guy who writes 2,500 words a day every single day of the year. So he's always improving his craft every day. It's since he doesn't put out nearly what he amounts to. He knows the game for his business when he was starting out was to turn out work. He knew to keep improving himself while also putting himself out there and making sure that people know who he is and that he's doing work. As long as you're improving and concentrating on getting yourself out there while improving your songcraft and what matters in your genre, you can make rejection temporary and part of your path. I will say what I know I've said before. The artists who succeed in music are the ones who get a callous to rejection. They see it as not a referendum on their worth, but instead as a badge of their progress. And this is also important to discuss since most of the time the rejection has nothing to do with your own worth. Promoters often only have a few hours to book a show. And let's say that show is not in your genre that week and you're not what they're looking for. Your email pitch may just get deleted and never even read. They've probably never even considered you or whether you're good enough. Other times you may email them and be just what they're looking for and it may go right to the top of the pile and get you in faster because you simply wrote them at the right time. The reasons you may get booked or not or often not attributed to your actual worth. So what you do to make this work is in your favor. So what you do is you show up often since this is a numbers game often times since timing is often a lot of the game. Make sure to keep on top of booking agents you want to be booked by just like we talked about in my video on how to get a music manager which is of course linked on the screen or in the description below. Every time you've made some gains or have something new to brag about maybe a good time to check in with that concert owner you want to get booked by. And remember don't hit them with the same email again and again but instead update them on your progress and continue to improve your pitch since if they're looking at that analytic software and see growth you may now qualify to get that show that you want to get on. But like I said before concert promotions is more than anything else in the music business are used to persistent musicians. So give them what they want. People who continually make their job easier by reminding them of an option to book them. But I feel like I've gotten a very ahead of myself. So let's talk about what you should actually send to a venue. In my video on how to write a successful Spotify pitch I talked about how you develop a pitch that makes you sound exciting to other people. And if you haven't seen that video obviously click it now or in the description below. But this is one of the most important things you can do with your time. That pitch belongs at the top of the email. Then you want to link whatever your streaming sites and socials look best. Whichever three of them are going to do you the best impression that's what needs to be in this email. If the promoter does ask for specific ones be sure to include those. But if you have a great video that shows off how sick your live set is included even if they didn't ask for it. And let me tell you this is the ultimate hack is if you're good live draw attention to this and make sure you have a video that shows it off. And if you haven't made one to capture it that should probably be your top priority if you want to make playing live be a thing that grows your fan base. As I've said before the people in the music business have very little imagination. So if you could show them instead of telling them that is always the thing that's better to be doing especially since a lot of time the interns opening these emails and if they click on that live show and show their boss how sick you are you're probably gonna have a lot easier time booking shows. And lastly the other thing to include is of course that dreaded EPK that I hate so much. If this is prominent in the venues and genre you live in make sure to include that. Otherwise leave those where they belong in the goddamn trash bin on your computer. So that is probably a good time to talk about where you should be looking to play. In most cities there's an ecosystem of clubs where if you do well at one you then get booked at their bigger venue. And if you do well there you can get the coveted opening slot for a big national touring act or headline that venue yourself. For example this ecosystem in New York City is Bowery presents. Where if you do well in their quote unquote farm league which is this venue called Mercury Lounge this can lead to opening for a bigger act at their more esteemed venues like Music Hall, Williamsburg or Bowery Ballroom. One of the main keys to doing well as sending the ladder to bigger shows is to learn your local ecosystem and make those shows your main focus. Since it's important to play different venues and for different crowds and cities it's often important to play those different venues and make that somewhat diverse. But I would always prioritize the ones where you can ascend the ladder and make those what you focus on the most. But let's also remember too some of those farm league venues are often not associated with the other venue. For example in Brooklyn dancing promoters at midsize venues watch the names at smaller clubs and the ones they see get booked numerous times at the small venue will often get a set at the midsize venue since they see obviously that smaller venue that really can't afford to fuck up has that person back all the time. There's also merit to playing other venues occasionally, especially if you're playing with a bunch of groups who have an audience that may like your music and is highly susceptible to it. But