This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
This the 2nd part of a two part article. If you missed the first part you can check that out here.
Ari Nisman is the President/CEO of Degy Entertainment, a booking agency that specializes in booking artists in the college and military markets. In Part I of this interview, he talked about his history in the music industry, how he formed a niche booking company and the military entertainment market. I also got to talk to Ari about how artists can break into the college market and some tips he has for musicians that want to pursue niche opportunities.
As someone who now finds himself in the “aspirational” music business, working with musicians trying to forge careers, I’ve noticed that whenever I come across an artist that, while not a household name, has some traction and is doing impressive things, it’s you that has booked them into the college dates. What advice would you give a DIY artist that wants to get into the college circuit?
AN:
The college market is ruled by two entities in terms of getting a lot of dates: the National Association for Campus Activities (NACA); the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities (APCA). These two organizations are working in a cohabitative nature, but I would say to some extent they are also competitors. They both set up the infrastructure for schools to come together and for their programming boards to come to one place and the agents and artists to attend on the other side of the fence and work to find a way to book the entertainment onto the campuses.
A lot of the reason our name is coming up a lot with the independent bands is because I think the club market continues to be strained and is so dependent upon ticket sales and on how much business you’re doing in the door. I think success there comes from building up a strong following and sometimes a lot of marketing dollars and radio play. In the college market you can be a no name and still be successful. Generally, we won’t sign an act that just wants to be stuck in the college market, because I don’t know that it’s any place that an act aspires to be in for a long time. But I think it’s a great starting ground and a great way for artists to really get their road legs underneath them in a much more comfortable atmosphere.
APCA and NACA conferences give you an opportunity to submit to showcases, which is no different than if you’re submitting to a CMJ or a SXSW, except that instead of having to jockey for attention and get the A&R guy out there, with 30 other showcases going on at the same time as is the case with CMJ or SXSW, the only thing going on at the time in the college conferences is your showcase. You’re on stage for 15 minutes in NACA and 10 minutes in APCA. You have 15 minutes on stage with a red clock counting down those 15 minutes. And the folks sitting in the audience are the buyers and the people that can immediately impact putting dates on your calendar. It’s unlike any other sort of booking scenario out there. Sitting in that crowd are programmers and college buyers, generally 17-22-years old with their budgets in their left hand and their calendars in their right hand and a booklet in front of them with your picture and your pricing, while they look with a little flashlight.
It’s a tremendously unique experience. These people watch the showcase, and if they like it, they work together collaboratively with other schools. You go into an exhibit hall – similar to at CMJ or SXSW – and there are booths set up. But instead of the booths with ticketing companies, etc., you have an agency representing music in one booth and in the next booth there might be a solo-represented comedian, a rock climbing wall or an oxygen bar you can rent during finals week; it’s a slew of all kinds of different entertainment. If the people watching you like what they see on stage, each school has one representative that can walk into your booth and ask to fill out a booking slip. And those booking slips are filled out in one of four different ways depending on the style of interest. And each morning, one person from each school wearing a purple tag – the contract buyer – sits in a room with all their counterparts from other schools, and it’s almost like an art auction, except it works with the opposite effect. For example, someone comes up that has a form filled out that says, “Degy Booking, International” and announces the artist’s name. And anybody from the college buyers that has interest puts their paddle up in the air with their school name. The agent steps to the front of the room if there are three or more paddles and starts to actually do the booking right there in the room on site. You build a tour right there. It’s a tremendously unique experience in the college world.
Are artists able to participate without an agent? A lot of them can’t get representation early on in their career.
AN:
They can. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a completely level playing field, just because they will be going up against agencies that have folks working there with ten plus years of experience who know the buyers. Obviously people like us have a competitive advantage just having familiarity with the schools and what they have and the people involved and the relationships. However, the nice thing about the market is that anybody can go in. All it takes is signing up for a membership fee and submitting your materials like I do for all my acts.
The only problem is that it can be expensive. Each conference requires you to buy a booth in advance in order to submit. To apply at all you have to buy an annual membership fee, which is pricey. You can submit to these conferences and not get accepted, which means you need to decide whether to still go or not go. All the travel is on your own, you have to work your own booth and create all your own marketing materials. It can be a costly experience, and there are many artists that try to do it one year or two years and don’t continue because they are not fiscally able to do it. Another reason the artists try to do it on their own is to hopefully get a sniff from an agency and meet some of the agents in the booths as their counterparts. We see a lot of artists that get snatched up by agencies after they do it well themselves once or twice. But it’s absolutely an opportunity for artists that do have the financial means to do so to jump right in.
Clearly they can’t accept everyone to play that has the financial means. Is it very competitive to win a slot at those conferences?
AN:
It is. And NACA and APCA operate differently. We’ll start with NACA. There is a panel of selected students and advisors from each region. NACA is divided into seven regions, plus they have a national conference. APCA has four regional conferences during the year plus a national conference. All the regional conferences for NACA have their own committees, and they sit in a room on a designated weekend and watch all the applications they get in to showcase for that conference. Currently for the larger conferences – like NACA Northeast, NACA South, NACA Mid-America – they get about 600-700 different submissions. For the smaller conferences – like NACA Central and NACA West – they get about 400-600 submissions. They choose about 30 or so slots. And that’s not just music. It’s a combination of music, comedy, poetry, magic, or maybe even a dance troupe. So whatever type of showcase you can see on stage in terms of entertainment comprises that series of showcases. And they are going to be tasked with picking a diversified lineup. So, it’s not just all white guys with a guitar or male singer songwriters. They have to pick a wide variety of entertainment – multi-culturally, genre-wise, etc. – in order to fit a wide variety of entertainment that might be booked for that region.
Other than, obviously, talent, or relationships someone like you might have, or the ability to present themselves well with a bio, photos and good recordings, are there any other specific qualities you’ve noticed that artists have or things they do that get them into NACA showcases?
AN:
I would say the most important piece or element that we use and that I feel is consistently used across the college market is a video, and more specifically, a three- minute video. The reason for this is that in the NACA application process, one of the key ingredients you include with your application is one type of media. And the type of media that is most approved now is a video/DVD of some sort. In the first round they watch 90 seconds. In the second round they watch three minutes. And if you pass all the way to the third round, they watch another three minutes. So the video is probably the end all, be all for artists in the college market.
And the best video is probably live, well-shot and also has crowd shots along with shots of the band to demonstrate it’s not just you and your mom who are into your band, right?
AN:
Yeah. No question that when you’re competing with 700 other videos, quality, slick editing, great audio and not having a bunch of people in a club walking past the camera with a beer will be really important if you want to be the best. You need to be unique and show yourself well. At the end of the day, I don’t think there’s one kind of video that gets selected to showcase more than others. I’ve seen it work with EPKs and with a combination of live shows. I’ve seen it work against a white wall. I’ve also seen standard music videos – whether it be MTV or VH-1 style – get people accepted. I think you can go with any style of video as long as the three minutes show you well, are well edited and have good audio and video. Most importantly, you shouldn’t provide too much involving interviewing or the background of your band. Most of these committees want you to jump right in and show what you can do musically. When they have 90 seconds to look at something, if you’re talking for the first 90 seconds being interviewed, they’re not seeing your music and they might just move onto the next one.
The old “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus” idea, as with radio. And what about with APCA? Is that different?
AN:
It is. NACA is a not-for-profit entity. APCA is owned by one person, a great individual named Eric Lambert who I consider a friend and I think has built a wonderful organization. Eric has his staff make the judgment calls on who gets selected to perform at an APCA conference. You hear of all these companies today that give priority membership, whether it be an airline or a hotel. And if you’ve been in the organization for years and continue to be a part of his organization, Eric gives some priority in terms of the initial slots and selection. But he wants to see the video, make sure it’s good for the college market and that the pricing is in line with things. It actually may be a little easier for an artist to get a showcase right away in the APCA market than the NACA market simply because if Eric and his staff like it, they may be able to slot you quickly. What I would say though is that some of the costs are a little bit more expensive with APCA vs. NACA. I like to consider APCA more of the “pay for play” method. If you pay the fee, generally, if you’re great, he’ll give you a showcase. But that’s one of the distinctions right off the bat between APCA and NACA: With APCA, you’re judged more by Eric and his staff than you are by a diversified group of folks in a room that you don’t know.
