Booking gigs can be so unpredictable.
I love songwriting and performing. It’s the greatest high there is. In order to perform, booking gigs is part of the process. So how does it work? Let’s get into it.
Booking gigs starts with finding venues that provide live music and that is just the beginning. Finding your fit within the local music scene as well as your fit within the venues that hire musicians, is an ever changing process. Venues, whether they are bars, restaurants, breweries, wineries, distilleries or other entertainment locations have a primary function and that is to provide a product or service to their customers and in order to continue doing that, the need to make a profit.
As a musician for hire, you provide a service to the venue you perform at and that service is live entertainment. Like most purchases, venues look for a return on their investment. It needs to make financial sense hiring live entertainment, which normally means keeping patrons at the venue longer purchasing food and drink. Venue size also affects how much money can be invested into live entertainment, as there is the cost of the musician or group as well as PRO fees, which cover the performance of other people’s music. In theory, if I play a Bob Seger tune, he gets paid songwriter and performance royalties.
Booking gigs can be so unpredictable, as there are a lot of variables. Assuming, you now know the venues that are a fit for you, booking means working with the individual who schedules the entertainment. Finding out who this person is, involves asking the venue who books the entertainment. The contact method here varies wildly. It can be by text, email, phone, Messenger or any number of methods. Booking a gig usually takes multiple touch points, meaning a lot of follow ups. One variable can be the time of year a venue books entertainment, as some venues book once a year and some book quarterly.
Next, the more dates a musician or venue has filled, the more challenging it becomes aligning on performance dates that are acceptable to both parties. Another variable when booking at the same venue year to year, is the person responsible for scheduling live entertainment, may change every year. It’s not uncommon for seasonal entertainment venues like wineries or lake front restaurants to have new people booking every year. The whole booking process starts over, meaning the new person may unaware you have performed there in the past, which can be a little frustrating.
Booking is unpredictable. My advice is to learn to pivot and always have a large number of venues you can work with. This year for me has involved a lot of failed alignment on dates, as I have a fair amount of gigs booked already. I am also seeing where some venues are cutting back on live music opportunities, which is unfortunate. Stay positive and keep after it. Have an awesome day.