What the Touring Landscape Looks like Post Pandemic
[Music] what's going on welcome to the new music business I'm your host Ari herstand author of how to make it in the new music business the book Third Edition coming this January so today's episode I don't have a guess this is actually a replay of a webinar that I gave just a couple weeks ago called what the touring landscape looks like post pandemic if you attended this live uh I spent a bunch of time at the end asking questions I kind of cut that out of this one because we went for about an hour just answering questions which reminds me if you want to attend future uh webinars like this or any events that I'm doing make sure you're on the email list that's where I send out all the information about these so you can attend all the events that I do it's just go to reset.com get on that email list but today's episode um this uh this webinar that I gave what we cover is well the current state of the tour Marine landscape of both the macro touring industry and the micro that means both what the Pulsar numbers are what those big big numbers are what the you know the big touring industry what the dollars look like uh mostly of the the giant tours but also what you care about I'm assuming because like what I care about is what is the club industry looking like right now what is the small to mid-level touring industry look like and I think the I think the results are going to surprise you I interviewed a bunch of talent buyers club Owners uh booking agents promoters that kind of stuff to get the information I uh read a lot of their quotes uh some wanted to remain anonymous some are public and you'll know you know some of these clubs and some of these these agents but we also get into the current Club deals what the current Club deals for small to mid-sized venues are looking like we get into how to get opening slots for touring artists we talk about how to know when you're ready for a booking age and how to find a booking agent and I dig into the seven steps to sell out your next show we packed info into this webinar so I would encourage you maybe this is a time to get out that notebook and a pen and and take some notes on this um I do I do a few webinars a year usually they're they're private we don't really um put them on you know the podcast or YouTube or anything like that afterwards but this one was um I we got a lot of great feedback on this one and people were asking for the replay and the replays don't typically last very long so uh here it is I hope you enjoy it um as always you can find all of us that make the show happen at Ari's take on Instagram and Tick Tock pause this if you're enjoying the show and click that follow subscribe or like button leave us a five star review on Spotify and apple podcast those really help all right let's kick into the show let's talk about the state of the 2022 music industry now you may have seen these numbers these are published by pole star this was the um the top 100 tours so you know the Arenas out there uh the the giant theaters and Arenas uh the tours that we're talking about now if you just look at those numbers uh look at this we are we have far surpassed the 2019 numbers if you were to just look at the top 100 tours you'd be like wow we're back baby with a Vengeance and everyone is clamoring for the shows and you can't bust down the the live music venue doors fast enough well these numbers are a little misleading um ticket prices have gone up at Giant shows uh these are not scalper prices these are face value prices um and the average gross of uh per concert has gone way up look at that almost 200 000 uh more per show these top 100 tours are making all right let's keep this going here so uh top 100 tours again ticket just ticket numbers have also increased not just sales not just gross revenue actual number of tickets per show sold now as you see this is average of 8 000 tickets these are the kind of Tours we're talking about right now I'm assuming the majority of the people here today are not playing 8 000 cap rooms don't worry we're gonna get to the the small to mid-sized clubs in a second but this is the kind of stuff that the industry is talking about and so you know the another reason why I'm doing this webinar today is because I imagine that most people here don't care about these numbers I don't care about these numbers why would any of us care about how how well Harry Styles is doing he's doing amazing he sells out Madison Square Garden and every sweet I love Harry Styles don't get me wrong but like that doesn't help us that doesn't help the small to mid-sized music venues that doesn't help the the touring artist that doesn't help the Indie artist who's trying to get 300 people after the show but we're all part of the music industry we are collectively part of the music industry so we need to understand top to bottom now pollstar and billboard and rolling stone and Pitchfork and they all obsess over these big big numbers and like look at the industry numbers it's like that's cool I look at these numbers too cool so uh let's just get caught up on these numbers and uh that's that's you know helpful okay so let's keep this going let me pull up my second slide show here all right so how are small timid size venue is doing I think that's what we all really care about um okay oh and Lauren no overall ticket sales uh are up so if you missed that last slide everything uh those