[MUSIC] My name is Peter Loomis.
I'm a agent at New Frontier touring in Nashville, Tennessee.
I've been with New Frontier for eight years.
We're a boutique booking agency that handles a roster of about 90 to a 100 artists.
There's agents and about eight support staff,
contact department assistance, business manager.
The company represents all different genres from Americana, to indie rock,
to classic rock from arena acts like the Avett Brothers to artists that are
selling 1000 to 2000 tickets like
Highly Suspect to more developmental artists like the Western Dan,
Ages and Ages, the Cave Singers and the list goes on and on.
Agents handle the day-to-day negotiations and operations
of touring and any live appearance that an artist makes centrally for money.
We handle talking to festival buyers and club buyers,
planning out the routing of a tour and negotiating the deal,
the ticket prices, what venue is appropriate in any given market.
Some of the things that agents do not do is they do not promote the shows.
They will negotiate the advertising budget with the town buyer of the event,
but they're not the ones on the street handing out flyers or deciding
what social media to boost and they're not handling geo-targeted posts.
They're more on the operations before an event gets announced and live.
The tools that are helpful for working with an artist,
it all depends on the artist and where they are in their career.
But having any tour history is the most useful tool,
to know where they've played,
where they haven't played,
how many people were there to see them,
how much merchandise sold,
radio history they might have in that market,
anything that is market specific
is probably the most important tool for an agent to have.
Once a show is confirmed,
the assets that are very important are
anything the promoter can use to help advertisers show.
So images, bios, videos,
links to social media or their music.
Those are all assets that we always have in hand that we relate to the venue or event,
so that they can properly market the show.
When I'm starting to think about booking a tour and getting the beginning steps in place,
I'll look at their their needs and talk to them and see what their expectations are,
of how long they want to tour for,
what's appropriate and how it would be successful for both the artist,
the venues that are involved,
and obviously the agency side as well.
So typically, it will be a combination
of markets that they have strengths in and then obviously,
when we're routing between those stronger markets,
we might play a secondary or tertiary market that we're building in,
and we might lean in certain direction for different markets
if there's any tools that we might have or reasons to go to those markets.
Whether it's a radio station that's been playing their new single,
or a strong fan base from Spotify streaming that we can see.
Any analytics that we can use to justify playing certain cities is always helpful tools.
A slot on a festival is one of the most sought after gigs for any artist or band.
They're getting thousands and thousands of submissions,
so it's a lot for them to sift through and to know who's worth putting on
that noon slot for 30 minutes on the sixth stage and who not to put on it.
So when pitching an artists to a festival,
any recent press I can give them or history in that market is all useful.
I always say the more information that I can tell them the better.
It's always good to be optimistic and show
them the trends that we've set up for the lead time,
because big issue with the festivals is they're getting booked eight to 12 months out,
and so it's hard to know the worth that artist in eight to 12 months.
So you have to outline things up with all the plans being in place and them going well,
so a lot of it is making some promises that
might not happen but it's always good to shoot that direction.
When building an artist,
I think one the most important things is diversifying,
looking at hard ticket plays,
looking at support opportunities,
festivals, concert series and using all of the those as
a combination to grow an artist's career and not just going down one alley only.
I've seen it several times where an artist
will get all these great support opportunities,
to go out and tour and play in front of 1000 people, night after night,
tour after tour, but they've never taken the time to go back to those cities,
play their own show and build their own hard ticket worth as a headlining artist.
The support slots always seem like a great route to
take and they can all ways be impactful.
But if it's not a good fit genre wise and fan base wise,
you're not going to transfer any fans to become your own fans,
and a lot of times with the larger touring acts that are
playing amphitheaters or arenas let's say,
you might be first to four,
first to three and sometimes you're just there to burn daylight so that
the headliners playing to a warmed up audience.
A lot of times people aren't there to see the opener.
They have a narrower mindset of music,
if they're a Dave Matthews Band fan or a Mumford and Sons fan,
they're more into pop music and not as much about discovering new music most of the time.
So if you can get into a support tour where you're playing to 500,000 people,
generally you're probably playing to a crowd
that is more into discovering new bands and bands that are on the rise,
and they want to be involved in your success story as well.
I always look at the Avett brothers touring as something to aspire to.
They're not really a household name,
but they have built such a die hard fan base,
where they can play arenas and the amphitheaters
in any given city or town you've heard of,
and then draw very well.
A lot of the pop bands out there,
they couldn't play up a market like Ash for North Carolina, or Chattanooga,
or even like a Salina Kansas,
but the Avett Brothers don't seem to differ away from the smaller towns because
they've always put focus on
those towns and known that there's fans there and an importance there,
and they're not elitist as far as playing certain markets go.
Another good example of touring structure that I've
seen really work is the Secret Sisters.
Luckily enough for them,
they have a lot of fans that
are very successful musicians that have asked them to go out on tour,
but what they have not shied away from
is following up those support tours pretty quickly,
three to six months after and go back to those markets,
really make those fans that saw them open for that larger acts,
and they are continuously grinding it out
and continuously following up those support plays or festival plays,
to play their own headline shows.
[MUSIC]