In this article we are going to see how to control all the factors that affect the influx of public to your music event and that depend on the artists you are going to hire. These are, perhaps, the factors that many leading promoters of major economic catastrophes in the music events sector should have considered before venturing into a concert with much love and enthusiasm, but little realism.

At this time there is no better way to invest our time than in training and future event scheduling. But this time without the rush of having an event in a few months and too many tasks to do, with little time to identify what the criticisms are. Now we have to program in the future, with a huge improvement in the quality of our work and the projection of our actions. This simply translates into investing time in training. So if you are here, my congratulations. I sincerely hope that our content is helpful to you.

This article focuses on artist recruitment and is complemented by our other two articles to maximize ticket sales:

• Marketing: 6 main types of advertising to sell more tickets.
• Event production: 5 factors that improve ticket sales.

Some of the artist information that we deal with in this post is not publicly accessible. From Drop.Show we work musical Big Data to reduce the risk of your events. Take a free trial.

 

 

1. Followers and listeners

The artist’s total followers and listeners on his social networks and streaming platforms.

In which to look:

• Streaming platforms
  1. Spotify: Monthly listeners and followers. Listeners: Number of unique people who have listened to the artist at least 1 time in the last 28 days.
  2. YouTube: subscribers and total reproductions of the channel. Also look at the reproductions of his videos that are not on his channel.
  3. Deezer and Soundcloud for more underground artists.
  4. Tidal and Apple Music: in Spain they still do not have great relevance. Depending on which artist you are going to hire and where your event is, give them more or less importance.
• Social networks
  Instagram: followers and reactions and comments on each photo.
  Twitter: followers and likes and retweets in each state.
  Facebook: followers and likes and comments in each publication.

The total figures of the artist’s streaming platforms and social networks will announce your general condition.

 

 

2. Digital growth

It is the control of the evolution of the figures of the point “1. Followers and listeners”. The growth or decrease and its relationship with the musical releases will give us a forecast of how the artist will be in a few months. If an artist is growing a lot it is a good opportunity for a promoter or festival.

To the data of the previous social networks and streaming platforms we add Google Trend, which will serve to see the progression of its popularity in Google searches.

The basis for analyzing the growth of a group or artist is to consider that if they are growing they are more likely to follow this trend than one that is more static. This has an influence, since between the moment of contracting and the execution of your event you are interested in the artist having grown as much as possible

If you want to go deeper into this topic, read on: How to analyze the digital presence of musical artists?

 

 

3. Followers and listeners of the artist in your city

Points 1 and 2 are quick indicators of the artist’s situation, his recent past and his possible future. However, the number of listeners and followers of the artist in your city is a data directly related to the potential attendance of people at your event.

• Analyze the number of listeners of the artist on Spotify in your city and in neighboring cities. Do it also with Instagram followers.
• Compare the artists with the lowest total listeners and the most listeners in your city to have the artists with the highest proportion of listeners in that city. Also consider the total number of listeners in your city.
• Analyze the artist’s YouTube views in your city.

Read more on this topic at: Where are the listeners and followers of the artists you are going to hire?

 

4. Behavior and relationship of the fans with the artist

The objective will be to know how faithful the artist’s audience is, since there is a great distance from “follower” to “fan”. For this we must observe the number of users who interact with the artist among all his followers. We can see it on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook.

Compare the relationship between Hype and the artist’s Engage, analyzing how many followers you earn on Spotify compared to total listeners. This way you will know from his current fame (Hype) how many people decide to follow it to continue listening to it later (Engage). Try to hire artists with a high Engage to keep the Hype when it is your event.

Read more about this topic in our article: Differences between Hype and Engage

At Drop.Show we have detailed analyzes of each artist’s engage. You can try our service for free at Drop.Show.

 

 

5. Openers

The opening act selection is often overlooked, but it is a very important part of the show. With an adequate selection you can greatly increase the quality of your event, surprising your audience with a small but solvent group. In addition, the opening acts bring a huge number of advantages that often have a good increase in tickets, and are a good way to publicize your event in the city.

Learn more about this topic in our article Teloneros for your show or festival.