And by people who are more stable rather than change every few years because of the nature of college kids and college buyers, right?
AN:
No question, I think that’s the case in terms of booking. Because every year with NACA the selection committee changes. And we don’t even know the people that were in the room the year before. You never find out who it is. So, you’re absolutely right. Think about the college market as a completely transient business. The students are there one year and gone the next because they graduated or are off the board, or because someone came in and became the new president of the College Activities Board. You’re constantly working with a changing environment. And you’re also working with 17-22-year old students, whose core role at their school is not programming, rather education; they just do this on the side. Trying to track down these people and book shows can often be, if you can imagine, more difficult than tracking down a talent booker at a club. But the difference is, there is some staying power with the folks that are directors, advisors or grad students. It’s very important for you to go year after year and develop those relationships. And this goes back to why I think some of the agencies or the people that have been doing this for a while have a distinct advantage. If you can create relationships with the schools themselves and people that have staying power, even if the students themselves are transient, you still have a relationship with the school from having worked with them in the past.
Do you have any general advice for people that want to pursue these different niche opportunities? What is the experience of being a musician in the military and college markets like?
AN:
It’s a completely different world walking into a club and playing a 60-minute set at Bitter End or Arlene Grocery in New York than it is going into a college atmosphere. Firstly, you’re on a college campus where education is their main focus. And when you’re walking onto a military base, military operations and safety of the U.S. citizens around the world are their main obligations. You’re walking into places where their main role is not entertainment. You’re working with people a lot of the time that are experienced at what they do but are not necessarily fully professionals at doing it. Students who are 21-years old and who are programming on their student activities board are not professionals at being talent buyers and promoting shows. You have to go in knowing that and knowing the environment you’re walking into.
Also, you’re not paid in cash; you’re paid in checks. Fortunately, with the government and with schools, your checks always cash. But you’re not paid in cash or even that night. Sometimes your checks are sent after the fact. You have to have a W-9 filled out.
You also have to know how to act and how to do things right on a military base and on a college campus. Both have their own different rules. But if you’re walking onto a military base, you better know there are certain guidelines you need to understand. Walking onto a school campus is no different. Everyone is there to take care of students. The show may not be open to the public. It may be closed to everyone but the students. On a military base, the show might only be open to soldiers and sailors. You basically have to know the rules and regulations walking into these sides of the market. It’s different from the club world, from the Performing Arts Center world and from the festival world. Knowing the guidelines attached to your particular niche environment will really help you going into it.
For more information about Ari Nisman and his company, please visit the Degy Entertainment website or follow him on Twitter.
Ari Nisman is the President/CEO of Degy Entertainment, a booking agency that specializes in booking artists in the college and military markets. Ari got his start in the music industry when he was a college student at the University of Michigan, where he got involved in field marketing programs for college students at several major record labels working with up-and-coming bands in Michigan and in the Chicago area. He went on to work as a marketing representative with Polydor/Atlas Records, where he helped run marketing campaigns and develop acts including Jimmy Eat World, Luscious Jackson and Mazzy Star. After a brief stint as an A&R representative at a small indie label, he joined up with Capitol Records as a field marketing representative in Michigan and worked with artists such as George Clinton and John Spencer. He started Degy Management Services, Inc. in 1997 and its booking agency arm, Degy Entertainment in 2001.
I got to sit down with Ari and talk about how he got involved in the music industry, how he found his unique niche, and what it takes to get involved in the military market.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me, Ari. First of all, how did you get started in the music industry?
AN:
I started back in college at the University of Michigan. Like many kids growing up, I was into sports and music, and I decided to pursue sports for a while. I got lucky enough to work with the Cleveland Indians organization in the baseball world for a bit. But I realized I had a bit more passion business wise for the music side of things. I hooked up with a couple of record labels who had field marketing programs for college students at the time. I worked with some up-and-coming bands around the Michigan and Chicago area. And then I stumbled upon bands that I began to develop for record labels. My field marketing guy transferred over to Capital Records and let me start working on some bigger projects like Radiohead, the Butthole Surfers and Jimmy Eat World. I was just a college field marketing guy out on the road doing record in stores, welcoming artists into town, helping acts backstage, loading gear. I remember Rusted Root was one of the ones I worked with back then, and sure enough, over the last seven years I’ve represented the lead singer of Rusted Root, so some things come full circle. Then I just decided I was going to sign my first band to management. I was probably too cocky of a 19-year old, confident college kid. There was a big band at the University of Michigan, and I decided to sign them to management and try to learn how to manage, and there we went.
How many years did you spend managing bands?
AN:
I probably managed acts until about 2002. But it was back on September 1, 2001 – and I vividly remember this because of 9/11 – that we started up the booking agency. I had brought in a couple agents from across the country who were sleeping on the floor of my office for some reason that day when the planes went over. When we were trying to start this agency, we were signing whichever acts we could find, because the acts on our management roster – even the baby bands – weren’t getting the big agencies to look at them. There was such a disparity between agencies like the William Morris and the Creative Artists Agency and the other big agency groups, and the shlubs in their houses trying to book bands, so we wanted to form some sort of middle agency. But it wasn’t originally built specifically around college market or the military market like it is now. We were just going to be an agency gunning for the big guys and trying to sign and book them in as many clubs and festivals as we could.
In those days, we signed a bunch of bands, got lucky with a couple of the first ones that were starting to make us money and took off from there. We developed a specialty over time.
Which types of bands did you work with?
AN:
Some of our earlier clients were people like Tito Puente, Jr., Colonel Bruce Hampton and the Codetalkers and then others like Perpetual Groove. A lot of the agents I hired back then seemed to be really into the jam band and hippie scene. We were developing young bands at the time. For example, Perpetual Groove ended up developing into a pretty sizeable jam band. The agents brought on a lot of the acts while I was still managing acts, so I let them really have a carte blanche on what was getting signed. It ended up being a lot of jam and groove bands, which wasn’t necessarily a scene I was into. And then I signed a lot of bands that were in the pop and rock world, so I think we had a varied focus.
And what made you decide to focus on the college and military market?
AN:
We call it niche booking. We found our niche and flew into it, and tried to take that ownership stake. While others were focusing on everything, we tried to focus on certain segments. It really started when I was working a management deal for an a capella group that wound up becoming the voices of the Cool Whip “Doin’ The Cool Whip” commercial. We struck a deal with overseas publishing company that had an office in Norway. A representative called me up and said, “You’re a booking agent, right?” And I said I was. And she said, “And you book colleges?” And I told her I booked some colleges. And then she asked if I had heard of the National Association for Campus Activities (NACA). Like any good businessman, I just nodded my head and said, “Yes,” even though I hadn’t, and then decided to figure out how to do it. And she said, “Great. We have a performance at the NACA West Conference in two weeks, are you going to be there?” And of course, we weren’t. But I said we were. And she asked me to represent the band there. And a big band from Norway, a band called Big Bang, who was the big budding star in the rock market there was going to be getting on a plane and were going to be our first client in the NACA college market. We showed up there and represented them. And we felt like we had a modicum of success, and like it was a business model we would be able to develop. Sure enough, we began to build this whole college profile, where we would submit to these conferences and try to get showcases. We just dove into the college market. We’ve been pretty successful at that for the last ten or so years and have developed one of the largest college agencies in the world. We often partner up with a lot of the major agencies.
The military market really came along as a result of the college market. About four or five years ago, one of the other college organizations, APCA gave an opportunity for some agents to show up in Las Vegas and speak for some of the major military players. Only about four or five agents took that opportunity. But I got on a plane, went to Las Vegas, met with the folks from the Army, Navy and the Marines. And after proving ourselves with some smaller shows in the initial years, we’ve now been able to make that a huge niche focus of our business. I think it’s more rewarding than anything I do to be able to book entertainment and see the smiles on the faces of our troops around the world.
