4 ways to book more and better shows using data
Streaming platforms are not just convenient for consumers, but they provide some helpful tools for the artists as well. By looking at how many listeners you have, where they are located, and where similar artists have performed, musicians can expand their fanbase easier than ever before!
A guest post by Angela Mastrogiacomo from ReverbNation
With data being readily available on streaming platforms, musicians and booking agencies can book more location-targeted shows. For emerging artists who haven’t played a tour, most booking agents have to take a risk about how many tickets they can sell. With the availability of streaming data, now everyone can see how many listeners there are in each city and country, and they can make a more realistic estimate of how many listeners they can bring to the show.
Streaming data also allows many booking agents to discover artists early in their career. There are many artists on streaming platforms who might have thousands of listeners and might not have played a show, nor considered playing live at all. This information can be used both by the booking agent, and an artist to book shows. In this blog post, we’re sharing four ways you can use data for booking shows.
1. Look at the Location Data
Most streaming platforms will give you data about your listeners based on demographic and geographic information. The geographic information will typically be broken down into cities and countries. Location data will probably be one of the most important and useful data points you can use for booking shows because the streaming platforms give you the number of unique listeners. If you have a substantial amount of listeners in a given city and you haven’t played there yet, it would be a logical next step to look for venues to play in that city. On the contrary, it would not make sense to book a show in a city if you don’t have any listeners there. This way, you can save money and make much better-touring decisions.
With the streaming data, you also can see the data for individual songs. That way, you can also see which styles perform better than others, and if they do, where do they perform well. The reverse look up based on location is unfortunately not available right now. In any case, if your music is on a streaming platform, you will be able to see where your overall audience lives.
[ALSO: 3 legal Bandsintown Hacks I’ve used to book hundreds of live shows]
2. Get More Followers to Follow Your Page
When it comes to listener data, the number of listeners is not the sole factor to take into account. In fact, if you take just the number of listeners as a decision-making factor, you’re probably making a mistake, because not everyone who listens to your music might become a fan. Someone might have heard your song through a playlist or through a radio algorithm. The people who truly might come to your shows can be better scaled with the number of followers you have. These are people who actually follow your music actively, and are interested to hear more music from you and who come to your shows. So, it would be a great idea to get people to follow your page, and use that data to see what locations your followers are in.
3. Look into Big Cities, and Smaller Venues to Start
Once you aggregate your listener and follower data in a given city, it would be a great idea to start with smaller venues. When you’re first starting your career, it looks so much better to be sold out on a smaller venue than to have a large venue and not even fill it up halfway. Moreover, creating a sold-out concert experience adds a new level of demand to your future shows in that given city.
Playing in big cities is also great because you have more people who might come to a show, and you have more press outlets to promote your show and get the word out.
4. Check out Tour Locations of Artists Who Sound Like You
A solid way to build your tour schedule is also to check out the previous tour schedules of artists who sound like you and who are in a similar stage of their artistic career as you. Perhaps they did their data research as well, and you can utilize that. A show that has turned out well for them might also work for you. Especially if you have a similar sound, it would mean that the audience for that concert might also come to your show. In this case, you can analyze what worked and what did not work for them. Better yet, you can contact that artist and pick their brains about their tour experience in a given location or venue.
These are four ways you can use data to book shows. Keep in mind that there are many other ways you can use data, as it is an ever-evolving technology with new opportunities. However, today’s platforms offer a great way for you to use data to make better booking choices, and you should absolutely take advantage of it.
Angela Mastrogiacomo is the founder and CEO of Muddy Paw PR. She loves ice cream, reality TV, and hanging with her dog Sawyer.
