Hi everybody! Noshi here with another oh so interesting blog post. There's this thing about who is responsible for bringing in the audience. Obviously the band, right? Story time.
Throughout our relatively short career, we've experienced just a few aspects of the industry in small form. There were the open mics where you had to pay to perform or buy a drink/food, battle of the bands where you had to do both, tiny rooms with no pull requirement, big rooms with lenient pull requirements, living rooms and cafes, just to name a few. And as you can tell from my snide moment-ary in the previous sentences, some have requirements for audience size while others don't. Quite a few are justified, but some really aren't.
You will even experience booking managers...or agents...(what's the difference here???) that ask for advance ticket sales, contracted guarantees (oh please avoid these if you're just starting), a monetary deposit and so on. Heaven only knows if these examples are normal, but because of science and actual real-world experience from our part, I am inclined to believe that the demands are really common. Of course, that isn't to say one should accept/agree with it or not.
I feel like this post has a lot of slashes in it. Does it have a lot of slashes in it?
In an ideal world, it is the responsibility of everybody involved in the show to bring in an audience. That is, the band, first and foremost, whoever put together the show and the venue. I mean, isn't that logical? Yes. Yes, it's logical. Because here are some things you get out of it:
Bands: Exposure, money, quality content, experience
Venues: Exposure, money, quality content, industry cred
Whoever put together the show: Exposure, money, quality content, industry cred
I mean, everybody loves money, right? If we all worked together, we'll live in peace and harmony. Aka, we'd all make money.
Ha.
Why is this not true? Our band has several forms of social media, this blog, our website, a newsletter, paid advertisements, quite a lot of footwork, poster, flyers, advertisement videos, advertising campaigns and so on. Some of these venues have a massive potential by literally just hanging our poster near their front door, but they don't do that. And don't get me started on whoever put together the show. I guess, the idea is that they put together the show, and the work is done. You'd be tré confused about the fact that ticket pre-sale links, FB events for the night or...lineup detail would be entirely missing.
I'm going to look into this. Surely, if a band takes care of their shit, the other parties involved should as well.
Btw, that means, take care of your shit first. Then, follow me to Part 2 where I hope to interview some key players about this topic.
Peace.
Comments