How to Get a Gig
  By
Heather McDonald
One
of the best ways to build up a fan base for your band is to get
out there and play live, as often as your can. But often bands find
themselves between a rock and hard place - to get a gig, you need
an audience, but to get an audience, you need a gig. You can see
above that, however, and get your band in front of the crowd if
you follow the right steps. This how-to guide will cover getting
a single show, but many of these steps can be built upon to book
your band an entire tour.
Here's how...
Read
the full article here.
Heather McDonald is a freelance writer and full time music fan.
She splits her time between North Carolina and coastal South Carolina.
She has worked in the music industry since her teen years. She started
out sitting behind a record store counter, first as an employee
and then as the manager of a small, independent record store. During
her time at the record store, Heather worked closely with both major
and independent labels on new release promotion and worked on in
store performances from artists as varied as The Barenaked Ladies
and Alejandro Escavado. Heather left the record store to move to
Glasgow, Scotland, where she worked at indie label Shoeshine Records.
There, Heather wore the jack of all trades hat: dealing with manufacturing
and distribution, securing international licensing agreements, artist
management, tour booking, and album promotion. She has worked with
artists like BMX Bandits, Laura Cantrell, Paul Burch, and Steve
Young. Heather left Shoeshine after six years and now works as a
freelance writer, covering music for many print and web outlets
and doing PR for labels and bands.
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Onlinegigs
is home to one of the fastest growing and most extensive national
directories listing venues, festivals, music conferences and
colleges that provide potential booking opportunities. Seeking
out those potential opportunities is one of the, if not THE,
most laborious tasks for a band starting at the point of locating
venues to contact. Onlinegigs gives you a great start to venues
in each of the markets as well as the opportunity to earn
credits back to your subscription by adding venues not currently
listed or updating the info on an existing contact. The more
people you reach out to, the better your opportunity of securing
a booking that meets your routing targets. You can search
for venues by any number of parameters including genre, city,
state, and one of the most powerful being the ability to search
within a specified mile radius of a zip code. You can quickly
locate venues, get an email out to them, set up a task to
follow up and move on to the next one. Then spend your valuable
time following up and developing relationships with the talent
buyers. It takes persistence. Onlinegigs gives you all of
the tools to streamline this process and optimize your booking
opportunities. 
