How to Promote A Concert
No one ever learned how to become a concert promoter except through trial and error. This is especially true in underground music scene. I actually started out as a DJ. I made some good tunes, but no one ever listened to me. In retrospect, I was not extremely talented, but some of my stuff was quite danceable. When my friends told me one day “you need to learn how to promote your music, or you will never succeed.” I took his message to heart, and devoted myself to promotion. When I finally gave up music, realizing that I would never be very talented, I still had that promotion bug. I was always trying to bring local Djs into the scene. Finally, I got a big break.
I had no idea how to promote a concert, and I needed to figure it out fast. You see, an acquaintance of mine – a big DJ from New York – was coming through the area. The town I was living in had a small electronic music scene. I knew that if someone knew how to promote a concert, they could get him to play somewhere, but no one was stepping up to the plate. The scene was so underground and the parents and authorities were so afraid of it that he could not get a show in a mainstream club. There would be no concert tickets sold online, and no concert set lists posted up on the Internet the next day. It was going to be strictly underground, and I wasn’t sure that I was in the scene enough to organize it. Nonetheless, I took my chances.
If you are trying to figure out concert promotion for yourself, let me give you a piece of advice: it is all about bluffing. No one knows how to promote a concert – there is no how. You just have to get everyone confident the concert will happen, that it will make money, and that it will be a great show. The rest is just details. In my case, I was so nervous that a certain part of my personality that I don’t normally like to talk about took over. If you had listened to me speak, you would have thought that I was the biggest concert promoter this side of Los Angeles. In reality, I didn’t know anything about how to promote a concert, but it didn’t matter. It went off without a hitch, and it was great.