BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES
As a singer-songwriter in the highlands it is relevant for me to look up music events for gigging experience. I searched around the web and found three trade events that I might be interested in attending. I looked up several ones and thought that GoNorth, SXSW and SONAR would be suitable choices for me. These events all offer performing opportunities and help to gain contacts for future events taking place around Scotland and abroad.
SXSW offers many networking opportunities, career-building conference programming and more than100 stages of music for showcasing bands. SXSW is great for upcoming musicians as a lot of contacts can be made and you can be inspired by other artists work. Last year there were more than 600 artists from all over the globe. Well known artists such as Blondie, Green day, Buddy Guy, Kings of Leon, Jake Bugg, The 1975 and Vampire Weekend have played at the SXSW. Free Wi-Fi is available. Accommodation isn’t included for participants but they can give you suggested hotels to stay in which are near by the festival. Costs are round about £600 per night, quite pricey. The festival is located in Austin the centre of Texas.
“Sónar is the International Festival of Advanced Music and New Media Art taking place in Barcelona during three days every June.” The festival welcomes new and fresh styles of music, more electro dance; this would be good to get some variety of style in my performance abilities. To get to Barcelona you could book a flight to the capital of Spain, Madrid then get either the metro or bus to the festival. I thought SONAR would be a good option for me since I can already speak fluent Spanish so communication wouldn’t be a problem for me also whilst gaining contacts out there I might get more gig opportunities as I further publicity.
GoNorth would be my first priority considering I live in the highlands; I would save a lot of money as I wouldn’t need to purchase accommodation and transport to get to any venues. It gives me the opportunity become familiar of venues such as Ironworks, The Market Bar, The Phoenix, Hootananny/Mad Hatters,The Room, Deeno’s, Blackfriar’s, Town House, Festival Registration and Festival Hotel. Performing round the highlands would help me get a fan base started and make me feel comfortable playing by starting out in small venues, encouraging confidence in my vocals and guitar playing. As GoNorth is my first choice I searched more details. GoNorth is a festival running in the highlands. Acts in the past years have mainly been from Scotland and local new coming musicians also the likes of Rachel Sermanni- a singer songwriter/multi-instrumentalist from Aviemore had performed one year. Rachel Sermanni is a good example of a local becoming big in the music industry from touring with Mumford and sons and releasing her own album. I hope to follow the same roots by working my way up, starting of the highlands then more towards cities such as Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Northern Ireland. If I didn’t stay in the highlands there are many ways to travel over here. We have the Inverness airport and flights from elsewhere in the UK are usually inexpensive. We are also lucky to have a whole range of B&BS, hotels and youth hostels for Performers to stay in. Unfortunately they do not include this as a GoNorth performer so you would have to pay for transport and accommodation. However the festival is a paid gig so you will receive cash from performing at GoNorth festival event. The audience attending the festival will get in free of charge and it’s a very relaxed friendly environment for young musicians such as myself, it will give me the opportunity as well to meet other musicians in my age group which might lead to joint gigs another time or becoming one of their support acts, you never really know.
As an upcoming singer-songwriter in the music industry it seems networking is very important in getting a good audience and opportunities from people who see potential. Sound cloud and YouTube is a good way to get your music seen and heard amongst public listeners. It’s especially important to get your networking sorted so that you are prepared before playing at events. Once you get offered a gig, make sure you are in contact with your events manager and that they send you an invite to play at the musical event you wish to attend. Post the dates of your gigs on social media sites such as facebook and twitter prior to the gig to inform your friends and the public to come.
Certainly post gig it is essential to take any musical equipment you may need. You should bring along with you some spare guitar strings, make sure you’ve got an acoustic pick up for sound quality of the gig and some cables for amplifiers-label them with your name so you can use them over again and not have any problems. Poor networking and advertising won’t allow a big audience for your gig. Post the dates so that people will come, make sure you post them at around 7-8pm as that is the time most people will check their facebook or twitter feed. If you don’t sell enough tickets you could end up losing more money than you gain for the gig.