I feel kind of special in that the two areas we’re known for – the college and the military market – are areas where first of all, you can help educate students who are going out into the world of the music business and really help to have an impact on those younger students; and then, I think there is no better feeling than being able to see a smile on the face of a soldier or a sailor overseas or even here domestically who has been away from their family and is on some tour of duty. You bring in a show that really brightens their day or becomes the soundtrack for the rest of their tour of duty. So, the two areas – in addition to all the other booking we do with festivals and the performing arts and clubs – that we’ve become known for are really areas where I feel that it goes beyond just booking. We also get to make an impact on people.
That’s fantastic. And how does an artist get booked for military events?
AN:
There’s no real showcase that I know of for the military market. They do have their own individual conferences. For example, the Army has the Boss Conference, the Navy has their meetings. A lot of the military personnel actually show up to the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities (APCA) conferences specifically in Atlanta for the national conference. So, if you do get a showcase with APCA at the national conference, there are generally a good share of military buyers who are in the audience. Those people are normally just buying for their bases, or sometimes they have some of the folks that book overseas for a series of dates.
To understand the military, you have to break it down into four main entities: Armed Forces Entertainment (AFE); United Service Organization (USO), which is the big daddy everybody has heard of and that Bob Hope made famous; Navy and Army Entertainment, which are the Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) divisions; private promoters, who are companies overseas and even some in the states that buy individually. Understanding those four entities gives you a better idea of what that market is all about.
AFE is a great organization. Colonel Weatherspoon and her team buy a lot of up-and-coming acts. They’ve been known the past couple years to really take a chance on some of the younger acts that are making a name for themselves but aren’t fully established yet. They pay on a per diem basis, plus cover your expenses. You have to qualify to get into the AFE program. After they accept you into the program, then they look at slotting you for their tours around the world.
Everyone knows about USO of course. They are a third-party entity and are not necessarily part of the military. They get their money through private contributions. The reason USO is so well publicized is often because the more well publicized you are, the more money and donorship you can bring in. You often get a mailer in the mail from them to help put money into the program. They then turn that money around and buy the talent to bring overseas. They generally don’t pay the artists, and I think it’s part of their credo that they don’t. But they do a great job of paying all the artists’ expenses and then some. But they have been known to bring out the heavy hitters like Bob Hope, Kenny Chesney.
Army and Navy Entertainment generally consist of people that work directly for the military, though they are not always enlisted. They are buying for either their individual bases or bases around the world. And you just have to get to those people and show them your stuff. Some of them have budgets, some of them don’t. Those are a lot of the people I buy for. We have a contract with the U.S. Army Entertainment, and we buy quite a bit for the U.S. Navy around the world. They will use different promoters and middling agents or sometimes go directly to dish out the right style of show to the right style of folks they buy with. They do a great job. And they are a little bit less publicized because they are actually the military, and thus they don’t really need to publicize what they do. Their goal is to take great entertainment directly to the troops. It’s not about fanfare or hoopla; it’s about making sure they bring the best quality entertainment to troops around the world.
To learn more about Ari Nisman and his company, please visit the Degy Entertainment website or follow him on Twitter. Also, check out Part II of this interview, where Ari talks about what artists need to know to get into the college market.
Randy Nichols is President of Force Media Management, a company that currently manages artists and producers including Underoath, The Almost and Aaron Gillespie. With two decades of experience in the music industry, Randy has also previously worked with bands and artists such as Reel Big Fish, Say Anything and Finch and has worn many other hats; he has worked as a booking agent, and a marketing/tour manager and product manager for record labels and also music websites.
Recently, I sat down to talk with Randy about how he got started in the music industry, his “Randy Nichols Needs a Job” newsletter experiment from several years ago and his practical advice for artists that want to successfully build their fan base locally, regionally and nationally.
Thanks for taking some time out to talk to me. How did you get started in the music industry?
RN:
I started the way many other people in the business started, by booking shows at my college, C.W. Post out on Long Island. I’d book anyone from Murphy’s Law to Tori Amos, because we had a bunch of different facilities on campus and had to book a lot of different acts. That was the beginning of it. From there, I moved onto a lot of interning. The big internship that got me started was an internship at Sony Music for a label called Chaos.
After I interned at a million different places, I realized I’d interned everywhere, except for a booking agency. So I decided search around looking for a booking agency that was growing, since it was about the time I was going to graduate from college. I started looking at Pollstar guides to find a growing agency so that when I graduated they would want to hire me. I was looking for good, solid companies with small staffs and bands that were about to break. I found a company where that exact thing was happening – Artist and Audience – and they offered me a job when I finished up college. That was an interesting angle that worked for me that I always tell kids to use when they’re just getting started: Look at companies that have acts that are going to break and get in with those people.
It’s not the kind of forethought I had as a kid, but you’re right on.
RN:
Part of our job in the business is to predict the future all the time and know what’s going to happen for our artists and our own careers before they happen. If you can do that and are successful at it, it allows you to deal with the problems that come up too.
What did you do with Artist and Audience?
RN:
I got hired as an assistant, and within a year became an agent there. I signed a couple bands that were really successful. I worked with Reel Big Fish. I had a band called Weston and Samiam and the Voodoo Glow Skulls – all stuff similar to what I do now. I was there for a while, and that company grew too fast, which was foresight I didn’t have. It had some growing pains and collapsed on itself.
From there I went and did tour marketing for a record label, Wind-up Records, for about a year. And then I left the industry for a couple years to work for an internet advertising company focused on the music space, back in 1999, before anyone in the business was doing those things. I learned a lot that is still helpful to this day in my job, which was kind of cool. That company collapsed in the whole dot-com bubble of the late 90s.
Where did you go from there?
RN:
I also worked for London-Sire Records for a super short stint, and it was my big lesson in label politics. When I left there, it was 2001, and I knew I needed work, so I created a newsletter called the “Randy Nichols Needs a Job” newsletter. I had made my calls and stayed in touch with everyone I needed to stay in touch with, but we didn’t have LinkedIn or Facebook or any of those tools back then. So, I made a list of all the industry people I knew wouldn’t be bummed out to be bombarded with emails from me. The newsletter was meant to be comical, and I sent out once a week. It would give people an update of what I was doing. I’d say, “I sat on the beach for four hours today, and all I could think about was working for you.” I went for being super sarcastic, but also showed my marketing skills. I ended up having tons of people emailing me back and starting to send me jobs they thought could be good for me. A lot of them were junior-level gigs that didn’t make sense, but when I turned them down, the people would always say, “If you hear of anyone else good, let me know.”
Did that lead to other opportunities?
RN:
Well, I ended up making a website called the “Randy Nichols Needs a Job” website. I started posting other jobs on my website in addition to having info about me needing a job. I started throwing other fun music industry things up there that I knew other people would like. But the focus of the site was on my resume. On that site I had things like music industry jokes, etc. I also threw things on there like R.A. certification numbers – how many records you need to sell – but the equivalent for every single country in the world. This was the early days of Google, so it was interesting stuff people would want to know but didn’t know how to search for easily. Then randomly enough, a friend of mine worked for the dot-com that had exploded and was running a new iteration of it. They were running Mariah Carey’s website, at the time everyone thought she’d gone crazy when she fired her management through an audio message to her fans on her website. My friend sent me a copy of this message before the whole team had heard it and pulled it down. I posted that on my website, which suddenly started getting a ton of traffic because it was only up for a second, and you didn’t have BitTorrent and all those things to go searching for it. I suddenly had a bunch of people talking about me and interested. I actually got interviewed by the L.A. Times about my website, which was sort of ridiculous on about September 8th or 9th. The article about my site never ran because everything in the media changed on 9/11.
Was this when you started thinking about having a management company?
RN:
New York was in a really weird state for the month or two around that time, and you weren’t calling anyone looking for favors. It didn’t feel right. But I had built this really great vibe with people and a couple people did call me after 9/11. The only real opportunity that popped up was my friends from Drive-Thru Records wanted me to run a management company with them. I felt I had no other options. The newsletter died out, and I partnered with them and started a management company in October or November of 2001. We partnered for about six months, and a lot of the artists we were working with decided they didn’t want their record label managing them, but wanted me to stay involved. So I split off from Drive-Thru and went full force running the management company by myself. I ran it for three or four years and then merged with Red Light Management for six years, and have since pulled my business back again. But my core business has been the same for about the past ten years.
