A showcase is not a gig.

I just saw one of my friend's bands, they were posting on Facebook about a gig they had done. I checked out and they were still doing the same old gigs as they did five years ago when I meet them.

They play gigs all around the world. But never more than 200 people. The fanbase is around the same as before, no growing. Their name is not getting bigger. In a nutshell, they are on the spot as five years ago just some shows done in other countries.

In their beginning, I invite them to some showcase festivals which they played. They played, they just used the festivals as a gig. They didn't do any meetings. Didn't go to the conference,  they played their gig drank some beer and went home.

This the worst way to miss out on an opportunity. Don't do the groundwork and just treat everything like another festival in the roster. A showcase is more about the opportunity to meet new people to work with then play a gig. The gig is just a chance to get people to see the show. Not audience, professionals from the business. So if you don't do the groundwork it will be a kind of crappy gig.

Well, my friend's band won't go anywhere and maybe that is fine for them. But they are taking up space for artists that really want to get somewhere and that annoys me.

PERSONAL :
This episode is why my job is so hard. I look for the artist beyond this band. Yes, of course, they asked if I could work with them. In their case, I thought the music was not good enough. Later on, I discovered that they were totally useless to develop. They were thinking that hard work was to do the same gigs over and over and really never aim to be bigger.
So I know that they want more but don't get how to get the things. It's like they do half of the job.
The hard part is to single out these artists from the really serious ones. The ones that will work with you to reach a global audience.