How to Book Different Music Venues

Video Transcript

Hi, this is David Jackel on behalf of Expert Village and I'm here to talk to you about a booking a show at a non-traditional venue. So, what is a non-traditional venue? Well, if a traditional venue is a rock club. A non-traditional venue is a place like a school, or a church, or a community center, or maybe an art space, a loft, anything like that where you could physically put on a show, but it isn't a place where people normally do it. Now why would you want to do that? One reason, as I mentioned earlier, is that you want to transfer a show that was originally at a club somewhere else so you can still put on the show. But another reason is maybe you want to put on a different kind of show. You don't want to have to deal with a club. You want to have more space. You want to have a more artsy environment. You don't want to have to deal with all the gunk you usually have to deal with when you're at a traditional rock club. Whatever the reason is, there are a lot of benefits to playing at non-traditional venues. For example, you get a different type of audience. You get a lot more freedom and you may not have the burden of trying to bring in a certain amount of people, which means you may not have to worry about the money the same way. Now, how are you going to book these? Well, if it's a community center, you can call them up and say,"Hey, I'd like to put on a show at your location. Can we do it as a fund raiser for you?" and that way they can charge a small amount at the door. Let's say its two dollars or something really small. Maybe five dollars. And then people come and the show, it doesn't cost that much to put on, because you take care of everything, you supply the PA, you supply all the equipment. You will have to do more legwork if you're doing a non-traditional venue, but on the other hand, you won't be beholden to the venue the way you are if you're doing a rock show. If you want to play at a party, then you get in touch with people who are involved in the scene and say hey we'd like to play at your loft or something like that and people are often into this kind of thing because it's a lot of fun. The one thing you're going to have to remember though is that non-traditional venues rarely pay very well. So, if you're not doing a club, you're not doing a college gig, or corporate and you're doing something like someone's synagogue, or you're doing the YMCA or whatever, that would be a lot of fun and you'll probably get a good audience, but you may not make any money. But if getting an audience is the most important thing to you, then it's a good idea.

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