So, as someone that has been working as a manager for a while and has worked with a lot of established artists, what would make you take a risk on a band that doesn’t have a really established track record?
RN:
One of the biggest things I look at when I’m thinking about taking a client is whether or not the client is working really hard already. Not just working hard in the studio, but working hard on the street, getting to know people, talking to fans, using technology and doing everything a manager should be doing to build their own careers. The way I see it, a successful artist needs to be a good business person nowadays. A manager can come in and help them run their business, but if they’re not already smartly running their business, chances are they’re not going to take my advice, they’re not going to follow everything I say, and they’re going to be in a bad situation quickly. I’ve picked up the artist that is super promising, has really great songs, has all the right stuff going on but just doesn’t have those instincts of how to run their career, and they fall on their faces.
For example, a band called JamisonParker –and I’m still really good friends with both guys – had great songs but were clueless, and didn’t have the drive to break their own career. We didn’t realize that the record label, the manager and the agent were way more excited about their career than they were.
It’s always a big problem when the team in place is more excited than the artist.
RN:
An artist might think they’re really excited, but unless they’re really excited to do the work that comes along with the music, I’m not really interested.
MusicianCoaching:
The live show is everything these days, and you’re working with bands that are touring workhorses. What are you doing to help grow artists on the road?
RN:
My opinion on this has always been that a manager doesn’t make people like a band. There are a lot of kids who say, “You manage big bands. I want you to manage my band because people will like us if you manage us.” There’s that thought process out there a lot. My belief is that I didn’t make anyone like any of the bands I represent. I helped each one get in front of the right audience and smartly make business decisions so their fan base can grow. To me, it’s going back to the olden days of focusing on building a local following. Then, once you have that, work on building a regional following. Then take that to another region and eventually take it national. I think the idea of being on a national tour nine months after you’re a band is a terrible idea.
People need to sit back and really do the work. But then it’s getting on the road when you’re ready to be on the road, and getting on a big tour when you’re ready to be on a big tour. These days, kids have an idea, then two months later, they put something up on Myspace, then a month later they’re calling agents and managers trying to get on tour. If you look back at someone like The Beatles, who I think spent a year in Germany just playing that club there, honing their skills as a cover band, you realize how much bands need to learn how to be a band first. And I tell kids this all the time: “Don’t send me your demo until it’s 100% ready, and you’ve done everything you can to make it as strong as possible, because I’m going to write you off the first time I hear it if it’s not good. If it’s really good, I’m going to pay more attention. But if it really sucks, I’m just going to remember your band sucks. Don’t send it to me until other people around you and strangers are starting to feel excited about it.” You need to get that honest feel. If you put something up online, all your friends are probably going to tell you they think it’s great. But if you start to see people you don’t know saying, “This is good. Tell me more. Tell me when you’re playing, because I want to see you, and don’t know you as anyone but the guy in that band.” That’s the point where you’re better off starting to reach out to people.
When you’re kicking the tires on a band and something strikes you as good and you know the people are working hard, what are typically that band’s most important assets? So, what are the core elements you see that identify something that’s about to pop?
RN:
I feel like you can’t quantify one specific area. Even looking at my own artists, I’ll have a band that has a massive Twitter following vs. another that has a major Facebook following. So, you can’t say, “They’re big on Twitter, but they’re not on Facebook, so it’s not meaningful.” I think the most important thing is finding a real, legitimate, compelling fan-artist interaction happening. It should be on multiple platforms to some degree – it could be much stronger on one than another – but there has to be a lot of feedback online, on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, whatever other social networks are around at a given number. It’s not just the number of plays or the number of fans or friends. It’s the actual interaction of people posting and the band reacting with them.
It’s equally as important for the band to say and do things regularly. I’ve been hit up by bands that have a decent online buzz, but they don’t interact with the fans. And at some point, that’s going to kill them too. In this new model, you have to talk to your fans regularly. You can’t be aloof and hiding all the time.
Is blogging a good part of this interaction and something you think works for your artists and artists in general?
RN:
It doesn’t have to be blogging. It could be micro blogging, which is just quick Twitter posts here and there or quick Facebook updates. They don’t need to be wordy. It’s just about regularly saying something and keeping an open dialogue. It could be a one-page diatribe once a month.
But it has to be above and beyond purely promotional messages.
RN:
Exactly. It needs to be, “Hey, I just heard the new Bon Iver Record, and it’s awesome.” Or, “I went to a show the other day and ran into so-and-so,” or “Here we are, eating dinner at Burger King today.” You need promotional stuff, but you need to manage how much promotional stuff there is vs. how much you’re saying things that say, “Hey, we’re real people, we’re having fun, you should like us and connect with us.” If it’s purely promotional, you’re going to turn people off right away; because people want their bands to be part of their lives and a friend. It’s like any relationship. If you’re in a relationship where people are just asking for things all the time and nothing else, you’re not going to stay in that relationship for too long.
The other thing is looking at merch sales, ticket sales, reaction on tour, etc. The biggest quantifier for me is seeing each time the band does something, does the fan base grow a little bit bigger than the time before? Whether it’s playing a show with 20 people there the first time and 25 the next, or releasing a song on iTunes and getting 200 downloads on iTunes, but the next song you release gets 400 and the next one gets 800. You’re seeing a trend. I think it’s important to see that trend and fans reacting; because until fans are reacting, even on a minimal level, it’s impossible for you to get new people to like you.
You were talking earlier about correct methods of touring and putting yourself in front of people in a logical fashion. Are there mistakes you see artists make time and time again?
RN:
It depends on which level you’re at in your career. The one mistake I see quite often is that when bands start to see even a little bit of success, they want to be on a tour bus. It’s a dream for everyone to be in a tour bus, and they make that jump from being in a van to being on a tour bus. When they were in a van, they were making some money and a profit, everyone was feeling pretty good about themselves, and moving towards a successful career. They jump into a tour bus, and they end their first tour in debt. And it’s their biggest tour ever, fans were reacting, kids were freaking out, they feel like they’re rock stars, and they don’t understand why they didn’t make a dime.
I think the tour bus is also a metaphor about expenditure in general. I think people also take a swing at radio too early and don’t understand why then they can’t pay their rent. The sustainability problem is one that manifests whether it’s a tour bus or something else.
RN:
Exactly. And on the tour bus front, even when you can afford to be in one, you need to look at it and ask if you need one. Are you doing radio visits every day, where you need to be in the next town at 7 a.m., and you need to sleep on the way? That’s a reason to get a tour bus. If you don’t have reasons why you need to be in a town early, why not keep the van, get a hotel room and come home from a tour making an extra $20,000-$25,000 across the board? For a young band, that’s a huge amount of money, when you’re talking about throwing out between $1,000 and $1,500 per day. It’s about being smart and watching how much you spend.
That advice can go to a baby band too at an earlier stage in its career. They can say, “We’ve got this tour where we’re making $100 per night, we’re going to be in front of 300 kids per night. But we’re going to come home from the tour $5,000 in debt.” But if this tour is going to help grow your career, it may very well be worth taking that tour and doing it. It is your first national tour, and it could be your first chance for people to really start to know who you are. That $5,000 of debt might be paid off by having new fans buy your merch and your record online. But if you know the headlining band on the tour typically has two kids in the audience at the show in its home town, chances are only two kids are going to be in the audience in every town, and now you’ll be $5,000 in debt with no new fans from that tour.
You have to ask yourself, “Why am I getting this tour? What is making these people want us? Is it because we’re doing something, or because no one wanted the tour, so they’re giving it to us?”
That’s a good point. Any parting words of advice for the real rookies out there?
RN:
The biggest thing is what I was talking about before. Don’t share your music until you’re sure it’s ready to be shared. You can share it with your friends and try to build an online fan base, but don’t come to industry professionals until you know the music is ready.
One other bit of advice is, “Don’t lie.” That’s my biggest pet peeve. You can hype up your band and stretch the truth little bits here or there with smoke-and-mirrors games. But we all talk to each other in this business, and everyone knows each other. If you tell me you sold out this club in town or this agent or manager wants to work with you, I know who all these people are. The first thing I’m going to do if I’m interested in you is call those people. If that information you’re telling me isn’t true, it’s going to blow up in your face, and it’s not going to be pretty.
