Putting on gigs is genuinely easier than you think, and if I had known how easy it was to organise a gig then I’d have been doing it years ago. Sadly I spent many years wondering why bands I like never played in Birmingham. Was it because Birmingham was a genuinely desolate place for music? Was it because there wasn’t anyone with the same taste in music as me living here? Was it that Birmingham had so many talented bands and was large enough to have several hundred music/arts ‘scenes’ without needing a steady influx of bands from other cities? Was it because we didn’t have the same media base as London where thousands of A&R men attend every gig with money to throw around?

But no, it turned out that bands I liked weren’t playing in Birmingham because I hadn’t booked them yet.

I’m hoping to demystify the booking-and-promoting process a little bit, in the hope that more people will put bands that they like on in Birmingham too, because – as previously stated – it’s genuinely easier than you think.

One of the first things to do is to make sure that people get to gigs, and the best way to do that is to make sure that people who might like to come know about it. I’ve just submitted some listings to printed media so I thought it best to share some of the places where I usually do it. My theory is that if 5 minutes of e-mails tells one more person about the club night then it’s worth it.

The Press Association have listings, I have it on good authority that this generates loads of web references and Ian from Spiral Scratch mentioned that his night was once listed in The Guardian due to the PA submission – you just can’t argue with this sort of publicity. Submit here at least three weeks in advance.

The NME website contact form has a welcoming “I’ve got a gig and I’d like you to list it in NME”. I have never once had a gig listed in the NME. To be honest I’ve got into the habit of doing it now to mainly to prove to myself that it’ll never go in, although I think you have to be starry-eyed about such things. Probably best to get this in over four weeks in advance.

The Birmingham Metro. Good old Birmingham Metro, always includes gig listings or club nights no hassle and phones back if you’ve forgotten to leave out details. Best get this in a week in advance.

One of the things that I think we’re sorely missing is an online national gig database which is easy to use and is of the same quality as John D Traynor’s Birmingham Gig Guide.

Last fm is almost there but hasn’t really taken off as much as other ‘Web 2.0‘ networking sites, which is a shame as it tells you about local events based on your listening habits which seems an ideal way to get people who don’t usually attend many local gigs, to more local gigs.

If only it would dump gig suggestions into people’s Outlook calendars.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 10:15 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.