Help Us Build A Better Booking Agency
As regular readers know, Hypebot and MusicThinkTank are sister companies to booking agency Skyline Music. The agency represents more than 60 great nationally touring artists across a broad range of genres from bassist extraordinaire Victor Wooten to the powerful March Fourth Marching Band and from power pop of the The Smithereens to blue-eyed soul of Felix Caveliere (roster here). This week we're holding an agency retreat to discuss how we can improve the traditional booking agency model, and we want your ideas.. What does a great booking agency look like in 2011 and beyond?
What extra services should Skyline Music or any modern agency provide?
Marketing? Ticketing? Let you imagination go.
We want to make Skyline Music a great agency. Please share your ideas in the comments below.
How about:
– artist retreats inviting your artists as well as a curated list of other artists with facilitators on topics such as: making great music videos, creating compelling press angles, using DIY web tools
– artist retreats to inspire new artistic collaborations (could be piggybacked onto the above); also invite artists form other art forms (painters, dancers, architects, chefs, gardeners, etc.)
– artist exchange programs where one artist hosts another in their city for a show and then the other returns the favor (could include housing too) and over time you could develop a circuit, especially in cities that are harder to book profitable shows in
Amazing to hear you opening this question to the field for ideas… Good luck!
Dmitri @StoryAmp
http://www.StoryAmp.com
I think any agency should be set up to help improve the workflow between agent/manager/artist. For example, be integrated with the rest of the artist’s team and minimize the amount of data that needs to be re-keyed by using a tool like Marcato Musician (http://marcatomusician.com) to manage bookings and communications.
I’ve found it incredibly useful to have everyone from agent to artist on the same page so that when it comes down to advancing the shows and building the tour book we don’t have to go looking through email threads and notebooks or make additional phone calls and emails in order to capture all the details we need.
A great Booking company uses Social media to track artist’s buzz. They use software such as Radian 6 to see who/where people are talking about the artist. This tactic can help make quality bookings. I also think it may be ideal for the booking agent/company to help create a buzz online in the area where the bookings are made.
In 2011, a musician has access to many DIY sites that cater to them. A Booking company needs to evolve to be successful to meet the needs of the clients. A opportunity also presents itself. Record labels are signing less and less talent. There are more unsigned talent looking to make money playing music. This is an ideal area for a Booking Company to seize the day in.
The agency should coordinate and involve more in the promotion of the artist and not wait that the label is doing it. I think the look on the worldwide market of a booker and what should be done to promote the artist is different then from the label, which focus on selling records.
But I think even artist could do more and should do more.
Artist should be more connected with each other and arrange shows together. Inviting each other to their resident city and go together to other countries. Probably in terrytories they wouldn`t get enough audience by themselve. This is interesting for the fans. They can see 2 cool artist in one night and the artist could even reach some more new listeners.
I think Skyline should showcase their artists more on fundraising sites such as iFundie or Pledgemusic. So their audience can get a more visual perception of the current projects they are working on.
I’ve often thought that being a touring member of a band should be a prerequisite for anyone taking on a career as a booking agent. I’ve been on countless tours where agents don’t understand that playing in Louisville on Monday, NYC on Tuesday, Pittsburgh on Wednesday, and Virginia Beach on Thursday is the sort of routing that causes bands still touring in 15 pass vans to become incredibly exhausted, miserable, testy, and otherwise burnout more quickly than normal. Routings should make sense geographically, and ideally, shows shouldn’t be more than 4 or 5 hours apart without a day off in between.
Thanks for the great comments and ideas. Please keep them coming!
The agency/agencies simply need to do more and bring a consistent flow of solid bookings that they acquired using their own resources to the table. Agencies should make their agreements on a month to month basis, if even that.
being versed and presenting integrated booking options for your artists which not only include live performance, but music licensing, publishing clearances, merch rights, etc. will net you bigger, better, more lucrative opportunities for your artists.
rich levy, live nation
Both booking agencies and PR agencies should require their artists (or their artists’ managers) to supply them with well-developed marketing plans based on statistics drawn from the new crop of peer indexing tools (I particularly like RockDex’s Twitter geolocation feature, but that’s really just a 2011-ization of the segmented direct mailing list model)
By passing WELL-PACKAGED PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF THESE STATISTICS on to the presenting organization, a booking agency can inspire optimism about ticket sales potential where there was none (and thus close deals on a more regular basis).
Booking agencies can also assuage a presenter’s ticket sales fears by introducing them to other advertising tech like that profiled on this site — as well as by making sure that the presenter is in full communication with the artists’s PR agency from Day One.
Lastly, I think booking agencies should be more open to a rebalanced distribution of labor, as the collapse of the traditional industry model has meant that a lot of labor-intensive tasks have fallen to smaller and smaller band management teams. Maybe this means that booking agencies partner more often with management firms to accomplish mutually beneficial tasks?
In summation, everyone — presenters, bookers, managers and pr firms — have to work both harder and smarter!
– Leighanne, Forthright Management