number let me let me actually go back to that just to let me just cover this button this guy up and then we will be finished here um so let me just get back to that slide because I want to show you just so and if you want um I'm gonna send everyone a replay of this so if you missed this or you blink or you have to take a bathroom break or something don't worry um so uh yes sorry overall ticket you're right overall tickets sold are slightly down um now the year's not quite over yet so I'm assuming by the end of the year that number will probably surpass 2019. uh the average tickets sold per show are up so once the year finishes now mind you this was published um I want to say just a couple weeks ago so you know uh these numbers by the end of the year 2022 I'm assuming every number is going to be up just like because average tickets and and there's more shows happening now than ever okay so let's move on all right so um I have interviewed and a bunch of people who work in the small to mid-sized venue space from Talent buyers club Owners booking agents promoters um I'm going to share just a tiny sample of the responses that I got that kind of given overview of this I know some Talent buyers uh agents might be here today watching this that's awesome um so here we go maybe you you listen to my podcast episode with um Jordan Anderson who is the talent buyer the booker for the troubadour uh she said we're still not back to being as busy as we were before the pandemic people aren't drinking like they used to or staying out as late and this is like me asking them you know where are we at right now where is everything kind of at the end of 2022 how are we post pandemic uh I also interviewed Paul bocker on the new music business podcast uh he's he told me so artist sales are down the numbers are probably not where they used to be pre-pandemic still it's hard to justify paying the same amount of money when you know the show's not gonna perform as well and that's from the buyer's standpoint the talent buyer he's not talking about the fan so um you know he books the Brooklyn Bowl uh 900 capacity both for Philly and New York and that was uh what he had to say about it uh Dana Frank so Dana is the CEO of First Avenue Productions as a promotions company out of the Twin Cities they run a bunch of venues in the Twin Cities uh ranging in capacity from uh like 250 to 2500 but she's also the president of National independent venue Association Neva uh many of you might know about Neva they were the organization that was started during the pandemic to help save our stages was their act and they actually secured through Congress to save our stages act which got um a lot of the music venues to help them stay afloat and got them um uh checks and essentially money to stay in business make it through the pandemic because obviously the live entertainment industry was hit the hardest of any industry I would argue uh in the world uh it's a tough party to come in because on one hand we're all happy and celebrating and we're excited but on the other hand there's so much more to do and the pain is very real it's not recovered we're far from it um Adam from the poor house in Raleigh North Carolina 289 capacity he's a talent buyer and the owner he's had a large majority of pre-sales these days are coming in week of the day before and actually day of the show anyone who has any sort of stake In Crowd showing up to a show knows how stressful that is I do worry about the lack of other clubs dedicated to live music post covet in Raleigh we lost a good number of venues and are now lacking the necessary capacity to accommodate local and touring artists my booking calendar is regularly getting seven to ten plus holds deep so at the end of the day I'm having to turn away a lot of artists that are essentially waiting in line to get a date that's not good for bands and it's not good for the scene Stephen Shelton he is also on the uh the Neva board he's a town fire and promoter I've done a few shows with him actually in Phoenix walk-up is all but gone on everything but local shows no show rates are no-show rates that means like when people don't show up are horrible when the show has been postponed or moved a few times or announced crazy far in advance but shows announced recently on a more normal timeline are having totally normal rates of no-shows I think there always was a reason why we didn't announce club shows too far out and that is just reaffirmed since there are so many tours right on top of each other because of the pause and touring once these start to get spaced out a bit more it will alleviate some of that pressure I also think a huge problem for the club is how many A-list acts are on the road and they are all really pushing ticket prices like we saw in the in the in the macro graphs if you are paying 500 a ticket to see Bad Bunny or Taylor Swift or ghost it is hard to see any club shows I think people are watching what they're spending they want to go to the huge can't miss shows that just doesn't have leave a lot of room for other less expensive events for most fans things are starting to come into perspective and Clarity here a Seattle area Taylor buyer who wanted to remain anonymous for this uh has been used or I should say their venues range from 200 to 650. attendance
