5 Tips for Playing Successful Shows

19-Apr-2018 By Guest Blogger

Back To The Ocean Performing at Youbloom Festival

A few tips to playing successful shows

Imagine you just moved to a new town. No friends or musician pals, let alone connections with the local music scene. What do you do? The easy answer would be: get a band together and start playing successful shows , but that is not always the fastest track to local success.

When you’re trying to establish yourself as an artist in the local scene, your goal should not simply be to put a show together, but to put together a successful show. The difference is enormous. Here’s a few tips of how to make that happen.

1. Know your Target

As an artist, you should be crystal clear about what your skill set, goal and target is. An emerging artist should not count booking a show an end goal in itself.

The details are what matters the most: who is coming to catch your band play? Are you going to be performing for a near-empty room, with only your roommate and parents there to watch?

If you’re a rock ‘n’ roller, on the other hand, your natural habitat should be the DIY scene. Do your research. Who are the best local bands that gravitate towards your sound? Where do they usually play? Are they playing successful shows? Where do they go for a pint?

2. Be a Fan

Once you’ve gathered your data, take action. Go see their shows, follow them on social media, see what they’re up to and what their strategy is. Artists should learn from each others’ success as well as mistakes.

Back To The Ocean Playing successful shows at youbloom festival — If you’re a songwriter and producer you may wanna play acoustic rounds and hang out where the local songwriters are, rather than at a dive bar populated by rock bands.

3. Don’t be a Stranger

Most importantly, befriend these fellow rockers. Approach them after their show, buy them a beer and make friends. If you’re the shy type who likes to stand in the back and just enjoy the show, get another member of your band to be the social one. Or, fight yourself and make an effort to exchange a few words and perhaps a little booze with them.

Whether you’re a hit writer or an indie rocker, you never know where meeting new people may lead you. You might end up co-writing a number 1 hit on a chill afternoon session with a writer you met randomly at a show. Or, you might end up headlining a national tour with a small-time band that broke through – and all because you had the guts to go talk to them after a set at your local dive.

Don’t be afraid to push yourself out of your comfort zone, because that is what’s going to change your perspective on things and ultimately lead you to a more efficient strategy for your career.

4. Offer Up your Skills

Take time out of your own life to make friends with those acts that already establish themselves in the local scene. Ask if they would like you to open for them. That way you will most likely play to a room full of people who are probably into music or musicians themselves.

5. Schmooze

Playing Successful Shows at youbloom Festival — Back To The Ocean and Anna Christie perform at the youbloom Festival

By opening for your new-found friends, you’ll be making a name for yourself as a new band around town, and you’ll be gaining their fans in the process. Throw a nice after-party after the show where you can properly hang out with your new fans and you’ll have a recipe for success.

Networking and making friends is crucial and takes a lot of work and dedication. If you’re looking for a simpler way to join these networks, check out youbloom Connect – where you can get partnered to perform with other local artists, build a steady fan-base, and even get your band on the road. Whether you reach out, or decide to do it alone, do yourself a favor: get out more and meet like-minded people. Many of them might not be your next musical partner in crime, but the worst that’ll happen is you’ll have more friends.

Luca a freelance writer, blogger, musician and songwriter. Born and
raised in Italy, his passion for Rock n Roll made him move to London where he
lived for one year and gained a certificate in Songwriting from ICMP.
Luca relocated in NYC in 2014 to pursue jazz music and liberal arts at the
The New School from which he graduated in December 2017. Luca currently
reside in Nashville, TN

How youbloomConnect Works

16-Apr-2018 By Robert Loustaunau

youbloomConnect is a global community of Artists, Fans, and Hosts – curating unique shows to create unforgettable experiences

No band is an island.

But a lot of the time they’re treated like they are. Whether you’re an artist, venue host, or just a fan of great music, we’re all looking for the same thing: each other. youbloomConnect helps you find what you’re looking for. When artists join youbloom, they enter a network of exceptional musicians to partner and perform with. Fans request their favorite bands to come play local shows while youbloom finds the venues to make it happen. By uniting fan, artist, and host on one platform, youbloomConnect makes it uncommonly simple for you to curate an unforgettable, live experiences.

