Showing posts with label Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Festival. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

I wonder if I can play at your place!

Hello, we wonder if we could play at your festival. But we have offers from others so we need fast to get an answer so we can take a decision.

These messages come from utterly unknown bands all the time. So the other offer is more important then what I'm booking? Yes, now I really want to book your band, especially since you have offers that are so important that I would change my whole schedule to book your band!

Yes, if you were a headliner you can ask these questions, or if you are already booked. But if you are not even considered so far this is a great way to end up in the wastebasket. I don't know how many I took off that just was a pain in the ass asking for an early confirmation. The festival has their different time limits so try to change these time limits you have to be really important, not an artist that would maybe get booked in the end. Yes, this is the course of being a new small artist. But we have all done that and you are not special enough to jump that stage.

The more funny part is that I usllay just tell them to take the offers that are already clear. Then it comes back that yes but your festival is important for us. Well, you have to take a decision take the smaller gig and miss our festival or play hardball and wait and see if it happens. But with a message like this, I guess you're safer with the small one you already got.

PERSONAL:
This is why they need a manager. I guess most of these band doesn't see that they make errors that can easily lead them in bad things later. They self-managed artists are usually the worst. I see these quite often out and doing kind of stupid mistakes.
much of the manager's role is to keep all shit like this from the network and just work professionally.
I become really tired of artists acting like a piece of shit


Thursday, November 23, 2017

Either you curate a festival or you follow!

A problem I see right now is the hype of a lot of things. Many festivals are mainly following different hypes of bands that will never last instead of presenting things that they would take a chance on but still be confident that their audience would like.

A very good example of this was NoNoNo. A totally overhyped band that a festival with no knowledge actually would book. The band broke through a campaign in just part of USA getting some radio airplay. That lead to a frenzy with the labels and bidding war. Then when the winning label saw what they had signed they immediately took off all spending on that band. So it was already from the start a hype thing.

The problem with the festivals is that they are not in this world. So they started to book this band. And to tell the truth the whole thing smelled bad, the live show sucked and they were famous for one song. I even warned some festivals to not take them in considering there was no backup moneywise. Several festivals went on the minefield that the band canceled gigs since they couldn't afford to get there. Second several festivals got the band but the audience lacked out and they were not happy with it.

Right now I usually check if the festival had NoNoNo on the bill. Then I know if they have a curated program or just follow the latest trend of crap bands that are presented by bigger labels.


Friday, May 19, 2017

The new number one festival

It has been a great days on The Great Escape. Okey to much rain and not that great of a lineup, I haven't seen a whole show at the whole festival.
Still this is the new number one festival in Europe. Here is the new young hungry people in the industry. I had great meetings and good gatherings and made fabulous new contacts. I got offered free tickets to Midem while I was here, sorry France your time is really over and will more be home for people longing for old days.
And I guess it's part of the new landscape that is forming right now in the industry. Time for big changes.