rates have improved slightly since we reopened but we're still seeing no-show percentages upwards of 30 percent on some shows no shows are people that bought tickets but don't actually show up now pause before I keep reading um why do you why do you care about no shows if they bought tickets well the artist still makes that ticket price and if you have a split with the the venue or the promoter sure you're making the ticket price but remember venues make the vast majority of their money on the bar so if you don't have 30 of your audience that you're expecting buying drinks the venue is hurting you need people to actually be in the room to buy drinks the ticket price is mostly by and large going to the artist that's why the venue needs people in the room to buy drinks so that's why they keep hitting the no show rate and why that matters I feel that the smaller venues are being hit harder by no shows because it's a more casual experience to see a smaller artist than someone you've spent a ton of money to go see walk-up day of sales are definitely slower than they were pre-pandemic I think folks are still not used to the night Lifestyles they had back before 2020. shows are starting ending earlier because everyone had a year plus where they weren't staying out past midnight it's hard to expect folks to adopt late that late night schedule like they used to Ryan from uh he's the entertainment director for slow Brew in San Luis Obispo California 500 capacity room we are on the flip side we are breaking ticket sales record highs heading into the fall there is a revived energy that wasn't there in 2019. our walk-ups have suffered a bit and we are seeing a decline in no shows we were averaging around 15 to 20 now showing now we are down to 10 that's good people are showing up no show rate is down percentage I think one of the biggest and most powerful things that came out of covet was the creation of Neva that's the like I talked about National independent venue Association and I'm so grateful that we have that organization now this is the advocacy organization advocating on behalf of independent music venues I have some good friends working hard over there and they're doing amazing things in our industry thank you Neva all right this is from a Los Angeles club owner Talent buyer they also asked to remain anonymous flip side attendance rates are much worse now tickets are not selling as far in advance this is a common theme I'm seeing crowds don't want to to commit it feels like attendance is still probably down 30 to 35 from pre-covered levels which is an improvement from earlier this year it seems artists that are doing underplays are doing fairly well that means artists that are playing rooms smaller than their typical draw uh so maybe they normally could play a 2000 cap theater and they're choosing to play a 500 cap venue that's called an underplay but the developing newer artists and music Discovery we have been known for is way down in attendance fans bands management all feel like they're committing less many more cancellations than we have ever had some because of illness but many for no reason given agents I've spoken to have said it's industry-wide and they're perplexed as to why artists are canceling last minute maybe because of light ticket sales and or tours canceling maybe because they test positive for covid or have a family emergency but there are definitely more it feels like there has been a shift in what people want to do when they go out being locked up for two years with the code restrictions made people crave social contact most small concerts and Listening Room experiences are people watching and listening to the stage and not interacting with each other bars and clubs and other places where social interaction happens are doing quite well listening rooms and small venues not so much all right so now some booking agents what they have to say they're kind of looking um you know they book a bunch of artists at a bunch of different clubs so those are a smattering of clubs all over the U.S uh small small clubs
um all right this booking agent primarily books a hundred to a thousand cap rooms and they said a lot of the promotions companies have been sheltered from going out of business by becoming a subsidiary of a larger company like AEG or Live Nation for those times I think that I'm dealing with my contact that I have known for years but it is more like I'm dealing with a huge conglomerate making the rules of the road one of the more worrisome new stipulations is the stop loss Clause where your guarantee goes away if they do not sell enough tickets when a band is covering all of the fees and their budget for crew and vehicle and gas and staff and promo and such is leading to a barely breaking even proposition one show getting canceled can turn a workable tour into a money pit I get it that without clubs there will be no place to play but without gigs that the band can rely upon actually happening or getting paid for there will also be no band as it is not like they can go work for three weeks in order to lose money I had not heard of this stop loss Clause before this is a new thing and it sucks and I think we should refuse it another booking agent that books a little bit bigger of a range from 250 to 3 000 cap room said overall Vibe is bullish that's good Bulls go up um this fall has been lighter than historicals I think this has to do with with um oversaturated over saturation of shows going on this is a common theme that we've been seeing too many shows happening everybody's hit the