Here’s how it works:

youbloomConnect For Fans

Connect works to deliver amazing experiences for fans by empowering them to create the shows they want to see. Fans can initiate a show with their favorite artists by requesting them. Connect works to make the show happen. Fans can also help the show to happen by becoming a Street Team Fan.

From the moment you request an artist, to the night of the show, youbloomConnect will keep you in the loop. You’ll receive weekly emails that show the stats for your requested artists, upcoming performances, and local shows we’ve hand-picked for you. When enough fans request the same artists as you, they are notified, and a show is organized. Once the show is set up, there is a 5 day period when fans who successfully brought a band to their city can buy tickets at a 15% discount, before being offered to the public. Updates on all requested artists, upcoming youbloom shows, and fan signup forms to share via social media, arrive in your weekly email from youbloom.

Request as a Fan

What is a Street Team Fan?

Exceptional fans have the opportunity to join the Street Team, working behind the scenes, with bands, and nabbing some extra perks in the process. Street Team fans promote their favorite artists across social media and increase fan sign ups locally. They help make the buzz around town when a youbloom band is on the way.

We will keep track of how many fans you get to sign up, and let you know how you’re doing in a weekly email. Street Team members will receive all the benefits of fans plus 1 free ticket to see their favorite artist for every 4 tickets sold for that artist. Once a show is scheduled, we’ll let you know so you can start promoting sales and earn your tickets.

youbloomConnect For Artists

Artists use youbloomConnect to maximize performance opportunities and in turn, ticket and merch sales. Once signed on as a youbloom artist, we search the entire youbloomConnect database to find you artists similar in genre, fanbase, and travel radius. We then provide you with artist matches in a weekly email that you can pair with and promote through social media and other channels. Connect works to get you performing together.

As an Artist, you’ll also receive updates from hosts who would like to host you! Usually, a show does not take place for at least a month after it has been set up to allow time for youbloom, artists, fans, street team fans, and hosts to market the show. When signing up as an Artist, you’ll have the option to host intimate youbloom shows of your own, by opening up your own home or studio as a Connect space. By different bands working together, it becomes easy to reliably plan a tour, fill venues, grow an audience, and sell more tickets and merch, sustaining music careers locally and globally!

Apply as an Artist

youbloomConnect For Hosts

A host can be a promoter or just a venue. They use youbloomConnect to book artists. With bands working together to produce a show, and fans/Street Team members confirming ticket pre-sales, hosts can book bands with better reliability that the show is going to bring in people and turn a profit. When artists have gained enough fan requests in a city, Connect notifies local hosts and begins organizing shows. Artist and hosts are brought together to foster new relationships and accelerate shows taking place.

What is a City-Rep?

Similar to the Street-Team fan playing a more dynamic role in requesting artists, the City-Rep can be a host or promoter who has established a relationship with youbloomConnect and plays an integral role in showcasing incoming youbloom talent in their city. For more information on how to become a City-Rep, email us at: cityreps@youbloom.com.

For more information on how youbloomConnect works, refer to our FAQ page. If you want to hear our story, visit the About Uspage.

Also, check out youbloom’s music festivals held in Dublin, Ireland and Los Angeles, California every year.

Our music summit and festival is where fans, promoters, and hosts discover and request upcoming talent. Artists can learn the essentials of navigating the industry while showcasing at nightly concerts and and meeting music industry leaders through seminars and networking.

See youbloomLA, youbloomDublin and youbloomConnect FAQs.

Our Mission

youbloom’s mission is to enable amazing experiences through a combination of curated shows, fan experience optimization, fan crowdsourcing, artist partnering and host matching.

Top 6 Micro Job Sites – For Musicians

16-Jan-2018 By Robert Loustaunau

Choosing the Right Micro Job Site

Being an independent artist can be tricky. When the gigs aren’t exactly flowing, one way artists can convert their skills to profit are through micro job sites. While platforms like Fiverr have become a popular hub for freelancers to offer up their skills to patrons, many competing micro job sites are offering unique perks to accrue their own network of buyers and sellers. Here we’ll disentangle the pros and cons of these platforms so you can find the one that’ll suit your needs.

Fiverr

Fiverr being the most well know micro job site platform, it has set the bar for this global marketplace. As its name suggests, a musician can offer up their services for as little as 5 bucks. Fiverr’s platform is clean and user friendly and seems to cater to musicians more with services being broken into categories like: Voice Over, Mixing & Mastering, Singer-Songwriters, Jingles & Drops, and Sound Effects as well as others. The commission Fiverr receives per gig is 20%, meaning they’ll get a dollar of that $5 jingle you wrote. While this rate is somewhat steady among job sites, minimum service rates can vary as well.

