How are you booking gigs in 2018?

[SusieP]

In my area of the UK there is a lot of competition and it's from people who are semi-pro. They have income from their day jobs so they can lowball us Pros.

And it's hard for us to get into places where the lowballers have already played.

We aren't greedy but we want enough to make a living from a few gigs a week.

 

I hear those of you who say never play for free.

And I agree - never play an actual gig for nothing.

 

But this is an approx 40/45 minute set of songs we cherry pick to give the venues an idea what we do and to see how we compare to the lowballers they have been booking.

 

This free 'taster' thing is something we have started to do this year because the big Hotel chains we have made a living from for years have started to slash their budgets and reduce the number of nights they book visiting acts.They are now keeping their Ents pretty much in house.

So our income has fallen drastically.

 

Getting in at these more local smaller venues has proven impossible.

Phone calls - fobbed off.

Emails - either ignored or a polite brush off.

Press packs with CDs, Facebook messages, actual letters - all failed.

 

Then when we offered to play a taster set for free, we have only walked away from one without bookings.

 

We have found that this is better than video clips etc to get them to want more....and pay for it.

 

So, for us, it has been worth doing.

We've only done it for venues close to home, though.

 

We will target more venues next year as well.

We've fallen foul of having residencies where all our eggs were in one basket of one large chain.

They slashed their budgets at short notice and suddenly we did not have enough money coming in to live on.

Our aim now is to do what you guys do and be on rotation at several independent places as well as the Hotel chain gigs we have managed to hang on to.

So if one pulls the plug we are not solely reliant on that chain for work.

[Bob Dey]

Lots of competition here too. There's one guy that doesn't need the income from gigs at all yet he tends to get more gigs than everyone else. His advantage is that he eats out often and gets to know owners of restaurants personally. Although he isn't undercutting others, at least not by much if he does. Then there are a few places that pay very little (or nothing at all) yet some musicians will do the gig because they just wanna get out and play somewhere, anywhere.