road the Indie promoters have really proven themselves during this time period nine times out of ten the Indie promoter will sell more tickets than a major promoter the marketing departments within Indie versus a major promoter seems to be Night and Day this year festivals have to make offers smarter than ever a record amount of festivals lost their asses last year and this year stay tuned on how this affects the landscape in 2023 promoters more than ever really need to be making the right bet on who they host at their Festival I feel like music fans are less into checking out the band they haven't heard of free pandemic I felt like the unknown band could book The the right room on the right day of the week and play in front of 100 plus but this isn't the case anymore fans are less willing to go out rooms of all sizes are back folks are coming out to all genres if an artist has fans those fans are coming out all right so let's take some big takeaways from all of this well number one right now the market is oversaturated uh the makeup shows are happening currently but everything's moving in a healthy direction so once everyone kind of catches up and shows are spaced out a little bit more it will give fans an opportunity to spend some more money on these smaller uh to mid-level club shows Once the the touring bands kind of get on their normal regimen everyone is still rushing back I don't know about you but I just saw a makeup show last month believe it or not from a show that was booked for 2020 and uh get this which is perfect I actually bought the tickets twice because I didn't remember I had bought the tickets it was to the Greek Theater in LA I forgot I bought the tickets in 2020 and then I I saw them they were like oh they're playing uh the Greek Theater I'd love to see them and I I bought tickets again and only when I was walking up and like opened my Ticketmaster kind of like wait why do I have two tickets to the show that's uh I forgot um so you know these makeup shows are still happening but we're learning acts with Die Hard fans do sell tickets pop is selling pop music so the big stars uh not just if you play the genre of Pop we're talking about if you are a pop act with fans in the pop realm fans are buying much closer to the show they're still buying in advance Walk Up Is Down like we talked about so app whereas um and I noticed this in LA but I know La is like an island compared to everywhere else in the country but pre-pandemic uh what I've experienced is uh La was vast majority walk-up meaning no one in La really bought in advance a show that I just ran um a week ago actually it was about 80 percent pre-sale and only 20 walk-up and this is in La um but we're just seeing this across the board says you know the booking agents and these music venues from around the country fan Behavior has changed they don't stay out as late we have to keep that in perspective whereas shows pre-pandemic may have started at 10 or 11 or something like that and that was totally acceptable if not anymore so if you have an option I would recommend starting your shows a lot earlier they want more social events fewer chances and people are taking fewer chances on unknown acts more social events all right what are Talent buyers looking for so if you're going to be pitching a talent buyer these are also known as Bookers these are the people that actually book the music at a club uh you have to remember and and understand what they are looking for um unfortunately there's gonna be a hard pill for you to swallow but this is the reality and I'm here to give you the hard truths that is why have you been following me for a while you know that's what I do but I'm here giving you the hard truth the hard truth is the vast majority of talent buyers don't really care as much about what you sound like they want to know can you bring people out can you get drinkers to buy drinks at their bar can you do that because if not it doesn't matter how much they love your music if they go out of business it is a business after all they might maybe you pitch them and they're like you know what you're my favorite band I've ever heard in my entire life I'm gonna listen to you a bunch and I can't wait until you are ready to play my room but if you can only sell three tickets you're not ready to play my room if my room is a 500 capacity room because what like uh three people I'm gonna go out of business that way so just remember the most important thing that Talent buyers care about is what is your ticket history can you sell tickets and not like oh yeah yes I can and you're confident they want to see the history that means like I sold 250 at the echo I sold 350 at the varsity I sold 400 in in September at the poor house I did 300 like that is ticket history very important I also want to know let's say you've never toured okay that's fine they are bands that are breaking out on the internet every single day that have no tour history no ticket history no problem what's your listenership on dsps in the market DSP stands for uh it's a catch-all for Spotify Apple music them streaming services what is your listenership on streaming services in their Market if you can say if you can go to a talent buyer in Denver Colorado and say hey I have 10 000 monthly listeners in Denver here's my Spotify numbers here's my Apple music numbers and guess what I have 2 000 email addresses in Denver they're gonna be like oh I'll