What Shows/Gigs should you play?

As an aspirational band it's very easy to fall into the trap of doing all the gigs you can get your hands on, but to be honest - should you be playing all those gigs?

Now I know a lot of you are shouting "OF COURSE YOU SHOULD!!" but the truth of the matter is simply ... NO, you shouldn't! Especially if you're a new band!

One band I worked with fell head over heels into this trap. They are a great band with fantastic music both recorded and in their live set. In late 2013 to mid 2014 they did over 200 shows! Now that's impressive in any light, BUT, it did them no favours at all!

Let's look at why not: 

• There was a lot of local gigs in there
• Local gigs are fine, but as I mentioned in another post, try not to advertise these gigs, keep them word of mouth only - see previous post for why.
• When record labels look at these gigs it really means nothing to them - local gigs are so easy to book they hold no status for most labels - in fact I'm certain that I could start an acoustic act tonight, make a facebook page and book the entirety of next week out in local gigs with no music to show the venues. They mean nothing to them.

•  Most of the places were 'sell tickets to play'!
• This is my absoloute pet hate in the music industry, I love how the venues have shunned 'pay to play' but in fact all they've done is repackaged it as sell tickets to play... and if you don't sell x amount of tickets...you have to pay the venue! STEER CLEAR! The only reason these still exist is because bands will still play them - worthless gigs! You won't gain any fans and you will have dragged all your friends to another city at great cost for practically nothing, just a night out.

• Doing so many gigs in a year devalues you as a band!
• Imagine your time as a resource - if you give it out like theres no tomorrow then you are practically flooding the market and bringing your value down. It's the same as diamonds - DeBeers hold a collosal amount of their diamond stocks off the market for the purpose of keeping the demand alive in the market and inflating the prices - this is what you should do with your time!
•  If you have hundreds of gigs in a year and a finite amount of fans (let's be honest, you have) then maybe 10 will come to this weeks show and another 10 will come to the show the week after and another 10 decide to come to the show the week after that... what you're doing if effecitvely spreading your fans out accross the year, STOP DOING IT! If you only did ONE show every 6 months in that location and promote it like crazy then all those fans who were going to come at different times will ALL COME TO THE SAME GIG! Making it an epic gig in a packed venue rather than 6 poor gigs in an empty one! If the fans do want to see your show, tell them when it is and make it exclusive... don't give them an option of 6 gigs to choose from in the next 6 weeks! It might look impressive on paper but that's it. Imagine a label executive comes to one of your empty gigs then imagine them coming to a packed gig!

• It's fun to begin with.... but...
• It wears thin really quick! The band I mentioned were doing hundreds of miles a week usually in their own cars. They did gigs 6 hours away, travelled there, did the gig, travelled 6 hours back, got home at 4am, got up in the morning at 8am to work, finished work and travelled 4 hours to the next gig and repeat! 
• It adds stress to the band that shouldn't be there and detracts from other things such as song writing and recording - things that will get you places!

• They didn't work smart on what gigs they picked
• They practically did every gig they could find, and it got them deeper in this catch 22 situation because they kept being offered more gigs to do as a result of the ones they were doing (in the same venues). 
• Doing an empty venue on a Tuesday night will get you nowhere fast.
• Unless the weekdays are the busiest nights at the venues, don't do them! People will be at work/school! They don't want to come to your empty gig.  

So in a nutshell.... don't do so many gigs!
Work smart, not hard, well... do work hard, but work harder at being smart! 

If there's any doubt about the gig, don't do it.
If you know it will be quiet, don't do it!
If you've done it before and it was bad, don't do it!
Basically, don't play gigs for the sake of playing gigs, you will get sucked in to it and it will be impossible to break out of and if you manage to then you'll find yourself back at step 1 just as if you had never of done those gigs to begin with.






The band that did all these gigs, they didn't do anything that year and when they came to me the biggest job was getting them out of that cycle because everything else was great! 
Now they are doing only gigs that will benefit them and maybe playing 2 gigs a month instead of nearly 4 a week and they are shooting up through the ranks much much quicker than they were by doing any only gig. The ones they do now hold a value and status and gets people to notice them! They did some of those kinds of gigs while doing the 200 a year but they got lost under the pile of bad ones they were doing.


If you would like to discuss any issues mentioned here, please feel free to email me at getnoticedandsigned@gmail.com and I'll try and point you in the right direction! If you know anyone who could benefit from these posts, please send them the links or share it on social media! Thanks!

Next up..... SHOULD BANDS PAY FOR PEOPLES SERVICES? (for example.. pluggers, booking agents etc.)