Why booking gigs is still essential in 2025
Despite the dominance of social media and streaming, live shows are more important than ever.
The June 2025 Goldman Sachs “Music in the Air” report predicts we’ll see an “insatiable demand” for live music grow over the next decade. The report estimates the live music market will net $67.1 billion in revenue by 2035, powered by increased touring and promotion over social media and streaming.
According to the National Independent Venue Association’s State of Live Report, in 2024, “91% of venues operated continuously throughout the year, presenting an average of 143 nights of programming. Nearly half–41%–host shows at least four nights a week, making them some of the most reliable and consistent gathering spaces in the country.”
Pairing overall anticipated growth of the market with the reliability of your local venues, it’s clear that live music is still an essential for independent musicians looking to gain exposure and turn a profit. If you’re looking for tips to booking gigs in 2025, here’s your comprehensive guide.
For additional insights, we spoke with Alex Pickert, a Boston-based music promoter and musician, who helped shape this piece and whose voice appears in italics at the top of every section.
Know your local scene
“Go to shows – all the time.”
Ahead of booking a show, get familiar with the venues, promoters, and musicians in your area with whom you can coordinate a show.
Create a log of:
- Venues that fit your draw, genre, and energy (for booking)
- Artists who overlap with your sound (for bill-making)
- Graphic designers who fit your brand (for postering)
Find the right venues and events
“If you’re starting out, you might find better luck at a brewery or other paid-guarantee gig so you don’t have to sweat the ticket sales.”
Conduct online research to round out your knowledge of local venues and keep an eye on upcoming shows.
You might be surprised by how many types of venues you have in your area. From DIY house show operations to brewery stages, you should explore all options to meet your goals.
Organize your list of venues by type, size, and location then identify venues that meet your current needs.
Gather contacts and begin planning
“Toss out some feelers and decide on a timeline.”
Make a list of contacts necessary to book your show: the promoter, an act or two to play with, and a sound person if applicable. You can source contacts by meeting musicians and promoters at shows or by finding their contacts online. Many venues have an outreach form on their website or an address for booking inquiries.
Before you reach out to a promoter, it’s important to have some dates in mind and have confirmed interest from potential openers. The booking process can vary depending on the program and your show history. Newer artists will need to provide more information than established ones.
Begin planning by:
- Deciding on a venue and find the contact information
- Create a range of dates to offer
- Invite multiple artists to share a bill
Choose a venue
Once you have your list of local venues and contacts, it’s time to decide where you’d like to perform. Here are some general guidelines for choosing a venue type and capacity depending on your level.
Non-ticketed brewery or restaurant: Excellent for early musicians looking for exposure
Local club (100 capacity): Perfect for emerging musicians and small touring acts
Theater (250 capacity): Great for established local musicians and 3-4 act bills
Concert hall (500 capacity): Best for established touring acts and major local acts
Email the promoter: do’s and don’ts
“Oh man, I’ve seen it all. I’ll try to keep this simple.”
Once you have plans for a show and a range of dates finalized, it’s time to reach out to your local promoter! Below are a few tips to ensure your email comes through successfully.
It’s helpful to include some essential information in your subject line. Here’s one standard format:
[Band or artist name] – Booking Inquiry – [Date range].
Do:
- Include links to your music, social media, and your show history if applicable
- Include a range of dates and potential openers
- Keep your outreach short, professional, and friendly. If you include an EPK, add it below your request or as an attachment to keep the focus of the email clear.
Don’t:
- Write a general email expressing interest in playing. You need dates and potential artists to play with, especially if you’re booking out of town.
- Challenge a date if you’re not 100% committed
- Confirm any other groups without checking with the promoter
- Limit yourself to traditional venues
Time your pitch
“Aim for at least a month lead time on booking inquiries – obviously depends on the venue though.”
Timing your pitch can vary depending on the venue’s booking cadence. Large, popular venues will typically book out 4-5 months while smaller venues may be operating on a 1-3 month basis. It’s good to aim for 1 month lead time at the very least, but check in with a promoter to gauge their preferences and the venue availability.
Follow up if necessary
“Do not follow up sooner than one week, unless your tour is resting on this show.”
Promoters get tons of emails. As such, you should be patient and respectful when following up. Typically, if you haven’t heard back on a booking inquiry, give it at least one week before following up. If you’ve been in touch with a promoter and are waiting to simply confirm a show or get clarifying information about a show advance, you can follow up within 2-3 days. If a promoter doesn’t respond to your follow-up after a week, it might be best to move onto another venue.
Build a bill that makes sense
“Be realistic and open to collaboration, especially if you’re just starting out.”
When there are tickets on the line, you need to be strategic with your bill. A well-curated bill comes down to two main factors: cohesion and draw. Find the right balance between musicians that complement your sound and acts that will bring a crowd.
It’s best to take an open and collaborative approach with the promoter, too. Be willing to accommodate local opener recommendations and be flexible with the bill to ensure a good show for both you and the venue.
Lastly, don’t be afraid to reach out to acts who are more established than you to inquire about sharing a stage. You never know who might say yes!
Prepping for the show
“There’s so much that goes into a successful show. Just master your part of it.”
In the leadup to a show, you can expect communications from the venue staff and promoter around your show schedule, stage plot, compensation, merch, and a contract or tax paperwork. You can get a step ahead by preparing the following:
- A stage plot with details on backline sharing/requests
- Day of show contacts (names, phone numbers, emails)
- A completed W-9 form
- Merch details
- Setlist
Day-of-show best practices
“Get ready to rock it.”
Plan to arrive early the day of the show if you can. That will help put everyone at ease and ensure you have plenty of time to prepare. If you arrive ahead of sound check, you can take time to meet venue staff and set up your merch table.