absolutely book you in my 300 cap room that sounds absolutely like you can you can sell out my room all right mailing list numbers again like you can't really let your fan your listeners on Spotify know that you have a show on the market not yet you can on bands in town if you're not paying attention to bands in town you really should be because you can ping everyone in every city in bands in town for free mind you letting them know that you have a a show in their Market uh so pay attention to bands in town um but Spotify doesn't let you do that Apple music doesn't let you do that uh bandcamp does if you're selling music on bandcamp hell yeah you can let your fans know that you're playing you're going on tour uh Pandora does I don't know how many uh people are paying attention to Pandora but you should be you can let your fans know uh via a little audio message for free on Pandora that you're playing the market but Spotify and apple music the two most dominant streaming services in the west uh do not let you contact your fans so build your mailing list and sure Instagram is like you know the way that everyone is kind of interacting with uh their fans and stuff these days but like we all know that Instagram can squash your posts whenever they damn well please and they sometimes will be like you know Shadow ban you or you'll post something and normally you get 500 likes and today you get 50 likes why who knows Instagram's having a bad day mailing list build that email list build that text message list Talent buyer is also looking for complete bills meaning if you are pitching a 300 cap room and you can sell 100 tickets go to them with two other bands that can also sell 100 tickets meaning they have they have ticket history and if you go to them and say hey here's a three-band bill we each have sold 100 tickets within the last four months I bet they will book you and if you can then tell them how you're going to promote the show and all the promo strategies that you're going to do for it they're gonna be like wow that's awesome thank you okay hell yeah and this is probably the most important uh you're spacing out your performances if you play every Wednesday uh at 100 at a bar why would a venue book you for a Friday and if you play every Wednesday for free at a bar and then you want to play a 300 cap club for ten dollars tickets on a Friday they're not going to want to book you because your fans will be like I'll just catch them on Wednesday for free why would I go to the Big Show space out your shows that's really important if you if you are having a big show coming up don't play that City for at least six weeks before that Big Show okay six minimum two months is better three months is even better I understand like you need to be playing and everything but like if you over saturate your city fans are just not going to come out and then your ticket history is going to be all right let's talk to current Club deals for small to mid size venues all right the best deal out there is still the guarantee versus or plus actually a percentage of sales what does this mean this means the deal could be like all right we're going to guarantee we're going to give you a guarantee of two thousand dollars versus 80 of the door of ticket sales so if the show makes um if the show makes four thousand dollars well you're gonna get that percentage that that versus because 80 percent of four thousand dollars is higher than two thousand dollars uh who's good at math and wants to do the crunch those numbers for me but I know that eighty percent of four thousand dollars is higher than just a two thousand dollar guarantee that's what it means some actually do it on top some will say like a guarantee Plus 30 of ticket sales or something like that so these are great deals for artists because you know you're going to get the guarantee no matter what whether two people show up or 200 people show up you're still going to get that guarantee unless there's that stop loss clause in there which I've never seen before so uh you have to look out for that that Clause as well in the agreements uh but for the most part most promoters and clubs are honoring the guarantee or the percentage all right um and Neil I see you just sent me a private message you might want to post that as a public message in the chat because um I'm gonna hold for questions until the end okay um a great deal is um door split from dollar one so no guarantee but you both are in it together so you and the club are in it together um so let's say it's ten dollar tickets and you're gonna say all right the artist gets 70 the venue gets 30 so if uh 100 people come ten dollar tickets thousand dollars made on the show you get 700 the venue gets 300. great that's a great deal that's super Fair that's awesome uh you're both in it together you get to keep your merch sales then you get to keep their bar sales win-win works just great hopefully you get to keep your merch sales some venues are taking a percentage of merch which I don't like I don't care for that I will argue to the death I called out the Brooklyn Bowl and the Troubadour when they were like yeah you know we do it was like they felt bad because they're like oh we we don't want to but it's kind of the club dictating this to us a lot of big big rooms take a percentage of merge sales sucks it's stupid because the band's not getting a percentage of the bar why are you taking a percentage of their