The hard truth on showcase festivals

For fuck sake, you are not that important.

So read what is a showcase festival. Okay, so this is an arena to get your career forward. You are here to showcase not play a festival gig.

So complaining that it cost you money to go on a showcase festival I can inform you that there are bands taking their career serious enough to go to the other side of the world to play a showcase festival. So you complaining about going a couple of miles in a car are just pathetic.
Also if you start a company (which actually an artist career is) you spend at least the first three years just spending money on PR. Why would this be different just because we are dealing with music? If you don't want to spend money on your career, well stay at the local bar and play there, but don't complain that you don't go anywhere.
And never, never ask the festival how you should find your money.

Also when you only can play on weekends since you much take off time from work. Well just that you won't take time off work is a good sign you are not a proband more a hobby band. And on a Showcase festival, you try to get just pro-bands since the hobby bands are more just a hobby you are not calculating to become something you are just happy to play. That is good but don't bother people that want to take you somewhere with it. Here is more around that theme.

It's hard to fill out to apply for a showcase festival so I rather send a mail asking if I can play.
Oh good, the forms are not tricky, yes they will be tricky since you don't have your shit together. In the field to show a live video and you don¨t have one, well if you don't have one your probably not ready to be on a showcase festival. This is why these fields are there.

On a normal festival, you usually deal with booking agencies that have all this for you. Showcase festival deals with the new ones and a good sorting point is to give some simple questions like, do you have a bio, a video a Spotify link can take off quite many artists that shouldn't play on a showcase festival at all.

PERSONAL:
The backstage passes have also their own story. It started very very long ago that a band that we had on the record label was collecting backstage passes and we compete with them to have the most. They have quit now but we kept going. Over 30 years of career yes we have been on quite many events. The fun is that every pass has its own story and I can just put them in front of me and I can tell you a special story around just that one. After 2010 I have also picked up all pins and other stuff and added on the badge I'm wearing at that festival so in the bigger ones I really look like a Christmas tree.
No, we have never counted them, but they are in around the order we actually got them. These will be a pain in the ass to move when we changing office.