It’s kind of interesting how the industry actually thinks that they don’t have to do so much or anything. I was on a showcase festival not long ago and I was invited by a record label to see their band. They even sent it twice to be sure that I would show up to the gig. It suited my schedule and I wanted to talk to the label about some things around the artists, so I went down there. I also was hanging around with a couple of other bookers from some international festivals.

It was a very small bar so you could easily keep an eye on who was there in the audience. I was looking for the representatives from the label. No one ever showed up. Kind of interesting that you don’t support your artist during a showcase, especially if you are two representatives and this is your only band. At the end of the show, we went over to the band and talked to them about what they were interested in, but they didn’t know instead they gave us business cards to contact the label.

If you handle an artist, you should at least show up at their gig, especially if you invited the industry to the gig. Just hope that this band meets some other label in the audience that can take them over and do a better job than their current label.

But it is common, at the same festival was a booking agency. To make contacts you need to hang around on the conference part, just part of the game and is a rule. This booking agency went down to the conference for twenty minutes sat at a table discussing with each other, went off, and was never shown again. Since they also had their artist on the same stage and it was not that of a good artist I chose to not go there, they were not present at all. Same here they don’t do a good job representing the artist they have. The artists think they are cool since they have other big artists, but in reality, that artist was probably done by someone else who did their job and went around and made new connections.

I have the past 48 hours been in three different meetings with a lot of representatives from big festivals and big showcases, discussing this problem. And of course, we name the people that don’t show up. We name those who don’t do their job. Mainly because we want people who are active and get as much business done as possible. People who just use the festivals to get your artist and extra gig and see it as a stepping stone will be called out during meetings like this later. So when you do your things, look after them so that you support your artists.