merch come on it's absurd all right standard deal expenses off the top then the door split this is standard I see this a lot um that means okay our expenses are 500 meaning you know we're gonna have to hire a door person to take the tickets we wouldn't normally do that if you weren't playing here tonight we're gonna have to hire a sound engineer to run the set for the night and that's you know 200 bucks the door person's 100 bucks and then you know um staff and all that stuff so let's say it's like a 500 expenses off the top and then the split so it's like all right still doing a 70 30 split ten dollar tickets sell 100 tickets thousand dollars comes in they take off 500 and then they split 950 70 30 with you after that standard deal see that a bunch totally fair sneaky deal now I only really see this in LA and New York um and I it's starting to kind of maybe happen in Nashville and maybe some other places don't love it um artists get paid only after a set number of people paid to see you not the band after you not the band before you only you now I don't like this deal uh a lot of venues in La do this venues that I love uh you know but this is and they can do this because La has an oversaturation of artists and um you know people have this mentality in La have hit it and quit it so it's like I'm gonna come for the band I'm here to see and then I'm Gonna Leave now it doesn't encourage artists to play shows together it doesn't encourage to create a complete Bill together it doesn't encourage fans to come at the beginning and stay to the end it's um you know venues that do this they are kind of clamoring and and just be like oh well it only you know uh they they have to only focus on each individual act and not looking at a full night as a whole which I feel like if you focus on the full night as a whole you would just be more successful all around uh everyone's in it together now what this actually means is usually there's someone with a tally sheet at the door you walk up like it's ten dollars and then they ask you who are you here to see or if you're selling tickets in advance sometimes I've seen a little check mark who are you here to see which sucks because like sometimes I go up to show them like uh I'm here for three of the bands that are playing tonight and they're like well you have to pick one and that's who's getting paid which is like not cool like I was like well what the hell like I guess or the option is like well I guess what I have to pay like I have to pay like twenty dollars uh for and then both artists get paid which is also kind of nuts because I can stay the whole night so I don't really love this deal but unfortunately a lot of clubs in LA and and New York are do this but if you really crunch numbers and think about it it's like the venues May argue it's less like well if if you know um oh and here's what it means only after set number of people so they usually say it's like all right it's you get paid zero dollars if 24 people come to see you but you get 65 of the door if 25 people come and see you there's like this this Benchmark there's this like Baseline there which is also kind of shitty because it's like 24 people came to see me they paid ten dollars the club now makes 240 24 drinkers are in your bar and I make zero dollars on the night like come on that's that is frustrating and kind of infuriating to be honest um and but if 25 people come oh wow cool now I now I get make 65 at the door and they'll be like oh well we need to cover our expenses it's like yeah but if you have five bands on that night and they all bring 24 people you just made over a thousand dollars uh from ticket sales and you've made you have 200 drinkers in your bar buying the bar buying drinks and every band just made zero dollars is that ethical do you think that's ethical well it's just kind of how it is which is kind of annoying so uh I would I would really argue that you know um I would I would encourage these Talent buyers uh to rethink these kind of deals and how they work because you know it's tough It's really tough for artists I've been on the losing end of this deal a few times and it like really hurts it's like the pit in the stomach and uh you know the door guy who pays me at the end of the night will come up to me like sorry you only 24 sometimes that threshold's like 35 or 50. I'm like sorry you only had 47 people here I was like wait that's 47 they're like yeah but you need 50. wait so I'm getting zero dollars tonight yeah wait so you get 470 and all the drink sales sorry all right bad deal not love with it uh is the rental fee um this is uh you know the club might say yeah you can rent this out for two thousand dollars and you get to then you know charge you know run your own tickets do whatever you want it it essentially says to you uh it essentially says there's no um we have no faith in your show we don't believe in you we don't think that you're gonna bring anyone uh we have no faith but if you want to pay us two thousand dollars you can rent the remote you can charge whatever you want for tickets now you may actually make a lot of money if you promote the out of your show and it goes really well then you actually might you know make more money this way it it actually could benefit you and I know I've done this um it and and it can work so you have to crunch numbers but now you put your promoter's hat on it's like how much do you want to be a promoter you