INXS Booking Agency (and slick middlemen)

Oct 6th, 2005 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Booking More Gigs

All that posting about Rock Star: INXS has given some folks the impression that my company is the booking agency for INXS.

Uh, no. Just a fan. You can stop e-mailing me now.

But you can find their current itinerary at Pollstar and you can contact their business office by e-mail for information about booking corporate events.

This does bring up a curious point. The booking agency business is traditionally shrouded in mystery, so there are a bunch of folks on the web that claim they’re the official booking agent for INXS, or Dave Matthews, or anybody else. In reality, the ones that aren’t scam artists are actually middlemen that can, in some cases and if the money’s right, broker concert events.

You can avoid that markup by approaching a booking agency directly with a serious offer. A serious offer means you’ve got five digits or more to spend at a venue like a concert hall or a hotel ballroom, not your buddy’s house with the big back yard. See what Ani Difranco’s booking agency has written about making good offers.

Most professional booking agents are off the grid, usually out of fear of being inundated with unsolicited submissions. Without their presence, sharks can fill the water. Pollstar’s professional directories are the definitive places to look for names and coordinates — and if you can’t buy them, you’ll have to find a library that has them or make good friends with a record company intern that can borrow one for the night.

Track these topics: booking agency, INXS