Booking a tour yourself or booking agent?

[musicbooking]

I have been booking more and more these days and wanted to know if anyone has had luck with sites like indiebooker.com, indieonthemove.com, sonicbids.com, reverbnation.com to help get dates booked themselves... Do you know of any others besides those? What is the benefit of DIY booking vs having a booking agency? Can agencies do better?

 

Cheers!

[beatpoet]

I was in bands with and without booking agents in the UK and the experience with a booking agent was so much better than without. I found that in a band without a booking agent, there may as well have been a brick wall around the venues where people principally go to to listen to music (obviously because they are more choosy about who they put on), so we ended up doing alot of waste of time gigs which we got through MySpace. We hardly ever got paid and generally we were reduced to playing in the backroom of pubs. In the band with a booking agent, we toured, played proper music venues and always got paid.

[Lord Lav]

Hey thanks for starting this thread! I was unaware of websites like the ones you mentioned (with the exception of reverberation), so I can't give you advice based on those sites. But thanks for name checking them because I'll definitely want to look at them.

 

I have to say from my DJ perspective it's been sooo much easier with a booking agent in getting gigs, and it's boosted my opportunities as a result. But I believe your ability in being able to get gigs easily with or without a booking agent is dependent on how much pull you have as a band/artist. At the end of the day if you can bring a large following every time you perform and make the venue money getting gigs is easy whether or not you have an agent. But a decent booking agent is great in the beginning to get you the gigs to start building that following.

[xrleroyx]

This just really helped us out. Thank you.