know um this is what promoters do they rent out the room they play the fat fee um you know pay the flat fee and they rent the room up all right now the worst deal out there is the pay to play deal don't ever do this everybody listen if there's one thing that you take away from this is never pay to play okay what does this mean it's not just so I've seen different variations of pay to play uh the absolute worst is somebody hits you up and be like oh you want to play the club all right pay me 500 bucks and uh then I'm gonna give you 50 tickets to sell at fifteen dollars and so you can keep whatever's left over of that uh that's super shitty if you crunch those numbers it's like you have like the potential to make like maybe 20 of what you sell but if you don't sell all 50 then you make like you're losing a lot of money I've also seen uh scammers out there there's also why you never want to pay to play where they're like oh you want to open for this huge artist at this big Club venmo me a thousand bucks and you can be the opener never ever do that because then the artist shows up at the club and guess what they're not on the bill they got scammed don't ever do this festivals I've seen festivals do this you gotta sell tickets and then you're gonna get near the headliner no don't ever do that those festivals are shows I've written about this a bunch over the years uh never pay to play never buy tickets from somebody if a promoter comes to you a promoter comes to you and see like oh you want to play The Viper Room you want to play the whiskey or whatever because if they're notorious these these rooms for pay to play like all right here's how it works uh we're gonna set up an Eventbrite and uh you gotta sell tickets to your set and uh you know you gotta pay us actually 500 bucks but then you know you can make whatever you sell and your tickets oh and if you don't sell enough tickets uh you're gonna have to pay us more before we allow you to get on stage don't ever pay to play okay how to get opening slots for touring artists so let me let me go through this with you I'm gonna actually share my screen um well I don't need to share my screen for this one um so if you can go to any any venue's website and look at their calendar and you can see all right which of the shows that they have coming up are not sold out now which also don't have openers and so as you can kind of see here can you see this yeah all right so like you know you go down the calendar and you're like all right let's just see let's see about this show this melt show on November 11th all right uh doesn't look like there's an opener okay so um now what do you do well you can actually just contact um let me show you actually wrote a little sample email here so you email the uh Talent buyer of that club and something simple like this hey Jordan do you need support for melt November 11th so look at this is the subject line Mel November 11th opener to the point you need support from melt number 11 I manage pink shoes and I think this would be a great fit we recently did remember ticket history 215 at The Echo 175 at the hotel Cafe 150 at Golden link here's two live videos right there give some accolades what's kind of Buzzy in the industry whatever you want to put here here's a link to some more stuff your your press kit your EPK whatever you kind of your one sheet here we'll say we'll make sure to go out all out with promo make sure our crowd gets out for this that's great the talent buyer can take this and be like wow okay they're good for like almost 200 tickets uh if the show isn't selling wealth it's like a 500 cap venue and they've only sold 200 tickets hell yeah they need a buffer to put 200 more on there so they'll probably do it for you now how do you get opening slots for touring bands that's how to get it at a one one single show on one single club night which I would encourage everybody to do all right how to get opening slots for touring bands well uh email the uh the band directly you can find their contact information typically on their website or their booking agent you can just Google it you can find it super easy to find contact information to Bans or the manager someone you say hey Tony we're big fans of melt caught them last time they came through Minneapolis at the Varsity Theater do you need support for this tour we have some good numbers in the markets you're visiting and would love to join them for this run and make sure it's a huge success here's our ticket history so you show what you can sell in the markets that they're visiting again if they only have 50 100 200 tickets sold in Denver they're like wow we could actually really use an additional 50 that would be really helpful you linked your your videos um and you do some Accolade same kind of thing let me know and then follow up don't forget to follow up that's super super important uh just because I didn't get back to you they might be super busy or they might have the flu or whatever follow up I would I would encourage you to follow up every week all right how do you get a booking agent when you're ready well number one it's only when you're ready because what do booking agents care about they're running the business will you make them money this year if you are not good from any tickets it's going to be really really hard to convince a booking agent to work with you unless they really really really really really really believe in you and