Orangutang Music

Getting Quality Gigs Not Quantity Gigs

“Treat your fans like gold because without them, you dont have a career”

Indie music bands and artists want the same thing as their record company sponsored contemporaries. A crowd to play in front of.

It took me a while to realise that it’s not how many shows you play but how many people come to them that’s important.

I’m not sure what the indie music business is like in the US, Canada or the UK when it comes to playing gigs as I have not been there (yet) but I know in Australia we still have venues that pay guarantees for bands to play.

This is great because you know exactly how much you are going to be paid at the end of the night for the service that you are providing.

What it can also do is lull you into a false sense of security by thinking that the more shows you play the better off you are.

That maybe true if every show that you play has a guarantee but what happens if you have to charge at the door and you haven’t cultivated a fanbase as yet?

I learnt this lesson pretty quickly. Let me tell you a little story.

In 1994 I moved from Adelaide to Sydney to further my music career and had the opportunity to get my own band together with a couple of really good players.

For the first time it was up to me to get the gigs as I considered myself pretty good with the “gift of the gab”. With that in mind I went out and got a lot of gigs for the next three months.

I was buoyed by the fact that I was part of a “working band” but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. It ended up that the band was basically paying to play and we were losing money. FAST!

Because I spent all of my efforts in getting the gigs I forgot to develop a strategy to actually get people to the gigs. When we did play shows we didn’t have a mailing list to communicate with our audience about future gigs.

I then realised that the most important thing was not how many gigs you played but the amount of people you played to. Very soon after this realisation I started a mailing list and started to cultivate a fanbase.

Every gig or performance that you do needs to have some sort of reason behind it. As soon as you start saying to yourself that the gig is just there to do then you are not doing yourself (and your audience) any favours whatsoever.

It’s pretty lonely up there on stage when you have to charge money at the door and there are only three people (besides the band and a couple of mates that you let in for free) in the audience.

Think of every audience member as someone who can bring along at least five friends to the next show. Make every gig count. Focus on the quality, not the quantity.

Until next time,

Corey Stewart
Orangutang Music

Keywords: indie music, independent music, music industry, music business, music marketing, music promotion, orangutang music, corey stewart

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