LSC X asked me a question the other day for his homie. “How would you respond to someone DMing Evrvdav asking to open?” (Evrvdav being my old show promotion company.)
Here was my answer.
creep their profile. hopefully one of their 3 most recent posts is playing a snippet of one of their songs. if it’s not, i’m super annoyed as i dig deeper to open their dumbass shit in another app.
while a song plays, i’m listening for their technical ability (and where they lack it), how personable they sound through their music and their posts, and whether or not them+their music is something i can put on a video ad or a flier and not have someone immediately puke and shit and cry and scroll past.
i reply with “yo, where you from, how many people u think u can pull, and what kind of card do you fit on”. when they reply and tell me a number greater than 10, i tell them “lol no i know from personal experience that ur gonna be very sad if u think they all wont abandon you the moment tix go live”, and if its less than 10 i go “ayo it really ain’t that hard to sell tix to people in ur network if its an excuse to hang out for a few hours and drink/smoke sumn n listen to some dope music they normally don’t get to vibe to in real life”.
the “what card do you fit on” is important cuz i’m not a goofy ass promoter who puts 15 boombappers, 3 female pop singers and 4 screamo rappers on the same card. i try to curate a sound specific to the artist so that networking across the whole card goes nicely and everyone can meet and cross pollinate each others networks and build the scene. higher chance their fans will become yours and vice versa.
if an artist tells me some generic shit i find the deeper connection in their music myself. if an artist acts like they’re the most unique rapper of all time i show them 30 people doing the same type shit they are. and if they’re too out there to fit on a card, i can’t help them until they can cater a set to one of my umbrellas (thrash, emo, boombap, ‘mainstream’)
That was the text as far as that day, but there’s a few things I can add.
Evrvdav paid artists 30% of their ticket sales instead of the industry standard 10%. The breakdown basically rounds out to 30% artist, 30% company, 30% expenses, and 10% wiggle room.
Because of this, it leads to a lot of artists not selling enough tickets to warrant paying them fuckin $6 or whatever. So I added a clause that they needed to sell 15 tix to hit the minimum payout threshold. I don’t kick them off the card for not selling tickets, but it affects future bookings.
Another thing that affects future bookings is if you take a bunch of shows in short proximity to our show. If you accept a show the weekend before mine the same distance away, you’ve essentially just cut your ticket sales in half between them. “No it’s okay cuz that other show is free” is actually even worse, if you can believe that.
I guess on a more positive note, I should also bring up the potential for growth. Evrvdav runs a “3 show model” per market. Basically, by show 3, we’re statistically selling out that market. That worked in KWC, Toronto, Hamilton, London, & St. Catharines. It was close to working in Ottawa as well before Covid hit. The process is show 1 gets our feet wet and teaches us who we shouldn’t have booked and who we missed. Show 2 we’re starting to establish ourselves in that market and started working with service providers in that city as well (fillers, graphic designers, clothiers). Show 3 we’ve trimmed all the fat and are working with the heavy hitters, usually marketing a headline show for the crew that put in the work. This could easily be you. It ain’t about Spotify streams either. It’s boots on ground, dope music, and dope performances.
Evrvdav was a vessel other artists could use to elevate their scenes and put a lil guap in their pockets. Because of that quarterly show in your market, everyone’s collabing, scheduling releases, and interacting with fans all thru the scene (even across the different markets, which was awesome). It was a great reason to get you in the studio and get some fires lit under your ass to justify focusing on this music shit a bit more than if there was no shows… As we’ve seen considering the entire local scene died the moment I stopped doing them.
That being said… Been talking to Bayne, been talking to venues. Head injury is still keeping it a little difficult to focus when stressed so I’m scared to introduce myself into a new generation of divas. Maybe I need to create a barrier between me and the artists, or I need more staff or whatever. But there’s been talks.
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