First off, the best thing to do is to just make great music that people talk about. Yes, it’s obvious, yes it’s easy to say - but it’s really not that easy to do.
Whether it’s just fans of music or industry people, developing a following where people are talking about you, and excited about you is when music booking agents are going to hear about you. Even though the music industry is spread out across the world in different cities, its surprisingly close knit and everybody is talking to each other.
It’s critically important to have an online presence.
Firstly, for your own music to be heard, but secondly to convey a perception of how you want to be seen by others. When people are talking about you and your music, the music booking agents are going to hear about “this artist” from everyone who’s talking about it, or from their industry friends. So they’ll eventually head on over to the Internet to check you out. You might consider offering a free download along with streaming music so that the booking agent could save your music and listen to it later if they wanted to.
Music booking agents get interested when they hear other people talking about music they are excited about because it provides social proof that this music is actually good. They want to book bands that will sell tickets and that’s the bottom line, so getting as many people as you can to talk about your music is going to lead to music booking agents hearing about you sooner rather than later. The key here (as simple as it sounds) is to be good.
Yes, its great to create events that get people talking about your music, but you have to be careful to avoid being sensational. These days, I would say that it’s best to build a long-term core of fans that will stick with you. Some people pull off some amazing stunts to get attention and then find themselves without any listening when they fail to pull off a stunt of the same magnitude.
All of the successful acts I have worked with have had slow steady growth and have had long careers as a result. You definitely want people to be excited about your music, and then you want them to share that enthusiasm with others - this can be done in a multitude of ways. Ultimately, if you keep building fans and generating heat, this will lead to music booking agents going to hear about you.
Tags: Get Heard By Music Booking Agents, Get Heard by Music Promoters, Music Booking Agents, Music Promoters