Booking shows online

[ABrandt]

Hey guys,

 

I posted here a while ago about a business I wanted to start to help independent musicians. I envisioned a virtual record label of sorts that would automate things like booking shows online and selling CD's through an on-demand print service. I got a ton of great feedback (and criticism ) from the people here that I really appreciated. The whole thing was part of a business plan competition at my University. Although we lost the competition, we gained a ton of interest from investors in my community (oddly enough Steve Vai's brother is one of them).

 

I still feel like I need to learn a ton more on how musicians such as yourselves actually operate though. Right now we have a pretty simple website that allows you to send gig requests to venues. You sign up for the site, point your profile to your various online spaces (i.e. facebook page, official site, etc.), and then select when and where you'd like to play. On the back end we then send a request to the venue along with all your info. In theory I think this could be a simple way for new artists to get their foot in the door with their local music scene. But honestly I just have no idea how effective this will be.

 

What are people's thoughts here? If you want to see for yourself how it works its at beatnex.com. Any and all feedback would be awesome.

 

Thanks in advance,

Austin Brandt