Events

Over the last 3 years I have had the opportunity to be part of some of the most creative and innovative in the south-west through my company Box Logo Music and with external organisations such as Broadwick Live, AEG and festivals such as Outer Town and Wild Paths. The following text will cover the last six months of the business and how the cost of living crisis has affected my events massively, it will also cover the stages of how I book, manage, ticket and market my shows and the decisions taken to temporarily give the business a break from April 2023 - August 2023.

Firstly starting out with the cost of living crisis. Nowadays, due to the rapid rise of the cost of living crisis many pundits have to pick and choose which gigs they go to throughout the week therefore adding more risk to the promoter putting on shows and making the shows more expensive to put on for promoters to break even. As Box Logo Music is a self-funded project, I recognised taking a punt for a gig to sell well wasn't the best process and I needed to analyse everything from what venue I use to the marketing process also I needed to get the perfect balance between raising my portfolio within the industry and not breaking the bank putting on events.

The last few events of November these being LostBoy in Bristol and 2 shows for Tragic in Bristol and London did not sell well and I barely broke even on both which made me realise the demand for grass-roots live music was struggling. So therefore I contacted friends who are promoters in Bristol, London, Brighton, Portsmouth, Birmingham and Manchester all of whom had a dramatic drop in ticket sales and were finding everything a little difficult.

I came up with a plan to use Podcasts to still elevate my portfolio and limit myself to one show a month for January till April. Since working with Marshall Live Agency I have learnt the basics to booking gigs and promoting them across Bristol and London, I have promoted shows in relatively small 200 capacity venues such as Exchange, Crofters Rights, The Thunderbolt, The Lanes and Dareshack. The best value and best recognised venue of these was Crofters Rights having a main room hire fee of £120 with rider and sound engineer included, so this is where I booked more of the shows occuring from January to April. And for London, I had less experience however found Thr George Tavern to be a good start off. Within both cities I had partnerships with lead ticketing agents being DICE and Headfirst both of which marketed and promoted my shows.

The Diary consisted of:

December - Wreck The Halls 2022

January - (off season)

February - Trunky Juno (Indie Rising-London), Carsick (Bristol)

March - Martha Hill (London)

April - Fudge (Bristol)

December - WRECK THE HALLS 2022

Towards the end of the year I had no events or gigs planned with Marshall and released there was a Wednesday at Crofters Rights where both stages were free, so for this reason I thought it would be a good idea to organise a Christmas Showcase called Wreck The Halls featuring two external headliners and six other local bands and artists. Obviously due to the living crisis it was a massive risk to hold a 250 capacity live event just before Christmas however I believe I had the line up and experience to sell out and hopefully have a nice pay check before Christmas. I contacted Wasserman Live Agency who gave me indie rockers L'Objectif and Keg then having worked with Getdown Services, The Pleasure Dome, Garden Party, Toast, Clemencie and The Assist before it was fairly easy to get them on board with the event.

I used three ticket outputs these being Headfirst, Seetickets and DICE in order to gain full exposure online and tickets were priced at £10 each. I also ran a Christmas Jumper competition and showed a live screening of the World Cup Semi-Final (Main Stage Set-times attached). Overall the event went really well with 60% of tickets selling which meant I broke even however with the event expecting to sell out it represented the stability within the market. I also employed a stage manager from BIMM in Bristol to manage the second stage and a photographer to capture some evidence of the event which set back some costs.

January - Off-Season

Within the events industry January is considered to be the quietest month due to being after Christmas which is a very expensive holiday for a lot of people and due to the living-crisis. For these reasons I spent January releasing the podcasts and organising line ups for the remaining gigs for Box Logo Music. This was a great time to evaluate the plans for Box Logo Music and what month we would last up until. Within this month I released the first few line ups and book further acts for Indie Rising gigs this included booking MOSES, House Of Women and The Great Leslie for Trunky Juno's showcase at the Sebright Arms on the 24th June. Also booking Naked Next Door, Harvey Jay Dodgeson and T.E.D for Martha Hill's showcase in early March and Carsick's Bristol headline with Shelf Lives, Nat Oaks, Toast and NRWO (Evidence shown of some email chains with Live agencies). January is also a fantastic time to release promo for the events and sell tickets, as not many events are many pundits are gagging for gigs come February, so it is a fantastic time to release promo and material. We released a piece of promo with the podcast and events once to twice a week non stop to keep my followers in close.

February - CARSICK Bristol Headline & INDIE RISING: Trunky Juno | Moses & Special Guests

To bounce back from the dry-season that was January I planned two gigs that occurred in February. The first being Carsick headline gig in Bristol, which was due to occur in February 18th. As most of the line ups were organised in January, all I had to do was pay the hire fee for the venue for the sound engineer and rider and maintain a close eye on ticket sales, for this show we had 5 bands/artists so a fairly busy evening. I started with planning a day sheet for the day and sending these to the artists and sound engineer, as I've worked with this venue on previously, they knew how I worked. Among the 5 bands playing we did have a hiccup unfortunately as one of the bands were underage, this was an 18+ venue and it was my job to make sure the venue was happy and the customers were happy, however due to the band being underage and the a lot of there audience underage the venue and I came to an agreement to make sure all 18+ audience members were out by 9pm, which ran fairly smoothly however the bands equipment were still on stage so we had to move them to the green room until the show was finished.

The second show was Trunky Juno at the Sebright Arms in London, I was really excited for this show as Trunky Juno was a really up and coming artist within the London music scene we also had MOSES, House of Women and Corvax also on the line up. However due to Trunky Juno tragically falling ill in the week leading up to the show, insufficient ticket sales and Corvax cancelling last minute the show was postponed for a later date within June.

March - INDIE RISING : Martha Hill + Special Guests

I made March my last month of capturing evidence and running Box Logo Music as I had a lot of University work to complete and wanted to have a break from running gigs as this was taking up a lot of my time and a lot of my money. The last gig was Martha Hill taking place as part of my Indie Rising series at the iconic Old Blue Last In London featuring a brilliant line up of up and coming artists featuring Harvey Jay Dodgson, Naked Next Door and I brought over House of Women from the previously cancelled show in London. As a lot of work went into the programming in January and February there wasn't much to do in March in the lead up to the event apart from host the event. Though if I was to host at this venue again I'd make sure there's two of us as the stage was upstairs so I had to keep rushing upstairs then back down.