One of my tips for career advancement in the music business is to know your place in ‘catering’, the area set aside backstage to feed everyone working on a show. On a large-scale show (700-capacity and upward), it is common practice to bring in a catering crew to cook hot, nutritious meals for the artists, … Read more
Touring creates lots of paperwork – contracts, riders, TV performance agreements, hotel rooming lists, etc – most of which has changing content. An example is the technical rider which contains an input list. The input list will change from time to time (the number of channels listed or the sources on stage for instance) as … Read more
The AAA – access all areas – pass is the revered token that denotes hip rock n roll success. You either have one, or you don’t. Having an AAA pass means you are in the band, in the crew, or are so close to the band they deem it necessary for you to have the … Read more
The person employed to set up, run, and maintain the venue’s sound system for visiting acts is the venue’s audio technician a.k.a. the “house sound guy”. If you create music that needs to be amplified—(pretty much any contemporary music) then the house engineer will help you when you arrive to perform your show. Likewise, you … Read more
In this day of Pro Tools on stage, quantising guitars to the beat in the studio, and syncing tempos for CDs, it is easy to forget that a good show, and therefore a musical career, starts with a great performance. And that performance, although coming from the heart and soul, will need a little refinement … Read more
Did you get a loud hum coming through the PA system at your last show? Or is there a persistent ‘zzzz’ sound in your rehearsal room, especially when plugging in certain bits of equipment? If so, you are experiencing ‘earth loop’ or ‘ground loop’ hum. All musicians recognise this sound (especially guitarists) and the way … Read more
Learn how to be a roadie, working with bands on tour, with this step-by-step guide! I have re-written ‘Roadie Inc. – Gain and Keep a Career in the Live Music Business’, and the new book, ‘5 Steps to a Roadie Job – Get Working On-The-Road with Touring Bands‘ is available now. ‘5 Steps to a … Read more
(This post is really for you if you live or work in the UK, and there may be similar arrangements if you live elsewhere) Traveling the world will leave you with foreign coins that are right now filling jam jars and spilling out from socks draws in your home. But sorting them out and getting … Read more
I have created a series of videos as part of a module on the live music busines that I teach at University of West London. The module is an introduction to the live music business, and this session will set the scene for study in the other sessions. There is an excerpt from the transcript below the video.
Read moreThe Live Music Business Session 1: Introduction to the Live Music Business
Email marketing will help your fans to give you money. I recently read two posts on Music Business Worldwide that tackle the subject of getting fans to buy recorded music and concert tickets. Dave Cool’s post on the mistakes a lot of artists make with their websites is interesting and valid, especially his point about … Read more