Just to follow up slightly on that, there is a Long Island band who shall remain nameless that has gone nowhere, and I don’t care to help them. They hit me up a year or a year and a half ago and were always bugging me online. I always gave them advice, because they were nice enough kids, and I always wanted to see them do well. One day they told me an agent at one of the major agencies wanted to represent them. And I said, “Wow, that’s really cool.” I was happy for them. They said, “He told me he’d pick us up as long as someone like you comes on as a manager. Are you ready to take us on as our manager so this agent will work with us?” I was just genuinely happy for the kids and emailed the agent to ask him the story. The agent got back to me, and said, “I have zero interest in picking up that band. They’re nice kids, and I’ve just been giving them some advice. But if they’re saying that …” And I had forwarded the email from the band directly to him when I emailed him. He immediately stopped talking to the band, was furious with them. And then the band called me and yelled at me, telling me I blew their big deal working with the company. And I did nothing but congratulate the company for getting involved with them.
You really have to be careful about being truthful. If you’re not, you can do damage to the relationships you’ve built and your career as a whole.
To learn more about Randy Nichols and the artists he represents, please visit the Force Media Management website. You can also follow Randy and his company on Facebook.
Todd Hansen is the Founder of the website Better Than the Van (BTTV), an online service with over 5,000 users that utilizes social networking features to help bands and music fans find free places to stay, shows to attend and venues to play in cities and towns across the U.S., Canada and Europe. Currently living in Austin, TX, Todd got his start playing in a variety of bands that toured throughout the U.S. Before starting BTTV, he also ran a small label in Minneapolis called 2024 Records.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Todd and talk about his own experiences within the music industry, what makes BTTV unique, how even bands that are just starting out can tour sustainably and get beyond their home cities, and how he hopes his site will grow in the future.
Thanks for taking the time out to talk to me, Todd. How did you get started in the music business, and what were you doing before you founded BTTV?
TH:
I’ve been in the music business for a while. I guess I just started like anybody else starts, playing in bands. Many of my bands ended up touring and opening for other bands. I also ran a small record label for four years out in Minneapolis called 2024 Records. Like most of them, it’s not around anymore. At the time, it was the thing to do, so I decided to put out friends’ records with a buddy of mine. I had a really good time doing it, but it ended up being too much. And we were doing it at a time where everyone was trying to figure out what to do as a smaller label. Now the climate’s changed a little bit, because that process is more defined. After the label, I basically went back to just playing shows and playing in bands. And about three years ago, I moved to Austin, TX. I just stopped playing for a while, because I had been playing for close to ten years and I wanted to figure out what to do next.
Which bands did you play with?
TH:
A lot of bands no one’s probably ever heard of. One of them was The Winter Blanket. The other was Fitzgerald, which was a rock/folk kind of thing. I filled in for a lot of people. I also played in an alt country band called Lackluster Dodge, which was really fun and funny and good. I was basically always playing in two or three bands at the same time. Some of the bands were a little more serious, so we went out and toured. I did a lot of touring around the Midwest and down South, and we’d go out to each coast every so often with people. Some of the tours were really good, where hotels were involved, but the majority of them were, some nights you could scrape together a few bucks to get a Motel 6 and some nights it was staying with friends or strangers on floors.
I started playing music like this at 17 or so, and it was just what I was used to, so basically the segue into the idea behind BTTV happened when I figured out that the whole social network type thing was going to get to a place where people felt pretty confident in the identities people were portraying online, and seeing that this might open up a space for a site that promoted free places to stay a la couch surfing. I wanted to use hospitality as a baseline for a connection so people could network a little bit better and more easily. There was a time when Myspace was young and innocent, and you could actually network pretty decently with other bands and get shows. You could scrape it together that way. And then Myspace blew up and turned into whatever it is now, and I thought that there was room for the BTTV idea. And when I threw the “music hospitality” idea out there, and it took on a life of its own. Now, we keep working on it and build what people want it to do.
You’ve been a performing and touring musician, and now you’re running this connective service, where you’re building a community for people to trade shows and couches and to put tours together. Is there anything you’ve learned about touring in a sustainable way that you feel would’ve benefited you when you were just starting out?
TH:
I think just having a place to start is really big. The service is definitely geared towards the younger bands and people that are just getting going. There are a lot of those, and a lot of bands that don’t have any idea how they could possibly tour outside their city or town or further than a couple towns away, because have it in their minds they need a booking agent or a friend to manage them and do it all. The site has become something that is geared towards the whole DIY thing, which is cool, but that’s not all that we necessarily intended or what it’s all about.
Someone said, “This is a really cool site. It’s the corporate version of DIY.” And I thought that was pretty weird. But, I guess it makes sense, even though it was never our intention. Our intention has always been just to be a point of contact and a way for the younger band to help get going. Someone might say, “I live in Minneapolis, MN, but I’ve never been to Chicago or Indianapolis before on tour,” or “I want to try to tour my way out to the East Coast and play Dayton and all these other towns along the way.” BTTV can be a great connection point, because the people who are on it are playing shows in those cities, really active in their scenes, want to help bands out and are very approachable people. It’s not a marketing platform or a promotions platform. It’s about trying to make authentic connections.
We were just talking with a band the other night at a studio here in town that is using it. This is a band that easily has friends in tons of cities and is playing other cities, but they said, “This is really cool. We’re playing in cities we would’ve never played before. We’re finding really good people there.” Whether it’s a place to stay, or a promoter or just making new friends or fans just by trying to make other connections, it ends up working as a quasi LinkedIn in some ways.
Can you get other members you know on the site to vouch for you, or are do you give people the opportunity to review each other?
TH:
Eventually, we want to do that. We’re a small shop, so all features take a little time to build out. Right now, there’s a commenting system on all the profiles that people can use. If somebody has a rough experience or it doesn’t work out they can comment. So, if a host didn’t show up or the band trashed a house, the person that was wronged can comment on a particular profile about that. There’s a feedback loop. And we are working on a feature that’s similar to one you find on LinkedIn, where you can make suggestions to other people based on the connection you have. I think as we grow, the goal is to show all the connection points people have. Then we will have people saying, “Oh, you play in this band? Our bass player was in this other band that knows them.” And then the other person will say, “Oh yeah? My bass player was friends with their other friends.” And then you connect the dots and can suddenly have a show in Portland.”
The world ends up being that small when you’ve been around long enough.
TH:
I think BTTV is innocently trying to make a way for people to connect in that way. And, as mentioned, it’s using hospitality and tour dates as the center totem around which everything else revolves.
You’ve played in touring bands, and you’re now really at the nexus of watching these touring connections happen for people at various stages. What advice would you have for people just starting out with touring that want to go to that next town over or fill in dates in between two towns?
TH:
I think a lot of bands when they get going want to go play the bigger cities because they think it’s going to be awesome, and that they’ll get a big turnout. I would say, don’t do that first. Try to play the smaller towns or cities around that city to try to gain a following and pick up some steam. Go to a place where there aren’t a lot of things people can do other than go to your show that night, or where you can open for or play in the middle slot with another local band that has a following. Get into a position where people will actually notice you instead of getting that opening slot at a good club that has ten people there just waiting for you to be done so they can hear the next band play. The key is to really try to hone in on those bands that – even if they don’t necessarily stylistically match yours – are drawing people and like you and want to help you out. I’d rather play Champaign, IL or Rockford, IL than Chicago.
I interviewed Martin Atkins not too long ago, and he was talking about how you go to New York or L.A., and not only are there 100 different bars between you and the destination for anybody just walking to any given club, but on any given night there’s a national headliner that’s offering free lobster rolls and fireworks and God knows what else. Having fewer options probably helps.
TH:
It does. Play the odds. The odds are that if you’re playing a show in Spokane, WA or in a smaller town or city at the only place they do shows, more than likely there’s just going to be people there that don’t know anything about you. But if you can fill that out with maybe ten people that you might know or have met online, they can vouch for you before you come. I don’t think that’s really changed. I just think it’s easier to get those shows now because people can connect a lot more easily that way.
