I read a great article on a site that sells email lists. They wrote that they got a lot of complaints that their lists didn’t work. People didn’t get answers they sent to over 1000 emails and only got two answers. The site explained that you really need to check out the blog, radio station, record label, etc before you send it to them. Not just send an email. Yes, this takes time. It’s quite easy to just put into the emails into an email list and just send a generic e-mail. The problem is that it never fits everyone. The generic email almost never fits anyone.

You have to go into each site to see what’s it all about and adopt your things. So instead of sending 1000 emails in one hour, you are down to be able to send 30 emails a day if you are working good.

Why don’t people answer? Here is a mail that came into one of the festivals we work with. On Facebook not even on the official email that goes to the bookers.

Dear,

Hope you’re ok.

We contacted you before, last year, about a concert of ******** from USA, blues, bluesrock.

We got the news that it is possible again to give concerts, with smaller capacity. So we started to plan a July-tour in Sweden.

Because of the situation, ***** will go solo.

We would love to perform at your place. We want to listen how you work with live bands or artists. ***** has an own ticket system, so we can work this way too.

Please let us know if you have availability in July.

And hope we can work something out.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

*** e presskit ***

*** Youtube link ***  [3/11/2012]

Kind regards

***

First, as I wrote. It came on Facebook, the person that handles the social media for the festival is not the booker. It’s not even interesting for this person to send this along. Why I saw it is that I was in there looking for something else. Since it clearly says a lot of instructions on how to reach the festival team on the homepage we can directly see that she hasn’t even been inside.

It’s a festival. She assumes it’s a gig place. Just that should be avoided by a quick look on the Facebook page.

The festival is held in September. She is asking for dates in July! Also easy checked on the Facebook page and the homepage.

She got the news that you could do smaller capacity shows? That is more than I know. Sweden has not opened up like several others and is still in 50 person capacity. And it looks like we will keep that over July as well.

She wants to discuss how we work with artists. We really don’t have time to discuss that even with the artists we book. Anything that says that I need to explain or discuss things is a big no no.

Having an own ticket system. I really don’t see the point. If we where a venue we would have a ticketing system. As a festival, we have that already. And to be honest there are so many ticketing systems out there so getting one is as easy as getting spam mails. Another question that arises is if we used the artist ticketing system how safe is that we ever got the money that we sold for?

Then in the end. Sending a YouTube link of a show done eight years ago is kind of strange. I would like to have something that is closer in time and something on the solo act since this link goes to a full house concert.

Why not writing this back to her? No, then you get a full email with excuses and other stuff. We are not paid to clean up the booking agents’ mistakes. Already here we don’t have any possibilities. We don’t have a show in July, and we are not opened up for more than 50 people and that can change if a second wave would happen. Finally, we are not interested to work with a booker that is not knowing anything around our event and having an error in each sentence they write. We just have to explain everything over and over again, things that already are presented on our homepage.

Instead, you just don’t answer. Leaving the person to make the same mistakes over and over again. Meet them later on a music business conference where they complain that it is so hard to get an answer from the music industry.

More and more also people are just talking to professionals that they know can deliver what they need. They don’t need the fuss.