Gigmasters.. yes or no?

[kmart]

A little info. for those of you considering from someone who signed up 2 days ago.:

 

1) As Guido points out, having your promo ready beforehand is really a necessity. I THOUGHT we were ready to go full-speed ahead (and had actually put off signing up for the past 3 months while waiting for promo to be finished), however until I signed up, I wasn't sure about a number of details that I would have liked to know ahead of time. Like the limit on audio/video content you can upload to the Gigmasters profile for potential clients to access" 200 MB. The initial cut of our video is more than that size, so for right now, no video. Not the end of the world, as the video is in HD and we should be able to lose a considerable amount of file-size just by dropping to standard def, which will take a couple days to get turned around...but I wanted to go live with this as airtight as possible.

 

So the major issue I had before signing up is it's somewhat difficult to assess what one will want to have ready to go before signing up...You can look at other band profiles, obviously, and use that as a guide, but knowing file size limitations, preferred formats, character limits, etc...would certainly have helped eliminate a fair amount of scrambling I've done in the past 48 hours to revise and change things that we already had in place just to fit the Gigmasters profile. MAYBE that information is available somewhere on the site to the public, but I didn't see it, and I didn't want to spend hours digging through to find it. If it does exist, it needs to have better visibility.

 

Again, not the end of the world, though.

 

2) That being said, now on to the positives. Right off the bat, the automatic stats/summaries/metrics & analysis are a great feature. Real-time (or close to it) updates to how many leads have been recieved and quoted against, average lead response times, views and downloads of your press kit, who comes up in searches with you (and who you come up in searches with), what they've been paid for the previous gigs booked via Gigmasters...

Really good stuff there. At the very least, I now have a much better sense of things in the big picture. I don't expect we'll get paid at the level of some of our 'competition' right off the bat with Gigmasters, but it certainly helps to see what people ARE paying for bands.

 

3) Bottom line is it's a tool that CAN be in one's toolbox to use along with any and every other means of getting gigs. Is it the end-all/be-all? Of course not But some food for thought to wrap up...

I created our profile Monday and uploaded basic press kit materials: song list, bio, a few pics, etc., ONE live audio demo (medley of 5 songs). I put careful consideration and thought into how the profile fields looked and spent a while revising and changing, mostly so I could become more familiar with the site and how to use it, but then decided that was enough for the day and went to bed.

 

Tuesday AM we had already received our first 'lead' (request for quote). I would characterize it as a 'soft' lead, but it is a lead nonetheless.

Stats showed that in the first 24 hours our profile was live, we had come up in 20 Gigmasters searches, always in the top 5 for our primary style of music in our immediate geography (Chicago area, and believe me, there are numerous bands doing something similar). As of my last look, we've since come up in three times as many searches, had a dozen actual views of the press kit/profile and one download of the audio. Now at this exact moment, none of that has yielded a single gig, or more to the point, a single dollar for the band, but I have to think about how much time, effort and MONEY it would cost to be able to confirm that a dozen people had checked out out press kit/website/promo materials otherwise?

 

Bottom line is it is allowing us another means to get in front of people's eyes. From there, we're ok to let the promo materials do the talking for us.

[sbrett]

Just an FYI for gigmasters signees. The signup page actually tells you the limits on audio/video:

 

Basic membership: 100MB of audio/video

Professional membership: 200MB of audio/video

Gold membership: 500MB of audio/video

 

Also for website newbies--don't forget to implement Google Analytics (free) on your main website. Gigmasters has great analysis tools, but you also need to know what is happening with the visitors on your site.

[stratotastic]

 

A little info. for those of you considering from someone who signed up 2 days ago.:

 

 

 

 

Great info. Thanks.

[Vito Corleone]

 

Like the limit on audio/video content you can upload to the Gigmasters profile for potential clients to access" 200 MB. The initial cut of our video is more than that size, so for right now, no video. Not the end of the world, as the video is in HD and we should be able to lose a considerable amount of file-size just by dropping to standard def, which will take a couple days to get turned around...but I wanted to go live with this as airtight as possible.

 

 

I think the amount you can upload is determined by the level of membership you have, but IIRC, there is also a per-file limit. I simply made a compresssed-file copy of our video for Gigmasters which, since their video screen is so small anyway, isn't really noticeable. (Although I did re-edit some of the graphics for that version so they could be readable on the smaller screen.

 

 

So the major issue I had before signing up is it's somewhat difficult to assess what one will want to have ready to go before signing up...You can look at other band profiles, obviously, and use that as a guide, but knowing file size limitations, preferred formats, character limits, etc...would certainly have helped eliminate a fair amount of scrambling I've done in the past 48 hours to revise and change things that we already had in place just to fit the Gigmasters profile. MAYBE that information is available somewhere on the site to the public, but I didn't see it, and I didn't want to spend hours digging through to find it. If it does exist, it needs to have better visibility.

 

 

Not sure if its on their or not. But good advice to find out all that stuff in advance. They are pretty good at answering questions and returning emails, so I would imagine any such questions one had in advance to signing up they'd be good about answering.