[00:00:00] Welcome to episode 141 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive Podcast. My name is James Cross and I help independent artists tour smart this week on the Bandhive Podcast. We're gonna talk about where you want to play outside your hometown, especially when it comes to your first shows or your first tours outside of your hometown.

But really this is something that you should look at any time. You are booking shows, whether it's a tour or a one off or whatever you're doing, you want to make sure you're playing the. Venues and cities. So that's what we're gonna talk about this week. And especially, like I said, if you're embarking on your first tour, I'm gonna guess you're wondering where to play. And so that's what this episode is gonna cover. But again, this works for anyone, even if it's not your first tour or first show outside your hometown, this is something you do need to look at.

If you're not already doing this, now the obvious choice would be the next city over. Right. So let's say you're in Burlington, Vermont, you say, okay, we're gonna go play Albany in or Plattsburgh, New York or [00:01:00] Montpelier, Vermont. There are choices there. Those are all smaller markets, except for Albany.

Albany is pretty big, but are they the right choice? Whether you're heading from a rural area to a city that's an hour or two away. So Burlington's fairly rural. It has a population of about 40,000 or you're heading from a larger city into a suburb. It can be tempting to choose where you wanna play just out of sheer convenience.

Whatever's closest to you, but that is not always the right choice. So listen. Instead of just picking the nearest city and playing there. Why not look at several cities that are around you and play the best one, the best fit for your music has the best venue. It has the best music scene. So let's say that you're in Burlington and Mont hill is about an hour away, but you know, Albany is about three hours away.

Both cities have a venue that you could. Now, this is just, you know, an example. So depending on what kind of music you do, maybe they don't, and this is going out on a limb here. I haven't done this research for this specific comparison. The music scene is probably a [00:02:00] lot stronger in Albany than it is in Mont hill.

This means that you'd probably play to more people. If you play Albany, obviously it's a larger city, so that's an advantage, but it's further away. So that's a disadvantage. Now which city would you pick the closer city with fewer people in attendance, or would you travel further and play to a larger crowd?

If you said be which is Albany or maybe both you're right. The reason for this is obvious, even though it takes more time and money to go somewhere further away, it's better to play the show that is more beneficial to you. When you are playing a show, you have fixed costs. That is the amount of money you invest into that show on a per show basis. It doesn't matter if it's a big show or a little show, but you're also investing your time. So if it's gonna take you, a day of prep and a day of travel, either way to play that show, then adding a couple extra hours onto your drive. , that's not really that bad because your [00:03:00] fixed cost of, you know, the day of prep and the day of the show, you know, you're not doing other stuff that stays the same plus the money that you pay for breakables, you know, strings, all that kind of stuff that doesn't change.

So why not play the better show? Yeah, it's a little further away. You pay a little more in gas, but you're probably gonna have more people there.

now, obviously this doesn't extend to crossing the country for a single show. That's probably not a great idea. we're talking, if the drive is a little further, you can still do it in the same amount of days, but it might be an hour or two more than the closer.

Now the question is how do you know which market truly is better? And this is where your research comes in. The first thing you want to do is talk to every single band that comes through your hometown and plays a show with you, ask them what other cities in the region they've played and what their experience was like.

So they might say, yeah, you know, Albany was okay, but Mont PI was great. We were really surprised, you know, it's such a small place, [00:04:00] but people were coming from all over to see us. That's a good thing. You want to write that down? Make a note of that. Ideally you keep some kind of log about all the feedback you get about different cities.

You can do it in a spreadsheet and every single thing you're told by bands have a pros column and a cons column and put them in there. You can also put in notes about specific venues for those markets. And this way over time, you collect a bunch of data to make booking shows easier because you have not really a decision tree, but you have options to look at and you have that data you've collected.

The next thing is if you've made friends with other artists in the region, just send them a DM and ask where their best shows have been and where their worst shows have been. Talk about, the venue, the fans, the audience, all that kind of stuff. After you've talked to the people that you have in your network. The next step is looking at how many shows you can find in your genre in each of the cities you're looking at. Look at the recent shows and try to find photos to see how the attendance was [00:05:00] because a lot of artists will post a photo or maybe several photos that end up showing the audience.

So that way you can kind of eyeball how many people are at the venue. Of course, keep in mind that the band you're looking at, maybe they brought out most of that crowd. Maybe it wasn't the venue or the locals. Maybe it was the band who posted the photo that brought those people. But if you see a trend that shows in a certain city or a certain venue are always packed while other cities or venues are barely half full. That's a good indicator of which city or venue is probably going to be better to play. That doesn't mean it's a guarantee, but it is helpful to kind of have that in the back of your mind when you're booking the.

Last, but not least you never wanna ignore your own numbers. You can get a ton of analytics on any social platform you use, but especially Facebook and Spotify will show the top cities for people who follow you and interact with you, listen to your music and Google analytics will [00:06:00] do that as well for your website, if you have it installed, which if you don't, you absolutely should.

It's super easy to add. And it will let you see where people are visiting your website from. It's not gonna tell you who they are, but it will show you the location they are signing in from probably down to state, maybe down to city, although that can be somewhat inaccurate.

For example, mine is always showing me, I logged in through St. Johnsbury, which is like an hour. So it's not a hundred percent accurate, but at least you would have a rough area to look at. If that person is not using a VPN to disguise their location, and most people don't use VPNs. So you should be fine with that.

The data from these analytics tools might show one or both of the areas you're considering. And if there's a trend that matches across the three platforms, I would listen to it.

If Facebook, Spotify, and Google analytics all say, Hey, you have more fans in Mont hill than you do in Albany. That's a good sign that you should probably play Mont Hiller. Now, one thing that I cannot stress enough [00:07:00] above all is just put yourself out. Playing shows is a good thing for your career. And as long as you're not overplaying any market, you're not gonna have any issues.

So go book a show and just get things rolling. This is all stuff you should think about, but it shouldn't stop you from booking a show. So just go. Pick a city, pick a venue and book a show, and that will get you so much further than if you say, oh, we're not ready yet. We're not ready yet. Just do it. Thank me later, because you will have a blast playing that show, That does it for this episode of the Bandhive Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening. I really appreciate it. And I hope that this episode has given you some ideas into how you can better pick the areas and venues that you wanna play. It really comes down to being a little analytical and talking to lots of other people about their experiences, A lot of artists, don't just share this information. But if you ask, they are more than happy to tell you about their experiences. So don't be afraid, just ask. [00:08:00] And most of the time bands stick together, they know that a rising tide raises all ships. So just say, Hey, what can you tell us about this city?

Have you ever played there? How was it? Did you like it? Was it a good show? Was it a bad show? me the deeds, you know, and 99% of the time, they will tell you as long as you're not annoying them during load in or load out or something like that. And even then they might still tell you, That's all for this week on the Bandhive Podcast. If you haven't already subscribed, please do that. You can find us in your favorite podcast app and then hit that subscriber follow button. So you get a notification. Every time we drop a new episode, which happens to be every Tuesday at 6:00 AM Eastern time, we'll be back at that time next week until then I hope you have a great week, stay safe. And of course, as always keep rocking.