13 Artists Brighton based booking agents 13 artists hosting a huge amount of renowned acts including The Artic Monkeys, Damien Rice, The Stoned Roses, Paolo Nutini, Athlete and Bloc Party amongst many others….

A  Questionnaire to gain insight into the qualities a booking agency look for in the decision to sign an artist

Industry questions:

1.     What advice would you give to an artist on how to increase their UK fanbase?

Play shows! Hang out after shows to meet people. Talk to other bands and get to know as many people as you possibly can. Being nice to everyone goes a long way – remember your band is only as good as the people who like you!

2.     What are the vital attributes a great band must hold to increase their chances of being successful in the industry?

It varies from band to band. Think about all the great bands throughout history and they are not all the same! Also different people think different bands are great so maybe what people think are great attributes varies as well.

3.     How important do you think it is to a musician’s success, that not only are they a great player and performer, but they also hold an extensive insight to the key roles of industry professionals such as managers, booking agents and record labels?

The most important thing is the band / artist and the music. It’s always good to get advice before working with anyone but the role of a good manager is to take away the stress of being a band / artist so they can concentrate of making music. Ask who anyone approaching you who they work with and it should give you a good idea or whether they are someone who’d be good for you but of course meet them and see what they have to say. The reasons artists have all these people is to give advise to the band and help them achieve what they want to achieve.

Agency questions:

4.     Could you briefly describe the process that your company go through when signing an artist to your roster?

We nearly always approach the artist rather than the other way around. We usually send over a plan for what we hope to achieve for the band in a 12 month period. If the artist agrees with what we’ve sent (sometimes after a few amendments) then we usually move forward working together.

5.     What advise could you give to hard working bands who are trying to get signed to a booking agency?

It’s really important to keep playing shows in your area, be that your town or neighboring towns. Keep working hard, improving your live show and building up a fan base. We book all of our artists all around the world and speak to all the local promoters in every town every week so if your band is good enough they will tell us about you and we will come and find you. Look for the good promoters in town that put on shows that you think you’d musically fit on and start there. In Brighton a good start would be playing for the more established promoters like Melting Vinyl, Lout or One Inch Badge, Sticky Mike’s, Audio or Concorde.

6.     What key elements of a bands performance are evaluated when considering signing them to the agency?

This is very difficult to quantify, as difficult as it sounds it usually comes down to the individual gut feeling of an agent. If you’re in a band you’d want an agent that genuinely likes your band and wants to work hard for you, believes that you can be successful and believe they can add something to help the band achieve this. If the agent gets that feeling when watching a band it’s likely they’ll want to work with you.

7.     What are the main mistakes artists make when approaching booking agents with the intention to get signed?

Concentrate on the local profile of your band. It’s not necessarily the best way to get an agent by approaching one but if you do want to approach us as an agency we get hundreds of requests from new bands looking to work with us every week. The main mistakes are sending really long winded emails about your band because we just don’t have time to read them all – if you’re band is good all we need is the music and a couple of sentences. If we like it and have more questions we’ll ask you. Also don’t send really large files of music that clog up people emails – the best format to send things tends to be as a stream over the interest normally via soundcloud or something similar.

8.     Why is it that a majority of booking agents, are reluctant to sign an artist, if they haven’t already got industry professionals such as management on board?

I don’t believe this to be true; I personally work with several bands where I am the only person who works with the band. The main reason booking agents are ever reluctant to work with anyone is time. We have to give the artists we already work with our time and effort it’s just not possible for us to have rosters of hundreds of bands. In that sense an argument could be made that booking agents would be more likely to work with a band with management as the band would have someone on board to help them with the decision making process which would in theory reduce the time this takes.

9.     Would an agency sign an artist by listening to their music alone or would the determining factor come down to how they perform live?

It would nearly always be how they perform live – as a live booking agent it’s really important for us to know what we are booking. It allows us to do so more effectively.

10.  Even if an artist had a really strong live performance, would the size of their fan base on a social media website play a deciding factor in whether to sign them or not?

No not at all. We believe in the long term careers of our artists if you’ve been a band 6 months and only have 100 fans on facebook for example but we believe the band could have a long and successful career then it doesn’t matter.

11.  From an agencies point of view, if you could state the qualities that the ideal artist would have to ensure an efficient working relationship, what would they be and why?

Loyalty, a hard working honest attitude and a realism on the profile of your band.