Nathan Hubbard, former CEO of Ticketmaster, dropped a scorch-the-earth essay on the state of concert ticketing on The Ringer. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who’s about to haul away a whole bucket of Tony Awards for Hamilton, penned an op-ed piece for the…
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Book More Gigs
Surviving the squeaky-clean NACA convention
I caught a little bit of the dust-up on Twitter today about this article in the Atlantic that targets the—shall we say—sanitized nature of the National Association of Campus Activities conventions. Today’s college students can’t seem to take a joke…
Find cheap crash pads for your next tour.
I’m usually the only voice in a room full of musicians and music managers telling folks to slow down touring until you’ve saturated all of the zones in your region. (Understand the Zone Booking Strategy I’m talking about by checking…
A Coffeehouse Changes Hands
UPDATE 6/23/2016: Sad news. After a few changes of ownership and management, Steel City’s going to shut down for good. Sad club closing news to report: Steel City Coffeehouse in Phoenixville to close .https://t.co/AACSqQRGLM — wxpnfm (@wxpnfm) May 23, 2016…
NACA Schools Block-Booking Live Music
Every time I write about booking shows on college campuses, I get two kinds of e-mail. One burst of e-mail comes from artists who are so frustrated about how difficult it is to nail down dates through college activities boards,…
During tough times, make time for more fun.
I’m sick of articles that contain the phrase, “during these tough times.” (Sick of writing them. Sick of reading them.) Many of my contacts in the booking business have freaked out about receipts this year. When jobs are on the…
RETRO: Booking Agents and Music Managers
I’ve been wanting to write some new articles about booking concerts. It seems like we’re in another cycle where folks ask me questions like, “now that we have Twitter and Facebook, it should be totally easy to find a booking…
Neon Armadillo: Redefining Live Country Music
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…
Listeners Use Your Music in Context — How You Can Spread Your Own Music Using iMixes
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…
Ticketmaster and Venues Experiment with Auction Pricing
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…
Internet Buzz Is Not the Same as Street Buzz
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…
CBGB: Punk’s First Theme Park
[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…