Wanted to know how do I go about getting my group gigs at colleges,and college radio stations

How would you get in touch with one of the agencies that you back you and cover your cost to get into one of the regional showcases?

The only thing missing from this interview is the real cost! Yikes. If you independent artists out there can do this, you’re doing a whole lot better than I am:

Submission fee: $85.00
National membership fee: $687.00
Purchasing a booth (which looks like is part of the package you must buy): $1149.00

Anyone interested in sharing? Oh, is that legal?

and is there any financial support available from NACA?

Hi Melina,

I was wondering if there would be interest in a multimedia show about French pioneers settling Western Canada. The material (songs, spoken word)is in French but all of the dialog could be done in English. There’s a lot of historical content. It would probably go over well in Maine or in Colleges where Canadian history is part of the curriculum. Played the University of Maine’s Lewiston campus in 2007.

thanx for your help
- Michel Marchildon (artist & producer)

Hey Jason,

Many of these agencies have listings on Sonicbids that you can check out. Go to the Promoter Drop Box, and check out “Colleges” under “Live Gigs” for the ones who are currently accepting EPKs for openings on their roster, or “Management/Booking Agencies” under “A&R/Publicity/Licensing”.

For Linda and folks looking for more info regarding the fees, check out the FAQ section on NACA’s website- http://www.naca.org/NACA/Associates/FAQ/

Hope this helps!

Linda is right on–NACA is super expensive for independent artists who represent themselves. We gave NACA a shot a few years ago and just couldn’t justify the overwhelming expense. $340 regional associate membership fee + $235 CAMP booth fee + $300 delegate registration fees (we had two at $150 ea.) + $345 for three nights in hotel = $1220 just to get to the regional conference! And that doesn’t include any travel expenses, cost of promotional materials to hand out to potential buyers, booth display, etc. It also doesn’t include any Showcase fees: another $65 to submit to showcase ($55 through Sonicbids) and you have to pay $220 more if you’re selected to showcase. You’re already in for well over $1500 to attend a single regional conference.

The good thing is that college gigs do tend to pay well. You could probably make back your investment with just a handful of shows. The problem with that is that chances are you won’t actually book any shows the first time you go to a conference. College buyers already have relationships with agencies that attend the conferences, sometimes going back years and years. They tend to know who they want to book and who they want to talk to before they ever reach the conference. It’s still very much about who you know.

Every musician/agent we talked to at the conference told us that you really have to commit to going for at least 3-4 years to build some recognition, and only then are you likely to leave the conference with some shows booked. By the time you go to 3-4 regional conferences, you’ve spent $4500-6000 just for the opportunity to talk to the buyers. For most indie, self-rep artists, that just isn’t feasible.

Since our NACA experiment we’ve had some success booking college shows outside of NACA. It takes some work (like all booking), but it’s well worth it. We went into the NACA conference with the impression that college shows were ripe for the plucking, and that we’d leave with numerous lucrative gigs on the books. Instead we left $1500+ poorer, but with a much better understanding of how college booking works. We had a great time and met a lot of really nice people, but those were not the reasons we joined NACA.

Here is a case study on booking college gigs outside of NACA: http://www.starpolish.com/advice/article.asp?id=25
Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, also has written some material on the subject: http://sivers.org/

thank you very much for providing these types of interviews; they are most informative!