Artists… Be Careful Overbooking Yourself Beyond What You Can Sell

I agreed to do a show on Oct 27 in Montreal and another one November 13.

With this kind of distance between the shows I should be able to motivate people to come out. I then had an opportunity to put my name on a flyer for November 9. My Spidey sense went off and I knew the better move was to get Chris Chrome on the flyer and jump on his set.

Convincing someone to buy two tickets from you, on the same pay cheque is a huge ask.

One I’ve learned from experience leads to an overall dip in your sales. 

There’s such a thing as performing too much when your goal is to move tickets.

Selling tickets takes real time and it’s not easy 

To sell 10 tickets to a show, when you don’t have an established following, is a chore.

You are going to have to create content, share flyers, spam people and possibly hit the streets literally. The more time you put into it, the more results you will get. That being said, promoting 3 shows at once is 3 times as hard.

Early on in the game we get excited and say yes to everything. Especially when our friends and family still want to come, when it’s novel and exciting. I promise your first three shows are the easiest ones you will sell tickets to for a long time to come.

You’ll usually end up focusing on one show more than the others and the results of your sales at each show will reflect that. 

To be real, the promoter is the one who really takes the hit when you do that. 

Throwing up all your flyers at once and saying come out and see me rap, is a great way to sell 0 tickets. 

Be a little strategic with it.

Don’t stress the saturation when there are really good opportunities

If people offer you money to perform, take it every time.

If you are invited to do several high profile shows, like opening for larger artists or festivals, jump at those opportunities. When I opened for Paul Wall, Paul Wall did all the work selling my tickets. It was like that for everyone I opened for.

No one is really coming to that show for you by the way, they came for the main act.

Now when you get into the nitty gritty of the underground everything changes. A bunch of lower profile names on a flyer will not sell a show on its own. Those artists need to create a vibe that attracts people and accomplishing that goal is a secret many people wish they knew.

While I’m saying be careful at taking on too many underground events, don’t be shy about the bigger ones that put you in front of hundreds of people.

Had I had merch ready when I opened for Afroman I would have made a real bag, don’t listen to superficial advice on your career, it is all case by case.

The promoter of the event can sell the event only so far as the artists make themselves sellable

It’s fair to say promoters are more or less picking blind.

There is no score card for who can sell what. From throwing shows I have a lot of scores recorded on the sales performance of a fair number of artists, but that is limited. This city is huge and a lot of people make big moves I never see.

Now promoters are fucking up because they book people based on who’s willing. 

Artists pretend like their job isn’t to sell anything and then don’t surround themselves with hustlers who will sell for them. They come to the show, each believing that every other artist will bring people. Only to rap in a room full of rappers when all is said and done. 

Before the event everyone’s posting excitedly about all the events they are doing. Then it was always a movie when they describe it the next day. Sometimes it is, mostly it’s regular. 

Maybe we need to each perform less individually and create a system where we can coordinate performances in some kind of hyper vibe behind some banner or another. Or maybe we need to perform even more, with that banner in mind. Something that creates a bigger than the individual feeling that can attract people.

The biggest star in the WWE is less big than the WWE and I believe we need a league.

In the meantime don’t book yourself beyond what you can sell.

Live Long and Prosper Everyone