Booking More Gigs

RETRO: Booking Agents and Music Managers

Mar 18th, 2008 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Booking More Gigs

Welcome to spinme.com, where we help working musicians make more money making music. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or our weekly newsletter. Thanks for visiting!I’ve been wanting to write some new articles about booking concerts. It seems like we’re in another cycle where folks ask me [...]



Neon Armadillo: Redefining Live Country Music

Mar 17th, 2008 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Booking More Gigs

Many of my friends and colleagues have gravitated into the country music space over the past few years. It makes sense, given that Nashville is probably the last stronghold of the traditional music business model that relies on teams of writers, producers, artists, and marketers to make things happen. In so many ways, country is [...]



Listeners Use Your Music in Context — How You Can Spread Your Own Music Using iMixes

Sep 12th, 2006 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Booking More Gigs, Growing Your Audience and Selling MP3s

Listen to this great description of how one listener uses and enjoys iMix selections from the Apple iTunes Music Store. People in America used to use radio and mixtapes for that kind of experience, but now they turn to other listeners online.
So here’s one suggestion to boost sales of your music while growing your audience.
Think [...]



Ticketmaster and Venues Experiment with Auction Pricing

Sep 12th, 2006 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Booking More Gigs and Concerts

Instead of selling every seat in the house for $30, INXS recently staged an auction on Ticketmaster. The highest priced ticket sold for $500, the lowest for $3. Nine Inch Nails used a similar model, and watched online scalping drop substantially. Venues and ticket sellers are finally clued in to the idea that pricing for [...]



Internet Buzz Is Not the Same as Street Buzz

Aug 22nd, 2006 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Booking More Gigs and Growing Your Audience

I was helping to produce a seminar for musicians at the front end of the MySpace explosion — this was a few years ago — and a band pitched a booking agent at the event by saying, “we’ve already got 2,000 friends on MySpace!”
And the booking agent replied, “ugh, you’re not one of those MySpace [...]



CBGB: Punk’s First Theme Park

Aug 9th, 2006 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Booking More Gigs, Editorial and General

[Thanks to a Stereogum commenter for a great headline.]
In my books, I’ve written about the ways that baby bands would push hard to get a date at a venue like CBGB, then complain when a talent buyer would insist on preselling dozens of tickets for a showcase slot. (Hint: the talent buyer knows you don’t [...]



Getting through to Talent Buyers: Pest vs. Persistent

Aug 1st, 2006 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Booking More Gigs

Jay Flanzbaum from the indispensible OnlineGigs has a great article at Galaris this month about the distinction between being effectively persistent and just bugging the snot out of a talent buyer. Most of the bands that claim “nobody will book my band” probably had someone Jay’s describing screw up their potential relationship.
Technorati Tags: music+industry, booking+agent, [...]



Working With An Agent

Feb 17th, 2006 | By Scott Andrew | Category: Booking More Gigs and Tips

This article has been around for awhile but the information is still valid: Working With An Agent.
The point is this: regardless of how wonderful a talent your are, the commissions you pay a booking agent must be able to not only cover the agent’s expenses related to their representing you, but must provide some [...]



There’s More Than One Kind Of Gig

Jan 23rd, 2006 | By Scott Andrew | Category: Booking More Gigs, Concerts and Tips

Ahem. Check, one two…check… ::thump thump::
Hi. I’m Scott Andrew, singer-songwriter guy from Seattle, and as Joe already mentioned, I’ll be a guest blogger on spinme.com for the next few weeks. I’ve never been a “guest blogger” before, so this is a brand-new venture for me. Also, I hope I don’t break anything. So here we [...]



The Coffeehouse Talent Buyer State of Mind

Jan 3rd, 2006 | By Joe Taylor Jr. | Category: Booking More Gigs and Growing Your Audience

Finally getting back to speed after getting a bad, bad cold during my holiday expeditions (the cold all my Northeast U.S. clients warned me that I would get!) — I’m catching up on a few hundred e-mails. If I haven’t responded to yours yet, just hang tight! I’ll plow through them over the course of [...]