What business model fuels the site?
TH:
Right now we do site sponsorships, where a particular company or brand sponsors the site for a month or as long as they want to do it. Within that package is advertising. Eventually down the road, we have a few ways we feel we can monetize it, but therein lies an interesting issue, because our audience doesn’t necessarily want to spend money on stuff they’re used to getting for free, which is “connection.” It poses an interesting problem. We’ve tossed around a very light subscription model. We’ve tossed around an idea where people only pay for what they use, so we give them an a la carte menu of features we think are really handy that they’d want to pay a dollar per month for. We’re really approaching it not as, “For $15 a month you get this,” and then they only use 20% of what they’re paying for. I think there’s opportunity to make money and have it be a self-sufficient thing, but we have to scale much more. We just rolled out the new site and redeveloped the entire thing over the last few months, so we’re seeing what kind of traction we get out of that. Right now, it’s totally free.
At a certain point you may have the uptown problem of getting the kind of traffic that Myspace gets, because any social networking site can become incessantly noisy and self promoting. How do you plan to grow without reaching that level of cacophony?
TH:
That’s totally the right word: the cacophony of sound and noise. And, that’s a really good question. I think right now for us the people who use the site drive what we do. We really only have the time and bandwidth to give them the tools they need that they’ll really use, and then to prepare by looking at what doesn’t work. We try to find those functions or features that can easily be abused and try to limit them. At some point, people will always find a way to use your site to promote themselves if you give them a little window of light to do that. I think a lot of that can be honed in as we make more money and can hire more developers and good, smart people to figure out how to handle those noise problems. As far as scaling right now, it’s “come one, come all,” and “try to grow as much as we can.” When we start noticing excessive noise, that’s when we’ll get creative and decide if it’s good noise or if we need to tune it to the kind of noise people want to hear.
To learn more about Todd and his friendly social networking site that touts itself as “Music’s Home for Hospitality,” you can visit Better Than The Van directly.
Mark Shulman is Vice President and General Manager at AEG Live Northeast. Mark got his start in the music industry almost 20 years ago, when he worked to organize performances and productions on the University Concert Committee at his alma mater, Penn State. After graduating, he worked with the Agency for the Performing Arts (APA) for several years in the late ‘90s, working closely with major artists including The Black Crowes and the Steve Miller Band. He eventually went to work with Metropolitan Entertainment where, as talent buyer, he promoted shows by artists such as Lenny Kravitz, John Mayer and the Red Hot Chili Peppers at many popular New York City venues, including Hammerstein Ballroom, Beacon Theater, Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall.
In 2003, Mark was on the team that opened AEG Live’s New York City office. He created and supervised the construction of the Nokia Theater Times Square (now Best Buy Theater), which opened in September, 2005 with Bon Jovi and won Pollstar’s Best New Music Venue that same year. Since then, he has worked at the theater with The Eagles, Fall Out Boy, Prince, Kanye West and many other artists. Mark also supervises bookings and operations at Starland Ballroom in Sayerville, NJ, the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, PA, Trocadero in Philadelphia and the Highline Ballroom in New York City.
I recently sat down with Mark to talk about his responsibilities at AEG and his advice for developing artists that want to build their fan base and book more and better live shows.
Mark, thanks for taking the time. So you’re a concert promoter -what does a promoter do?
MS:
As a concert promoter, your primary goal is to work and develop artists to present them to fans in the best possible way. That involves working with management and agency to determine what the right place and the right ticket price is, and then once you agree upon a deal, it’s marketing, selling tickets and producing the event in such a way that everyone has a great time.
What is your role at AEG?
MS:
I oversee our operations and bookings from the theater level, down for the Northeast.
So, you’re one of the principal people that put together the Nokia, now Best Buy theater, and put together a lot of events for AEG. These days, you’re dealing primarily with enormous artists. What is the process from a promoter’s vantage point that developing acts should be going through in order to get bigger and better gigs other than posting numbers to smaller promoters and club owners?
MS:
It really depends on what level of developing you are. There’s anywhere from the point where you don’t have any type of fan base, up to the point where you may be worth thousands of tickets, but still developing. The question really depends on where you are. The most important thing an artist can to do start raising attention is to develop a fan base. And that can be through any way possible. Not to make that sound easy, but to start getting that traction and start getting music into people’s hands and start getting them talking about it is really important. Now more than ever, word of mouth is just the best way to build your fan base, and it can be through social media or friends telling friends. But getting your fans to be active marketers in spreading the word about what you’re doing, and then engaging those fans in a way that keeps them involved in everything you’re doing are critical steps to take.
Do you think that’s purely product based, or is that something people can mess up if they have a good product?
MS:
Good product is really only a small part of the battle. Just going by averages, you have to believe that the best product that comes out every year probably never gets heard by anyone, just by the sheer volume of what’s out there. So, having great product helps. But being able to effectively market and get it into people’s hands is arguably more important.
You’ve been doing this since you were a freshman in college at Penn State. Let’s say you’re a band at ground zero, you have a mailing list of 100 – your friends, family and some guy you kind of met kind of sort of once. Can you elaborate on what you would do if you were that age again and were a musician on that level, in light of everything you’ve seen?
MS:
I think I would try as much as possible to get in front of as many people as possible for as little cost as possible and then slowly start working my way to the point where I get my fans to start wanting to pay to see me. But, really, getting in touch with those early adopters is important. There is no blanket answer to that, because it depends on what your scene is. If you’re a rock band, it’s going to be very different from if you’re a Hip Hop artist or an indie rock artist. Everyone is going to go about it a different way and have different tools at their disposal. It also depends on where you’re from. If you’re somewhere further away from a major city, you’re going to have a lot harder time. Gigging around a small town is probably not going to get you the traction you need. I think more than anything, get yourself into a place where more of the influential tastemakers are. That’s probably at one of the top 12-15 markets in the country.
I remember seeing the VH1 behind the music story of REM, and they said they just played pizza places in obscurity in Athens, GA forever. You don’t think there’s a build process where a small market like that is helpful for development?
MS:
I think anyone who developed more than five years ago is not a model to look at. The internet has changed everything, and the decline of the record companies has changed everything. I can’t say for sure what would happen if today REM did the exact same thing from Athens, GA as they did then, but I don’t see a whole lot of bands coming out of small or obscure towns anymore.
I wasn’t really comparing that apples to apples, but that’s interesting to note. It used to be that sometimes you wouldn’t necessarily want to a band in New York, L.A. or Nashville, because of the overwhelming flood of talent there.
MS:
I think that was true. But now, since you can get so much attention through media and blogging and fans telling fans, you want to be in a place where you can get in front of as many people as possible and then do your best to engage them, whether through your mailing list or chances to win opportunities. We have a lot of bands who get onto larger shows as local artists by being able to motivate their fan base to come to see them. If we feel that by putting you on a show it’s going to help bring in another 100 or 200 people, we’re going to get you in front of the other 1500 by putting you on the bill. The goal is that those people who see you are going to latch onto you and then start telling more people about it. For us, the goal of social media is to get fans to tell their friends and other fans about you through various promotions and are able to spread the word. That’s really the most effective way to get the word out now that traditional media is less effective and less cost effective.
I get hounded every day – eight-ten cold emails and calls per day – asking me, “Can you help me find an agent?” I know artists who can draw 100-200 kids in twelve markets who can’t find an agent. Why do you think it’s so difficult now for artists to get agents?
MS:
I think it was always difficult. I’m pretty sure it was as difficult for artists that drew 100-200 people ten years ago as it is today. It’s the most difficult type of artist to book, and it makes the least amount of money. If you only have a certain amount of time in your day as an agent, you have to concentrate on what will pay the bills. Taking an artist that’s making $250 per day and grinding out a 20-city tour is next to impossible. What I would say to that artist is to question why you need an agent so badly. All that agent is going to do is call all the same places you can yourself. They may be able to call in some favors and get some better results. But they’re not miracle workers, and they aren’t going to get you on the next arena tour just by virtue of being your agent. They are still going to have to try to get you in at the club level, which you can mostly do yourself.
