OK, so the band is doing well, you did some gigs in front of your family and friends and now you want to go to the next level. The best feedback you can get for your band is playing in front of a live audience, but that can prove to be more difficult to achieve without a label or a manager. However, in our times, when internet and social media are the best things that could ever happen to an aspiring music band, planning an indie concert can be a task easier than you might think. But remember… it might be easier, you might have all the right tools, but you’re still going to be putting a lot of effort into it. No pain, no gain.

So, here are some nice tricks that can help you organize a small concert:

1. Google is your friend.

You can find anything you want on Google. The real key to using your new best friend is to know what you are looking for. According to Music Think Tank, there are a couple of interesting websites for indie artists that can help any aspiring musician learn a lot about industry, managers and booking shows, like Sonicbids Blog, Rap Rehab, Hypebot and, of course, Music Think Tank.

You might also want to check out some interesting books about concerts and tours. One of them is “This Business of Concert Promotion and Touring: “A Practical Guide to Creating, Selling, Organizing, and Staging Concerts” by Ray Waddell.

A must-have for indie artists is: “All You Need to Know About the Music Business” by Donald S. Passman. This book is the definitive, essential guide to the music industry and is now in its eighth edition, revised and updated with crucial information on the industry’s major changes in response to rapid technological advances and economic uncertainty.

2. Mastering the Social Networks

Obviously, when you and your band don’t have big budgets to spend on marketing and promotion, social networks are the safest way to success. It might take some time but if you do it right, the results are guaranteed. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are names that you should be familiarized with, as they are key to a successful event and a growing popularity of your music.

Singer Josh Levi claimed that “social media definitely plays a huge role in success today” and he is right. Either you are trying to promote your song or your concert, synchronize your accounts on every social network and start posting. You might bump into haters so keep calm and carry on posting… You might find out that a hater will only promote your music and some of his friends might actually enjoy it and come to see you play live.

3. “It’s not the singer, it’s the song”

These are wise words from the music industry so you better take them seriously. You can’t have a concert if you don’t have songs. While singing covers will help you fill up the playlist, people will come to see your concert so if you want to be successful, you must have some personal creations. It takes just one good song to hit the charts and be successful but just like in any business, getting to number 1 is hard work and staying there is even harder. So it’s best you prepare a good and entertaining playlist for the people who come to see you.

4. Choose the right venue

Now this is crucial. The selection of the venue can help you have a successful concert. Obviously you must select the venue that fits your target. If you want to organize a jazz concert, organizing the event at a Rock Club is definitely a bad idea. So, depending on what you sing, choose your venue wisely, as the venue itself can generate some audience. After all, it is in their interest also to get people to come inside and spend some money there. And since we’re talking about venues, make sure that the venue has the technical capacity for a proper concert. You might want to avoid places where the sound is bad or where people are cramming in and have no air to breathe.

5. Sell the tickets

You managed to set everything in place. You have all social network accounts working and your website is up and running. You found the perfect venue for the concert and set the date now comes the crucial part: how to sell the tickets and generate some revenue? So what is there to do? Well, take matters into your own hands and sell your own tickets. It’s your show, your money, your time so why not sell your own tickets directly from your website?

Once you advertise the concert on the social networks the people who are interested will come on your website and find more details about you, your band, your music and your events. Your website is the primary source of information for people who want to get to know you so why not sell tickets from your website. A few years ago, creating your own ticketing software was very expensive but now you have Oveit. With just a few clicks, you can set up your event in a couple of minutes and then use an Embed code to paste it on your website, and that’s it. You can now start selling tickets directly from your website. No more telephones to the ticketing platforms, everything you need is in your hands. So now you can focus on things that matter: the concert!

6. Keep your attendees close

It’s the evening of the concert. You sold your tickets and everything went as planned. People came to the venue, enjoyed your music and had a great time. What next? Transform your attendees into your fans. If you used Oveit’s event registration software to sell tickets, you might want to know that you have now gathered a lot of information about the participants. So now you have a data base to use and improve and you can send e-mails, make a newsletter and keep in contact with everyone. The key detail to being successful is communication. Music comes first but it doesn’t matter how good your music is if you lack interaction with your fans. Keeping them happy and satisfied will get you a long way. And now you can do that with your own data base.

Back in the days, getting in contact with your audience was quite difficult. Now, this is not the case. Labels have discovered that organizing events themselves will improve their revenues. Why hire someone to do your concert when you can do it yourself? So if the labels do this, why couldn’t the indie artists do it?