Get a Gig: How To Automate Your Club Gigs.

There was a time when musicians and bands had to physically approach a prospective venue to play at, find the booking person, introduce themselves, tell them they’d like to play, hand them a press kit with a CD and bio, and then play the time-consuming waiting game for a response, despite numerous follow-ups. To make matters worse, this method was once considered the “correct and ambitious way” of doing it!

Many booking departments can and will book musicians or bands instantly if they’ve heard of them or if they just “sense” that they have it together. This has happened to me, though I wouldn’t bank on it as a regular strategy, because a lot of your trips will be “wasted.”

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The (even more) primitive way of getting booked at a club is the “snail mail” press kit to the booking department. Some musicians and bands still do this, as pointless as it is, since the odds of actually getting booked at the club as a result of mailing a press kit are about equal to the odds of getting a record deal through the mail AND getting struck by lightning on the same day.

I’ve worked at a huge hollywood club, I’ve seen how piled up the booking office is with press kits all over the floor, the piles of CDs scattered about the room’s furniture, the overly-inundated and exhausting look from the booking person. I know that it really only comes down to several CD’s that were probably given to the booking person by co-workers or friends.

You need to think of an Internet approach to things; a laptop approach to things. The Internet automates so many tasks, and as a teacher, I can assure you that this “younger” generation has no idea (or too often takes for granted) the potential of this particular “type” of “media” that just a generation (or two?) before had no knowledge or access to it. What does this translate to? AUTOMATE your club dates.

There are several choices out there for automating your club dates, but one such example can be found at: www.onlinegigs.com. This site enables you to automate your bookings and promotions (and management of both) all from one place. You can start booking your gigs entirely online.

More to come.

© 2010 – Paul Alexander for: www.MusiciansCompanion.net – All Rights Reserved.