most of the time musicians just play any show offered to them and don't really consider a strategy. There's so many useless shows that do you no good. Try to get to know the ecosystem of the city you're playing. If the venue is off the radar of other promoters is going to be with seven random bands who you sound nothing like, you're better off staying home and practicing. Since especially if you have a small audience, there's only so many times people are going to come out to see you in a particularly bad show and you shouldn't waste that on these bad shows with seven bands that do you no good when if you get a really good show break, this may be the time that those few people you can bring out really seem to amount to something that does you good. There's plenty of venues where promoters just throw anyone together in hopes of bolstering the bars earnings by a random crowd that does you no good. You have to remember the promoters at the bigger venues that you actually want to play know which venues are like that and they intentionally avoid looking at them. Avoid those at all costs and focus your energy to effective bookings. But to tie this back to getting bookings every time you play anything but the venues you're concentrating on, you may be diminishing your draw from a show at your goal venue. So be sure to have some strategy of playing live and don't just say yes to everything. Most of the groups I've seen build their fan base through live shows have done it very effectively by being very conscious and calculated of when they're playing and what it may mean for their future bookings. And yes, some get a little too rarified and stay home a little too much and miss some growth whereas others just play way too much with way too many different groups. Try to find the happy medium and really give this a lot of consideration. So a lot of what I've talked about here requires you learning the landscape of a particular city you want to get booked in. And the way we do that is of course finding community. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, one of my most popular videos talks about that which is linked on the screen right now or in the description below. While I often tell you finding a community is one of the most important things you can do, this is where it really comes in handy. So let's say you start a conversation with an artist by putting them on your Spotify RS playlist or music and talk shows, you then tag them on social media and you start a conversation. Start exchanging information about what you know about various promoters in each other's cities and hopefully talk about discussing playing a show together at some point. Your community is often little research assistants that you're going to trade information with and try to understand what is going on in each ecosystem in each city for them. Reach out to these other musicians and talk to others and you can find the answers of who are the best people to book shows with as well as who to play with, which brings me to. There's a lot of strategies for playing live shows that bring people out to them and audiences have a great experience at. But the most effective one is to assemble a roster yourself and approach a promoter with it. Remember, if you approach a promoter with, hey, me and these other two artists have been talking and we really want to play together, you're basically doing the promoter's job for them, which goes a long way and can really help your chances of getting booked at a venue. And if you want to go the extra further, consider bringing other things that may bring in people for the show, which is, of course, all genre dependent. But like, for example, maybe jewelry vendors, that popular food truck, a great DJ for between the set, dancers or whatever gets people out, it culturally fits your music. But most of all, it's whatever gets people telling their friends how great a time they had and makes them want to come back to see you again. If you also put a name on the night and do it semi-regularly for marketing and growing your audience, it can be really, really effective if people know what to call something and know how to classify and tell people about it. Doing a bi-monthly night or sometimes every three months night that's a big, big event that people talk about can be a really, really effective way of making people know to show up for something that's really special. Now, remember, assembling these shows goes vice versa. If you're becoming friends with other musicians, they may put you on them in their town, especially if you do right by them in your town. Remember, this really helps your chances of getting a show since you're giving a promoter an easy way to get a bunch of hours of their life booking a show back to them so they can do what concert promoters love to do, which I imagine is catfish people on dating sites and reject them since who else would want this job of concert promoter doing all of this rejection all day? OK, that's it. In the next video in the series, we'll be talking about what to do at the actual shows to make sure you're growing your live show attendance as well as getting more specific on what promoters want to see. And eventually, we'll even start talking about booking tours. But we're also going to be talking about what I missed and other things in future live streams. So any questions you have, please lay them down in the comments and stay tuned for what else is on this channel. So please be sure to like, subscribe and get notified since I want to keep building this conversation and talking about these subjects since there's plenty more videos on this subject coming in the next few weeks. And if you're new here on the screen right now, there's a playlist on how to grow your fan base from zero to 10,000 fans as well as how to kill it on Spotify. Thanks for watching.