Thursday, April 12, 2012

Band Booking is Good for Venues Too


If you listened to some people talk about band booking and gigging you'd burn your guitar and amp now because of the economy.

 
Smart, successful musicians know though that when times are tough for bars and clubs etc, live music can actually be more not less important in order to make money. 


This is because venues (whether live music ones or not), more than ever need some method of differentiating themselves. Some incentive to get cash-strapped punters up off their backsides and out into the night to spend some money - in their venue.

 
One of these ways is obviously by offering live entertainment.

I saw a great example of this in action in a provincial UK town last month. This small town  had loads of bars in the town centre but only 2 were open on the Sunday night I went there. One of those bars was a venue which was advertising live bands 6 nights a week. 

The venue owner told me that it was the bands which drew the people in and that without them he too would be closed on a Sunday. He also told me his bar was "busier than it's ever been".

Not only that, but when I went to see a gig on this particular Sunday, they'd had live bands on all day prior to the evening performance by the band I'd gone to watch.

So if you think about it, us musos are actually doing these venues a favour. keeping them in business in some instances. Makes you feel a bit more relaxed about pitching your act to your next target venue doesn't it?

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