Fourer

The next logical step if Fiverr is not for you is Fourer. With no lack in discretion, this site is a spin-off from Fiverr and the minimum rate is $4. Like Fiverr, Fourer nabs 20% of each transaction. The catch with this site is that you can only receive your payout through Paypal. Many similar job sites function this way so consider your relationship with Paypal before signing up. Fourerr also provides users the ability to “level up” where points can be gained by selling services. These points can then be exchanged for purchasing credit on the platform.

FiverUp

Don’t let its name fool you. FiverUp offers minimum rates of $4 and takes a 20% commission. You can manage your funds through Paypal or your credit card. In an attempt to differentiate itself from its competitors this micro job site offers a flurry of extra features. For example, FiverUp offers a “bump” function which allows users to pin their service to the site’s front page everyday. Their is also the possibility that if the company finds your service to be unique or especially useful, they will feature it in their blog, maximizing your exposure.

SEOClerks

Diverting from the common pun, SEOClerks has carved out its own niche of buyers and sellers priding itself/advertising itself on services as low as $1 and being especially useful to SEO and web development services. If you are an artist looking to beautify your website or expand your brand coverage, purchasing services here may be your best bet, but SEOCLerks allows you to sell the same range of services as the other sites, leaving a category of Music and Audio for musicians to sell their craft as well. They have different user levels which dictate the range of cost you can demand for your services where you may start offering gigs from $5-$125 and at later levels there is no maximum on the price. They also have a “want to buy” and “want to trade” section, where you can ask to have specific gigs done.

Gigbucks

While not wholly unique in its design, the platform has garnered good reviews from it users and a reliable following. Like the others, Gigbucks pays out through Paypal or Alertpay/Payza, and also offers credit to one’s Gigbucks account balance. The rate one can charge is $5 – 50 and Gigbucks takes a set 20% cut.

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)

Finally, there is MTurk. This Amazon-affiliated crowdsourcing website is based in India and has accumulated a wide girth of customers over the years and is known to be a sturdy forefather of the micro job site platform. Any number of Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) can be requested and those who complete them, Turkers, are paid in Amazon credit. One can also pay the Turker through debit/credit or PayPal. Workers based in India have an added perk of being able to receive payment as a direct deposit in the form of Rupees. The commission rate for MTurk is where things become more complicated with a 20% – 40% fee per HIT depending on a workers number of tasks at had. A worker can be paid as low as $0.01 for a task but usually jobs pay as low as $1.20.

Still not sure where to post your services? Take a look at our comparison chart of what each platform has to offer. Hopefully this will clear things up so you can begin posting and get paid!

Robert Loustaunau is a content writer for youbloom and is a member of the social media team there. He is an avid music maker and listener. He enjoys the simple things in life: coffee, a good book, and quality time with his lovely girlfriend.

BEFORE I DIE: youbloom | HEADROOM #9 with Featured Artists from the youbloomLA 2016 Music Summit and Festival.

01-Oct-2016 By Shannon Duvall

Sometimes all it takes is a little list. There’s a big world out there full of choices and for an ambitious musician it can be hard to know which direction to steer in. That’s where a BEFORE I DIE list comes in.

Narrow things down. Weed out distractions. Focus on the three things that will make your time on this mortal coil the best it can possibly be. Then go.

The youbloomLA 2016 Music Summit and Festival is in full swing, with scores of the finest independent artists around hitting stages all around the city of angels with one thing in mind: to share the music they love with you. They’re on this journey because they know, deep down, that this music train ain’t stopping; they’re in it for the long haul; they’re married to rock ‘n’ roll...you get the picture. But where the path will lead is different for every single artist up there tonight, and five of them were kind to provide us with some truly great answers when we asked: Hey buddy, what do you want to do before you die?

