This post is about a book I wrote that I want to give to you. I hope you read this post but if you just want the book you can get it here.
Great businesses tend to have great systems at work, many times as the foundation of the business. Having a system as a foundation provides an economic engine and allows for more time to innovate on the higher levels of the business. Of course, a system can always go through improvement and innovation in its own right.
In the music business we have been going through a significant shift. One of the biggest changes is that the primary revenue stream for most artists is now the live show (touring). For all of the income made in touring there isn’t a shared understanding of how to make a show great (from the business side). Feeling the need to have a system that incorporated best marketing practices and a timeline for how to carry out these tasks, The Artist Farm created a tour marketing system. The results (in current form) took several years of testing to hone. I wrote a book on this system called “Squeezing The Show” which I’d like to give to you now. All I ask in return is that you email me your feedback and thoughts. If it changes your life (and it may), I’d like to know. If you hate it (and you may), please let me know.
This book is written for artists and managers but I think the following people will find it useful:
Anyone in the music business
- Managers (use it as a manual to train your new hires, learn some tricks yourself)
- Self-Managed artists (learn how to market your shows and get more people)
- Agents (use it for your self-managed artists, pick up some ideas of how managers work)
- Record Labels (doing 360 deals and want to know how to service touring?)
Anyone who has an event based business (the timeline tasklist idea is universal for event businesses)
- Photographer, Craft makers, Painters who participate in art shows
- Caterers
- Speakers/Lecturers
You can download the .pdf here and if you have the need for the toolkit, drop me an email (ben(at)theartistfarm.com) and I will send it to you.
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Great find for me. Thanks for sharing the ebook.
Great job. Real world, actionable items in here, and laid out really well.
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Thanks for this! Can’t wait to read it and use the knowledge with my music. I love your site!
Noel, Mike and Derek~ Thanks for the kind words. Enjoy the book and drop me a line if you’ve got any feedback or questions!
Thank you so much for sharing this. It’s awesome to have a system I know works right in front of me, and not have to write this book for myself as I’m sure every other touring artist has had to.
I’ll most definitely email you with questions and/or suggestions. As a viral marketing tool you clearly understand the concept of real value, and on a karmic scale you’ve saved many promoters a lot of headaches!
I’ll certainly do what I can to get it out there.
Very insightful and helpful, thankyou.
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Jez and Ger~ Glad to read you’re enjoying the book! I enjoyed writing it and figuring it all out over the past couple of years.
Thanks for putting this together. I am reading through it now and wondering how someone hasn’t put together such a great tool earlier. I see it mentions some excel spreadsheets but I don’t see anywhere to download them. Where can I find those?
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Ben, this is a really great resource. Thank you for sharing it with all of us–and, for FREE! When will the items in the toolkit be available (or did I somehow miss them in the version I downloaded)? I look forward to receiving your reply. I’m ready to put these tools to immediate use. Thanks, again, Ben!
Hey Ben, as I had mentioned to you previously, your book is incredibly thorough, well thought out and well presented. The time frames and scheduling are particular appealing to me in looking at this from a visual artist’s perspective for art shows. I have read the book twice to glean ideas. Some minor adjustments are all that are needed to make it very useful to me. I would imagine the book would be very useful to anyone planning similar shows, adapting the plan to the particular venues and events.
Great job and thanks for sharing this!
Thanks for the great feedback Rob!
An awesome guide for any touring musician, thanks! May i pass this on through other websites? Will definately link back to you! =]
MartinT~ Thanks for the note, nice to meet you! Yes, please share and link back to this blog post. Thank you!
Ben – thank you for sharing this information. I have friends in Virginia who are musicians, I’ve given them the link to your site. I also have other family members in Texas who are musicians I will share this with- I will encourage all of them to give you feedback.
I ran across your information (I know it’s helpful to find out how your found) from Tom Peter’s The Change This Blog. I saw the post where they asked for input on Saving the music industry and your response in the comments. I’m always looking for that type of information and how online relates to the music industry.