As a musician you want to put yourself out there as much as you can – and one part of this means being proactive in finding your gigs (Read Bob Baker’s Get Your Ask Out). This means applying to be on a conference performance slots responding to a venue requesting submissions on Reverbnation, or with the rise of the idea of ‘concerts in your living room’, seeking out opportunities on Gigit or Concertsinyourhome.
You may start applications, and then fail to follow through and complete them because you began a different project, only to come back to it a few days later and realizing you missed your deadline. Or, you aren’t prepared for what they request in your profile or submission, for example, a high quality photo of the band or some attention grabbing press quotes. Not having these things ready causes the process to take way longer than it should!
Get organized by getting together in one folder:
- 1-2 Hi-Res photos of you and/or your band, color and b&w
- Band member full names/all instruments
- 3-5 MP3s (most used format for submissions) of your top songs
- 2-3 Videos on Youtube of your top plays or favorites
- 3-5 killer press quotes from the top publications
- Short (50 words) AND long current bio
You are also going to want to have that handy-dandy calendar I mentioned last week to be sure when you are available for the concert, event or conference.
Now, this is the hard part…sit down, start and finish that application!
The worst thing you could do is start the application, get distracted by something else, and then when you remember to return to the application days or even weeks later, discover you missed the deadline. Nothing is more frustrating than making such an easy error!
Once you get more comfortable with submitting to conferences, you can start a database with names of festivals you want to be a part of with deadlines/requirements and then you can clearly see that November is the time to submit to NAMM Conference in January.
Being that organized will make you efficient and quicker to get your applications in and on time, meaning more chances for you to perform!