Here are a few tips for ensuring your set goes smoothly:
- Don’t play beyond your set time (you should prepare by timing your practice sets)
- Bring merch with printed QR codes and signs for digital payment
- Show up early, be easy to work with, don’t overplay your set time
- During a break in your set, thank the other musicians for playing with you
- Be efficient, organized, and fast in loading on and off stage
- Rehearse your stage banter – that can help with transitions and help you feel confident
- Bring merch, collect emails, engage with fans
- Respect the venue and staff
After the gig: follow-up & relationship building
“A little thank you goes a long way. Just shooting a quick note to the promoter after thanking them and the venue can be the start of a relationship.”
Take a few minutes to send a quick thank you note to the venue, promoter, sound person – the whole team who put on your show. That can go a long way in preserving the relationship and let you get on the calendar even faster next time.
Beyond building relationships with the venue team, make sure you retain your newly won fans! Here are a few standard practices for post-show fan engagement:
- Post recaps of the show, tagging the venue and other performers.
- Load new contacts into your mailing list and send out a thank you or welcome email soon after
- Take note of merch sales and make plans to restock any dwindling stock
- Prepare to announce your next show while you have momentum
Common mistakes to avoid when booking gigs
“It’s so tempting to play as much as possible, especially when you’re first starting out. But you need to work with your demand in your home market.”
There’s relatively little published guidance for independent artists booking and promoting their own shows. As a result, many musicians have to learn the hard way when it comes to what works. With that, here are a few tips to save you some unnecessary trouble.
- Long, rambling emails: A promoter’s inbox is always full. Save them the time by keeping your email succinct.
- Overestimating draw without proof: Don’t overbook yourself – meaning, don’t book a room that’s beyond your draw
- Playing too many local shows: Avoid playing ticketed shows more than once a month in your hometown. That gives sufficient time for demand to build up again. That helps you and a promoter.
- Not promoting your own set: Yes, they’re called “promoters” but you’re still the star of the show. The venue will help by blasting your show to their socials, but the onus is ultimately on you to drum up your following.
- Valuing relationships with promoters over artists: Promoters may seem like they’re at the wheel of your local scene, but building relationships with other musicians in your area will serve you in the long-term. You’ll have musicians that will want to have you on tour or help you rally a crowd for your release show.
How to book strategically to advance your career
Regardless of where you are in your music career, booking gigs strategically allows you to grow your fanbase while maintaining a healthy life balance. If your goals include making it out of your hometown to tour or even play one-off shows, you need a path to growth that’s paved with strategic gigs. Playing incessantly and passively taking gigs can be exhausting, dilute your focus, and stunt your growth. Here are a few tips to stay focused and grow your local following.
Balance gig types
You’ll need a mix of exposure, support, and headliner shows to ensure you can acquire fans, keep a revenue stream, and capitalize on your momentum with milestone shows. Exposure shows are opportunities with minimal lift and maximal opportunity for fan acquisition. Support shows entail playing any opening slot for a show, which sits between exposure and headliner shows in terms of workload. And finally, headliner shows are shows you put together and bring the crowd for.
Play it conservatively
Especially when you’re starting out, prioritize exposure and support gigs to develop a following. For emerging artists, selling out a small room is always more impressive than underselling a large venue. Continue to progress your way through room sizes in your hometown, leaning conservatively.
Open for touring acts
The best exposure gigs are often opening slots for an act whose fans might resonate with your music. Keep an eye on upcoming local shows and if one catches your eye, reach out to the artist’s agent, manager, promoter, or directly. This varies depending on the artist, but like any networking, be friendly and leverage any overlap in friends, interests, genres, etc.
Understand the offer
Venues offer payment in a variety of ways. Some of the most common are ticket splits and guarantees. In a ticket split, the venue takes a share of ticket revenue, often 60-70%. For any kind of split deal, it’s helpful to calculate your anticipated revenue by multiplying your expected ticket count by the dollar amount and then taking your percentage. If you have questions about a deal, always reach out to a venue ahead of the show.
Booking Gigs Glossary
Holds: When inquiring about available dates for a show, you might encounter or place “holds” on a range of dates. Holds are placeholders indicating you’re interested in playing that date should it be free. Promoters organize holds in a queue, so first hold gets priority for the date and will get a call or email if a second, third, or so-on hold requests to book that date.
Challenges: A challenge is a way of asking a promoter to confirm a date for you. If there are any holds before you in the queue, the promoter will reach out to those artists and ask if they are still interested in the date. The first to confirm gets the date.
First of three: This refers to the first set of three musicians that night – typically used when referencing the first of two openers.
Setlist: An arranged list of your songs, often printed and placed on the floor or monitor of a stage.
Advance: An email often sent 1 to 2 weeks before the show date containing all the information a venue and artist need to produce the show.
Stage plot: A diagram showing the arrangement of your gear for a performance.
Input list: often on the same page as the stage plot, this is a list of the gear you’re looking to run through the house P.A.
Radius clause: A common rule for a festival or larger headline show, this prohibits an artist from playing live within a given mile range within a certain days of a show.
Breakables: Often used when discussing sharing a drum kit, breakables refers to any equipment that’s subject to wear and tear that’s easy to swap out, such as cymbals, snare, and kick pedal.
Opener: Refers to the artist who plays first, ahead of a headliner.
X/Y split: Shorthand way to refer to a deal that sees a portion of proceeds go to the venue and the other portion to the artist
Guarantee: A flat amount of money a venue agrees to pay you for your set. Typically this arises in an offer for an opener.
Conclusion: Build your gig reputation one show at a time
Playing live is the ultimate combination of community-building, revenue, and career growth. There’s nothing else in your music career that’s as thrilling and strategic. We hope this guide distills a sometimes daunting process into a navigable and exciting facet of your career.