are making so much money from their other artists that they have so much money to spare that they now can actually devote the time to kind of work with a baby band which is a hard sell so if you have that ticket history they're like oh I can grow with this so when are you ready well ticket history I would say here's a benchmark now this can vary but I would say you can draw 400 people locally 108 plus markets if you can do that you can pretty much email any booking agent in the country let them know this and they will take you seriously if you can't do this well keep pushing on your own until you can all right seven steps to sell out your next show number one spread out your shows we already talked about this if you play every day every week No One's Gonna Come number two create a show poster this makes it legit this makes it like it's an event actually get something designed that you can post create show videos for all platforms so whether you're doing Tick Tock or Instagram um YouTube all of this make show videos that you can post you know a bunch of stories like all the bands that are playing like make it really exciting it shows that this is an event that people want to get out to it's not just like a Tuesday night you know Five band Bill they're like oh whatever I'll just get the next one make this a legitimate show guess what we are in an internet era Street teams all that more important uh they're still physical posters I stand by these put around town in highly populated area of people who will go to see live music get those posters up put a QR code on them include other buzzing bands we've already gone over this with ticket history if you can sell a hundred but the other band can sell 100 the other band can sell a hundred guess what you're good for 300 tickets now all the fans are coming out for this big show so instead of playing to 100 people you're not playing to 300 people number six contact local media get a sponsor uh this is a great way to partner up I like calling them Partners uh you know whether you have like a locals show a local radio show they want to partner up give away some tickets something like that and number seven just like we talked about make it an event an actual event so um what does this mean it's not just a show now I can show you kind of like what I've done with an event and I'll talk a little bit about uh brass Roots District my project and kind of the events that we run uh these are true events so um here I'm gonna pull up a little uh thing here and what is what is Grassroots district and kind of how have we done this this is a we run an immersive concert theatrical Funk Soul experience so that's a lot of words everybody dresses up it's 1973. uh we have a
script we have a storyline it's all original music I wrote the music uh we did we put this up for the first time last summer it was outside because it was still covered era it was in a parking lot we did 16 shows I'm like oh wait you already you just said spread out your shows yes but this was like a run and this and we we capped capacities to make sure that we would sell it out uh we capped it at 100 tickets a show and there was waiting lists and people were like oh my gosh I need to get this and it just kind of spread it's almost like a residency if you're making an event everybody came dressed up we had like storyline we had dancers uh or we taught dances these are not dancers these are the attendees that learned the dance to one of our songs people dress up they love to take photos with all the stuff that we had um so it was a really fun experience and uh if you can turn your stuff into an event that would be awesome all right another one I want to talk about is uh the sweat Gala here and um this is by the artist um Annabel Lee I'll just tell you about it uh here we go so it was a red carpet event it was in a club um and you know as you can see uh there's uh people dressed up this is formal they they call it a she called it a grunge prom there was a tattoo artist there was a portrait station where people would make portraits of each other and then hang them up here was a self-help time machine where people could kind of go in and write letters to their future selves and then she would mail them the letter she's going to mail them the letters in a year which is kind of badass uh there was a a blank canvas and then people could just kind of contribute to the painting that night there was an art auction she's also an artist there's an art auction here uh it was also a music video premiere so like come up with an event like what is the event this is uh you presented some awards to the the director so like how are you gonna make oh and by the way it was a rock show and you know pull performed a full a full concert so like how are you going to make your show an event and that's what you need to think about down to the set list that she called The Sweat list remember this called The Sweat Gala and that was the on the far right you can see what the final painting looked like that everybody made that night it's pretty cool oh yeah and the bar made the most bar sales they'd ever made that night uh the club they actually printed out the receipt and was like uh this is the best night we've ever had and we made more money on this than ever [Music] today's episode was edited by Max Hunter theme music by brass Roots district and produced by all the great people at Ari's take
2022-10-27 17:31