 

 

6. The committee of wise men

It is the value of the opinion of the artist’s fans, but in a strict and direct sense. The committee of wise men is the way to manage and extract value from the opinions of your close ones.

It is based on the minimum representative sample: of all the fans of an artist in a city, a very small sample of them is the amount it takes to have a representative opinion of the whole. Therefore, the opinion of a few dozen people is very valuable.

In this article we explain in depth how to manage your Committee of wise men, what questions to ask, how to value their answers and how to reach more people.

 

 

7. The contract: promotional commitments

When you have realized it is too late: your partner has not taken pains in promoting your event.

Whether you are a manager who rents a room, a promoter who hires an artist, or a manager whose client is hired, leave the promotion commitments reflected in the contract. What each one commits to.

This will give security and seriousness to your agreement and avoid very unpleasant problems in the future. Often the promotion is left to the last because there are “fires to put out” in the production of the event. However, there is no worse fire than an empty room and a negative income statement. And when this happens, you all want to look for those responsible.

Leaving this issue tightly by contract will largely ensure the promotional viability of the event, an essential aspect for it to work.

 

 

8. Presence in Festivals

It is something very to consider. The presence at festivals of the artist you are going to hire can be a double-edged sword.

• It can be a very good thing, because being at festivals will make it much better known and can mean an increase in ticket sales.
• But it could also be that a lot of your potential audience goes to those festivals and then doesn’t want to go to your event. The same happens when all the festivals hire the same artists with Hype of the moment.

Insures everything related to exclusivity aspects in the contract.

You will have realized the importance that Drop.Show believes that they have contracts. A contract is the root of any event, since the fluidity and viability of this will fluctuate and will have a lot to do with what has been signed in this document.

Keep reading about contracts in our article What clauses should a musical artist contract contain?

 

 

9. Date of the artist’s last performance in the city

This is an important fact. Each artist has a different rotation and their audience will be willing to attend your event again after a certain period.

A large majority of intermediate level artists adhere to the rule of visiting each city a maximum of 1 time per year, while newly created bands, without digital music content, can perform even every 3 months. Their goal is to make themselves known as artists. For her part,.

Small bands have approximately one show every 6 months or 12 months to present their new musical works. Medium bands, with stable sales figures, from approximately 300PX to 2,500PX, should not operate more than once a year in each city. For their part, the largest bands, with scales of the Extremoduro or Metallica type, do not usually visit cities more than once every 4 or 5 years. However, the difficulty of hiring these bands is in having the exclusivity and the necessary money.

 

 

10. Manager’s opinion

From the promoter’s perspective, let’s not forget the most important thing: you and the manager must form a team. Both of you are interested in selling more and that the event goes well.

Ask their opinion to get a general idea of ​​what the artist’s journey has been. Then he calls the rooms he has visited and confirms their numbers.

Sometimes it is convenient to close a percentage of the cache to variable, which depends on the number of entries that are sold instead of being limited to a fixed one.

 

 

11. The artist in the media

An action as simple as searching for your main news on Google will give us a lot of information. In which media does it appear, how big is it, what is the type of audience for these media, in which provinces / communities do these media have a presence?

Read on on this subject in our article dedicated to assessing the artist’s presence in the media.

 

 

12. The capacity and ticket sales of the artist on previous dates

It is, in fact, the most important indicator. However, it is also the most difficult information to get. Knowing the capacity of the spaces in which the artists have performed is essential. On the other hand, we all know that Madrid and Barcelona, ​​in the case of Spain, are the cities that sell the most.

Comparing the artist’s listeners and followers in one city and what he has sold can give us an idea of ​​how much the artist can sell in our city if we know how many listeners and followers he has compared to the other city.

It is important to be in communication with promoters from other cities to keep up to date and not miss opportunities.

 

 

13. Quality

It’s obvious, but it still deserves a section on this list. That the musical quality of the live artists is good will make the experience of the event unforgettable, putting your company in a position of good judgment and making your clients trust you and repeat in your events or your festival.

Listen to music from an artistic point of view, what it transmits to you and its purity. Research their live shows and judge for yourself.

 

We hope this article has been useful to you. We would love to hear your opinion.
We recommend reading our article Production: 5 aspects that affect the sale of tickets for your event.