I know when you market a show it’s very different, because you’re dealing with known commodities with built-in fan bases, print and online advertising and media buys on different websites. When you have an unknown quantity, or a quantity that’s not very well known, what is the marketing process like ideally? What should somebody be doing to correctly market a show, either in their home market or for the first time in a new market?
MS:
I don’t know if there’s a good answer to that question, or if I’m the right person to answer it. I really don’t market or advertise bands of that size. But I think it’s hard for anyone. But, take it step by step. Don’t try to headline in a market you’ve never played before where you probably don’t have any fans. Get yourself on a bill with three or four other people. Find another band who also has a draw and a similar audience and start touring together. To go it alone and try to play someplace you’ve never played before when you’re worth 200 tickets, 100 miles away isn’t necessarily going to translate. Ask yourself what your scene is. If you go and ask your fans, “Who else do you like locally,” what do they tell you? And then you should be working with those bands and increasing your fan base together.
Is there anything digitally that you think is an absolute must-have for bands, be it an email list or a recommended social network? Is there a litmus test for when you’re looking for a band online – other than that you have access to Pollstar numbers – that gives you a key performance indicator about how much the band is going to be worth?
MS:
The best indicator of future performance is past performance. But I would say, as a developing artist the best think you can do is have a really great website. Facebook and Myspace are important, and even everything down to Wikipedia can be important, because a lot of people will go try to find out about your band through there. But, have a website that not only gives information like tour dates, but also really engages your fans. You’ll do especially well if you can create an active forum. See if you can create your website in such a way that fans spend time on it instead of just going to look up a bit of information.
To learn more about Mark Shulman and his company, check out the AEG Live website.
Dave Lory has had a diverse career in the music business and has done everything from tour managing huge acts like MegaDeath, the Allman Brothers and Lady Gaga to being the head of the international and marketing departments at labels like Mercury and Artemis to managing acclaimed artists like Jeff Buckley. Most recently Dave has been a partner with Tom Silverman in the recently relaunched New Music Seminar. Speaking of the New Music Seminar at the end of the interview Dave shares a two for one promotional code for the upcoming July event.
Dave, thanks as always for your time. Let’s talk about what you saw on the road. I often get asked “How do I book a tour?” Tell me what is really involved in taking a band that is local or regional and getting to the next market.
DL:
It’s funny because a lot of times the question is their answer. They just do it. I remember I was right out of high school for four years I was a touring musician and tour managed the bands I was in. I went to all the Chambers of Commerce and asked them for a list of clubs – this was before the Internet – and sent out packages and I was pleasantly pushy and went in and played for free, and the next time we brought in a few more people, etc., etc. I grew up in the Southeast, and it was a big club scene in the Carolinas. Really I just started doing that circle and making it bigger. After about three or four months, the dates start getting easier. Because you’re playing a show, and then you book the next one a month or two in advance, and six months later without even realizing it you start having this database and options. We were playing anywhere from 22-30 days a month literally. That practice really hasn’t changed. Now there’s more detail with Musician’s Atlas or Pollstar, where you can go in and find the venue sizes.
Do you think there’s more competition now that so many musicians are able to do the DIY thing?
DL:
The club owners are getting saturated with artists. That’s why an artist really needs to look at their hometown first, and maybe even go places many people wouldn’t even think about. If you are living in New York City for example then it means going to Albany and some of these rural areas and getting on a show for free. You really have to be good at it, and that takes repetition and more importantly you have to show you can draw people, and that again really is through repetition. So there’s really no secret leap of faith or saying “let’s get the support slot, because sometimes the headliner will choose the supporting band because they like the band, but other times it’s a business decision and they choose someone because they will sell tickets.
From your perspective, when is it time for a band to get a tour manager, and what falls into your lap other than advancing shows? I know depending on the tour, that job varies greatly. Some tour managers are glorified roadies, and some people are actually doing a great amount of the business. I don’t think on the bigger tours people have an understanding of what a tour manager job really entails.
DL:
The first step is as a band you need to have band members that take the business aspects seriously. So you need one guy that deals with the merchandise, another guy that handles the website and updating it and reaching out to the fans and making sure they know about the shows, and another guy dealing with the logistics, and one guy maybe dealing with the boring aspects of it, so everybody has a job and they do it. In this regard things really have changed that much, because you’re still building a fan base one fan at a time. It can get to a point where you’re not performing or doing the business transactions as well as you could, and it kind of hits you upside the head. That’s when you have to say, “Maybe we bring a friend on for the next month, and he drives the van, and we pay him a $25 per diem, and that person slowly gets into that position.” When the band knows the job duties, they can actually train the person. The first person to hire ideally is a tour manager, but he can also be your sound man.
The job of sound man fell to you in your experiences on the road?
DL:
I actually got sat down by the band and told, “Pick one or the other.” Seriously. That was my slap upside the face, and I said, “Which one do you want to do?” And they said, “It doesn’t matter. You’re a great drummer and a great business person. Just make up your mind.” I was 24 at that time and hadn’t gone to college, but I was intending to go to New York to attend NYU’s music business program, because I thought that’s the logical place to break into the business or as an artist. So I made the decision to go into business. And I actually replaced myself with Scott Travis, who’s the drummer for Judas Priest right now. I moved to New York and continued managing the latest band I was in for the next year and a half. And I think that’s how you get better as a manager too, because once you take that next step and can just focus on being a manager it enables you to start gaining experience.
Tell me what the job as tour manager evolves into? You were just out with Lady Gaga. That’s a considerably different role. What kind of tasks fall into your hands? Someone like Gaga has people for almost every aspect of her life. Even Semi-Precious Weapons have their own handlers. They’re on Interscope, they have a manager. How does the tour manager role change as a band gets bigger?
DL:
Interestingly enough, I met Semi-Precious Weapons on the tour with Perez Hilton, and they were the only ones without a tour manager. They did it all by themselves. I kind of took them under my wing because I thought they were an amazing band. This was before they got signed. I saw them go from everybody rejecting them in a couple months to then all of a sudden a bidding war happening. They took no prisoners every night, hit the merch every night and did everything to develop a fan base. It was truly amazing. They went from the co-headliner to the opening act in five shows on that tour. It was a national tour. They originally asked me to tour manage them on the Lady Gaga tour, but they couldn’t afford my experience at the time. I really liked the band and wanted to make it work. Coincidentally I was brought in to coordinate Kid Cudi, so I was managing two artists. I was tour managing Semi-Precious Weapons and coordinating Kid Cudi’s tour, and then Lady Gaga once I got out on the road. The tour had seven tractor-trailer trucks and ten tour buses. They were primarily arena shows in theaters, and arenas have several loading docks, and theaters have only one, maybe two. So we were having trouble getting all the gear in on time.
It feels like it’s about to be a Spinal Tap moment: “Where’s the stage?”
DL:
Right. It really was. It was an unbelievable production. Lady Gaga is incredibly talented and smart, but it was a little bit too much. I was asked by the production manager and tour manager and stage manager to oversee the local crews, because that way the stage manager can stay up on top and the production manager can do his job. I used it to my advantage because I was getting more stage space for my opening act and getting sound checks on top of that. When you’re touring, the headliner will set up their stuff, and that can take all the way to the doors or past the doors, so you never get a sound check as an opening act. This is what opening acts don’t understand. They say, “Oh, the monitors weren’t good.” Well, the monitors won’t be good until you headline. Just get over it and get on with the show.
Semi-Precious was that way on the Perez tour. I’d say, “No sound check tonight, guys.” And they’d say, “No problem. It’s rock and roll.” And they’d just do it and never complain once. And you really wanted to fight for them. It was the same result with the Lady Gaga tour. What are you responsible for on a tour like this? For Semi-Precious Weapons I was responsible for everything from the lodging and logistics, to the tour bus and production elements, the timing, the guest list, the interview schedules. Anything and everything came to me and I put it together. On Kid Cudi, I got their trucks, lighting, video screens, video walls, put together their tour riders, tour books, the buses, what time they got up, when they traveled, how they traveled, the food at the venues. As a headliner it even gets more extreme. There were 70 people on the road, so you’re responsible for making sure they get paid, their daily per diems to eat – breakfast, lunch and dinner at the venue – the local crews you’re coordinating, and they have laws that get break for dinner, so you have to make sure stuff gets in, the production, the setup of the stage, the backline, the test, the backline and settling the show every night. And when you settle the show, people don’t understand you’re literally going into the venue and paying for that venue. So, all the local crews and staff, the Coke people are drinking that they’re paying for, towels, the production, all that is being paid for. And then it gets really difficult when you’re shipping it throughout the world, because you’re dealing with customs, passports, all that stuff. It’ really anything and everything that needs to be done.
