I GAVE YOU MY MONEY. WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
Within 24 hours of receiving your payment, we will contact you to go over the things we need from you to start the gig booking process. Some things we will be looking for are any photos, links, press coverage, etc. that you think will be useful in getting you booked across the country. At this first contact, we will also answer any more questions you may have and can schedule a video call with you and your team if required. From then on, you will receive offers and periodic updates through email to keep you posted. Our process is very hands-off, but feel free to check in any time and we will get back to you within 24 hours.
WHAT'S THE ARTIST DEVELOPMENT PACKAGE?
It's kind of like buying a brand new, reliable, efficient Honda Civic for 10% of the retail cost, except if the Honda had the capability to actually bring in money.
ADTURO?
We take the same things we know that got you here to help you get fans to your shows. Plus some other stuff.
WHAT IS THE BEST ONE PIECE OF ADVICE YOU CAN GIVE TO ANYONE LOOKING TO BOOK A TOUR?
Start booking at least three months in advance. (We say it, like, 20 times on this website.) This means getting your stuff together even sooner than three months. Emails should start going out about three months before your departure date. No--wait--follow up. Don't let a conversation stop just because they stop responding or because you're too lazy/nervous to pick up the phone and talk to someone. Schedule your follow-ups and follow through. That's the best piece of advice. Not the first thing.
CAN YOU GET US A GIG FOR EVERY DAY ON TOUR?
Without getting too much into the economics of touring, we began building Bandturo with gigging every day on tour in mind. We truly believe that we have the best process in the world for booking gigs for independent artists. When we tour we understand the cost of time and money it takes to be out on the road instead of back at base where our jobs guarantee (sort-of) a stable income. Bandturo is a process that has been carefully and painfully developed over hours and hours and days and days and years of research, practice, and networking. But even though the process is finished, it does not mean we have stopped improving and adding to it. It also doesn't mean it will solve all your booking troubles. But it does save you a lot of time and money, helps you earn more money, and start new valuable relationships with talent buyers and booking agents across the country.
We will be working and experimenting over the next several years to build a process and network that will one day become a solution for bands to gig every day that they want. And, actually, each band that signs up for Bandturo helps in that process.
TLDR; we can't guarantee you will have a place to play every day. Yet...
OUR BASS PLAYER MESSED UP BIG TIME AND GOT MARRIED. CAN I POSTPONE?
Yes. There is no obligation to use our work for anything and you are not penalized if you miss a gig or have to cancel. I would just make sure to clearly communicate that with the promoter or talent buyer/venue, and anyone else involved in that production and event.
DO YOU GUARANTEE WE WILL GET RICH OR WHAT?
Do we guarantee we will get you paid? Hell no. At least not yet. (We are working on it though...) If this is your first time, it is super likely that you will end up losing money in exchange for the learning and spiritual experience. That's why we offer our services at such a low price. We know the price we have to pay as serious artists. Keep at it, and it will get better with time. A good way to combat the early pains of touring is to start out regionally, and/or playing weekends. (It's why we invented The Cul-de-sac back in our early years.) Our friend Bo actually made money on his band's first tour. He wrote our testimonial.
WHAT ELSE DO YOU GUYS NOT DO?
Right now? We don't find your local support if a venue asks for it. Full disclosure though, we will probably end up sliding you some contacts from our personal database to get you pointed in the right direction if we have them. We don't guarantee gigs in certain cities on certain days. However, this is one of the core problems that we are constantly developing a solution for. So this one is more of an "almost" and "not yet" than a "no." As previously stated, we can't guarantee the venue/promoter will pay you. But one of our goals is to keep growing enough to build some sort of indie ticketing app to help solve this problem/increase show attendances all over the country.
WHAT IF I AM A SOLO ARTIST?
No problem. We can get you booked.
DO YOU ONLY HELP BOOK GIGS FOR CERTAIN GENRES?
We help book gigs for all genres. Yeah, some are more difficult to book, but we try our best and have a very effective process. We also think genres are kind of stupid and outplayed. How good your music is and how experienced and professional you come off as actually has a lot to do with how many gigs you book and how good the gigs are.
OUR LAST TOUR KIND OF SUCKED. I'M NOT SURE ABOUT TOURING. WHY SHOULD WE USE BANDTURO?
It is very likely that your first tour may be just five gigs instead of the 30 you daydreamed about. Bandturo's goal is to help eliminate off-days so the artist can learn the business, have an experience, and focus on their art. A lot of the first tour is just making some contacts and building your professional musician resume by showing people that you are serious enough to show up and plugin. You'd be surprised at the things that happen after the experience from the first tour, both on your next tour and in your regular civilian life back home. Our two main focuses are our customers' 1) money and 2) experience. (It's two of the first questions we ask after you sign up with us.) We think that the more we build these two aspects of touring up for the independent music industry the more we can all make a positive effect on the entire world. The phrase "baby steps" comes to mind.
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” -Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft
I DON'T THINK WE'RE READY. WHEN SHOULD WE START?
We highly recommend starting the process today. Although it is not completely necessary, the rule of thumb is to start booking your tour at least three months out. Six months is best. Therefore it's a good idea to get your marketing materials, dates, and a rough tour route ready now. It can always be updated later, and 100% of tours that don't happen don't happen because of preparation.
Don't worry about money--you will find it. Start a crowdfunding campaign and get your fans to pay for multiple packages. We can help you with your campaigns, just ask. And don't let other people hold you down. If you are ready then don't worry about who will be ready when it's time to leave. They should be worried about that, not you.
FOR REAL. HOW DOES IT WORK? HOW DO YOU BOOK GIGS?
We build our processes with the brand new independent artist's success in mind. If you are having trouble getting gigs than it is usually one of two things: 1) You start booking too late, or 2) You need to work on your materials--press, web presence, music quality. Book through us and still have problems it is almost definitely one of those two problems because, (deep breath), this is what we do:
You sign up. We send you a heads up. Then we send you a form to submit all your goods. We organize your materials on site, design you a one-sheet, upload one sheet and other necessary materials to our database as a fluid press kit, manually (via human) route your tour/gigs while calculating mileage, drive time, and estimated fuel cost, design a template for your email campaigns that reflects and reinforces your one sheet and web presence, and build several targeted and dated email campaigns. We send out emails in mass batches several times: Six months out, six months minus two weeks out (follow-up), four months out, four months minus two weeks out (follow-up), three months out, three months minus two weeks out (follow-up), two months out, two months minus two weeks out (follow-up), one month out, one month minus two weeks out (follow-up), two weeks out, one week out, and beginning of tour. As each batch gets sent, we monitor the emails to see which recipients are being responsive and send them messages accordingly.
There is even more to it, but that is the gist and no one really likes reading about boring processes that much except us. We can include additional services when you sign-up for one of the "per gig" booking services--Regional Tour Package--where we hit the phones and message the strange people that ONLY use Facebook to book gigs. The phones and Facebook thing is an ongoing process and starts pretty much as soon as the emails start going out. That's an hourly rate though and can get pretty expensive if you're using a spray-and-pray booking approach. And we can't even guarantee results for that, just a log of our work. (Update 4/30/2020: We're currently doing some phone calls for ADP and Booking Agent packages.)
There you have it. There is probably more to it than we've revealed here, but this should give you an idea of how seriously we take our business of putting more artists in more venues for more money. You can check out Our Process here.
Heard enough?
Still have questions? Shoot us an email: booking@bandturo.com