It’s actually very enjoyable. When you’re last person on that bus, and you look behind you and see seven tractor trailer trucks and 10 tour buses over 70 people on the road, not to mention the 20,000 people that just left the venue with smiles on their faces, it’s a pretty rewarding feeling.
I’m going to bring it back in all the way to the beginning, because unfortunately most people don’t get to experience it on that level. But over the years, of all the things you’ve learned, what were the things you’d say to somebody looking for a tour manager. There are going to be obvious human qualities – they’re going to have to be trustworthy, they have to be diligent, not completely baked 24/7. But if you were starting over as a musician, how would you hire a tour manager? What qualities would you look for?
DL:
Two, primarily.
One, they don’t get rattled and they’re even keeled. You’ve heard of Murphy’s Law, well it happens all the time. A girl buying a ticket doesn’t care that you had a flat tire and were late, or that you aren’t feeling as good, or you had a fight with your girlfriend. They are paying for that one show. So, you really have to have somebody that’s even keeled and can handle pressure in its most intense form.
The second thing is, being really well organized. There are a lot of moving parts. People don’t realize that tour books, etc. are put together for the tour manager, not for everybody else that reads them. In doing the tour book, you’ve already laid out your daily itineraries for however long the tour is. “We’re leaving at 8 a.m., and there are 1,000 miles until the next city.”
What are the essentials in a tour book?
DL: The tour book is an itinerary that goes out to all the personnel working the tour: the musicians; the tour people on the road, but more importantly the management company, record company, publicist, etc., so they can look at that book and find out when is a good time to schedule an interview or hold a meeting, etc.
When would you suggest people just starting out start this thing? Would you suggest people schedule their tours to this degree when they’re just four or five guys in a van?
DL:
Absolutely, because if you’re doing one show in a week, that day sheet starts with, “Today is” whatever the day is, the date, the time zone and the city you’re going to. And then there’s “travel” at the beginning, which would be, “The van is leaving at 12:00 from Bob the guitarist’s house, and the travel time is 5 hours, 250 miles.” I usually use 50 miles for an hour, and if I have to go through a big city like D.C. to get somewhere else, I’ll add an hour for traffic just to make sure I’m being conservatively safe. And then on that same page it says, load in the gear, what time the sound check is, what time the doors are, what ages: 21 and over; under 18; etc.
And this kind of stuff really provides clarity and organization to anybody’s schedule. And it’s wonderful to hear concrete and useable bits of information like estimating 50 miles to an hour, etc. This is the kind of stuff that would translate to the guys that are just starting out and may say, “We’re going to D.C. We’ve never been there, but we met some dude, and we’re going.”
DL:
It’s the matter that everybody’s on the same page when you’re traveling. Even on your family trips, your dad woke you up and said, “We’re leaving at 10 a.m. tomorrow, and Grandma’s house is three hours away, and we have to be there for lunch at one.” So, it’s really no different. It’s coordinating a group of people on a trip, and we’ve done it as friends just going to the beach. The only difference is you’re in a professional situation, and you can’t be late, especially as a young artist. You should always be early. By just doing that day sheet, it’s a sheet you do so you don’t have to think. You just look at your sheet, and you know you have to be at Bob the guitarist’s house at ten in the morning.
I’m going to switch gears and get more to the present. I appreciate you sharing all that stuff from your past.
DL:
The beautiful thing about being in the music industry, and something that you brought up is that we learn every day. I learn from you, you learn from me. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in the music industry for 20 or 30 years. If you were in any other business, and I asked you, “How does that work?” you’d look at me and say, “You’ve been in the business for 30 years. Don’t you know?” No, you don’t. The other person gives that advice, and it’s not looked upon in a bad way.
That’s very true. Tell me about what you and Tommy are doing with New Music Seminar this year coming up in New York. What’s different this year, what’s coming up that you’re excited about? What are your general thoughts about the music business and where it is all going? Go to town.
DL:
The first thing is, the Seminar has really rekindled excitement in my career again, personally and professionally, mainly because you feel like you’re giving back something. What we’re giving back is bringing everybody together in an industry that needs to reinvent itself and being a big part of making that happen. The second part is we’ve got a program called “The Artists on the Verge,” which we’re researching hundreds of artists that have never been on a major or independent label, and we bring the top three artists out of that through a voting system and analytics of who is selling merch and concert tickets and music. We give them the opportunity to be the only show in front of the industry and the press in New York in July (July 19th-21st), and then again we do it in L.A. the day after the Grammys in February every year. That eventually will hopefully be a tour. We’re breaking artists above the noise floor, and we’re going to print the Top 100 by name and the Top 10 by genres twice a year.
Hopefully this will get exposure for these artists. Both of these reasons are reasons I’m excited. We started in NY, Chicago and L.A. doing one-day events and we were actually going to do it in Dallas, where 80% of the artists can just drive in and out – people in the industry, managers, agents, etc. It just took off so fast and in L.A. we had over 1300 people, and everybody was– and I mean everybody, because we reach out to the delegates and ask them what we could do better – was unanimously requesting, “You need multiple days.” Because they were learning so much in the book we give out that has facts and forms and marketing tips and dos and don’ts – it’s not just like the other conferences, nothing against them. They talk about Beyonce’s sponsorship deal and getting your music in CSI, and their books aren’t very practical. Our conference book is packed with real information that they can keep and keep going back to, some of which we just talked about: forms to fill out for a show as an example; or a rider; or merchandise forms that help you figure out how you sign out your merchandise before a show; tips on how to sell more merchandise; tips on how to tour more efficiently on the road; how to get started. That’s just on the touring end. It covers all aspects of the business. We really created this “curriculum,” as we call it, because we call our panels “movements” and our moderators are “conductors” and the speakers are “players” and it’s the NMS Symphony of ideas. We were doing four movements, and the basis of it is getting 1,000 true fans, spending $100 each on whatever it is you’re selling, be it a concert ticket, music or merchandise, and getting to the 300 ticket mark. What’s evolving that is now we’ve gone to a multiple-day event, where we’ve added eight 20-minute lectures, where companies and the heads of these companies are going to show artists no matter where they are in their career how to make money, and 22 mentoring sessions where the delegates get a one-on-one session, and it’s going to be fast-paced, almost like speed dating, where 200 people are coming in that room, and you’re going to be hitting just about any of them.
Shameless plug but I’m actually one of the mentoring sessions. How many panelists are there this year?
DL:
There are only 23 slots for panelists. Most conferences will have six, to eight people and there’s not a clear objective, they don’t talk before they go up there, so it’s really haphazard how those things happen. There’s not a lot of real information going out there. Nobody cares that I managed Jeff Buckley. They Google me and they know that. What they want to know is, how can I show them how to get to 300 tickets the fastest way possible. Nobody is allowed to talk about their companies on these movements. Their companies are being sold through the New Music Guidebook and the fact that we’re advertising them in that book and also by them speaking. Everybody’s really focused on educating artists managers, agents, independent label heads on how to use their companies and what are the new ways of doing business? That’s what’s exciting about it. When you leave the seminar, everybody is so positive about going out there and making that change, and “I can do it”. It is very rewarding. You leave with a very similar feeling when you do a live show as a tour manager. You’ve done a great job, people leave happy and if you help people. I’ve been teaching at William Patterson this past year, and it too is very rewarding. Youth gives energy back to you.
That brings it nicely full circle. Are you guys going to be doing any promos for the conference this year?
DL:
Yes. If you register for the New Music Seminar between now and June 29th, you can use the code “NMSNY10” and not only will you get a 2-for-1 discount, but you will also be automatically registered to win a Gibson SG white $1280 guitar. We’re doing the drawing on site on July 20th at 1 p.m.