Huxley Rittman:

1 | Be featured on a hip hop banger

2 | Play a show somewhere stupid like underwater or in space or while freefalling from a great height

3 | Play a show in which I actually don’t screw up

An act we’re pleased to welcome back to the youbloom stage, Rittman is an artist who brings fresh footfall to the well-hiked trails of acoustic storytelling, making it more about the listener than about himself, which is dignified and refreshing. Like a relaxed, neofolk Dylan; instantly persuasive and warmly addictive. For fans of: Nick Drake, Hudson Taylor, Mark Kozelek

Nasty, Dirty and Nasty:

1 | Become a touring artist full time.

2 | Be featured on a song with Nas.

3 | Perform the 5 fingers of death on the Sway in the Morning show.

Eclectic, exploratory hip-hop that pulls no punches. The chemistry between Dirty and Nasty is colossal; together they capably tackle a range of different compositions, from sexy grooves to party anthems and rhymes to make you stop and think. This is an act that’s going places, and you really want to be there to see their live show before they blow up. For fans of: Black Milk, J Dilla, Digable Planets

Jonny Cat, frontman & guitar, Coo Coo Birds:

1 | Write an Opera.

2 | Score a great film.

3 | Tour three times a year in Europe and Asia.

Welcome to your new favourite garage band. Coo Coo Birds bring the fuzz and crunch with all the references to sex, drugs and rock’n’roll essential to doing justice to this timelessly rebellious musical style. They’re groovy, they’ve got swagger, and they write really great rock’n’roll tunes. You’ll love ‘em live. For fans of: The Stooges, The Black Keys, Jay Reatard

Case Bargé:

1 | Make a positive change with my music, rather it be in a listener’s personal life or in the overall music scene in general.

2 | Go on a world tour and have every show sell out.

3 | I would love for the creative collective I’m a part of to be a staple and known for our influential and positive efforts to better not only the music community but the entire world as a whole.

Like a dark dream shot through with sharp-as-a-knife clarity, Bargé’s music blends ambient tones and synthy, electronic landscape sounds with rhymes so deftly spat you get the sense they must be red hot. It’s top class hip hop with more than enough food for thought for a feast. For fans of: Tyler, the Creator, Ab-Soul, ScHoolboy Q

Grover Anderson:

1 | I would kill for one of my songs to become so ubiquitous that everyone rolled their eyes when it’s played, even if that meant someone else played it. Like, I want to feel like Ketch Secor from Old Crow Medicine Show does when Darius Rucker’s version of Wagon Wheel comes on.

2 | I’d also like to play in one of those overstuffed tribute performances that they do every year at the Grammys, like when Growl & Springsteen & Costello & Little Steven did that Clash Tribute.

3 | I’d like to tour with Garth Brooks. In my book, he’s the best live singer-songwriter that you can see, and I want to learn everything I can from him.

Wistful and clever, the wonderfully proficient Grover Anderson weaves together songs that mix youthful whimsy with heartfelt daydreams, delivering them to eager ears with a stripped-back, pure and well-considered expression. From the acoustic gems to rockier grooves, It’s the perfect road trip music, and it’s sure to be a killer live. For fans of: Paddy Casey, Josh Ritter, Ryan Adams

What three things would you put on your BEFORE I DIE list? We’re, uh, dying to know. 😉

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WOKE UP THIS MORNIN’: youbloom | HEADROOM #8 with Featured Artists from the youbloomLA 2016 Music Summit and Festival.

28-Sep-2016 By Shannon Duvall

We all have heroes – performers and artists we’ve stayed up late into the night listening to and watching over and over. For many of us, it’s these legends and icons of music who inspire us to pursue musical careers of our own, and for that kind of life-changer, we’re eternally thankful. But what if we had the chance to live their life? Would we take it? Knowing everything we know about our favorite artists, would we want to say I WOKE UP THIS MORNIN’ and cashed it all in for a shot at walking in their shoes?

Six featured artists from this coming weekend’s amazing youbloomLA 2016 Music Summit and Festival tell us, in no uncertain terms, who, if anyone, they’d rather be if they WOKE UP THIS MORNIN’ and found another face staring back at them.

Gabbs Casanova, guitar & backing vox, Only on Tuesdays: ‘I would have to say Miles Davis. Not only is he one of the most amazing trumpet players to this day, but he was also a passionate and spiritual figure who refused to be pigeon-holed, which I find very inspiring. To me he represents an artist with great insight about life whose brilliant music and rejection of the status quo transformed not only jazz, but also genres like rock and fusion. It would be absolutely amazing to wake up and find out what it is like to be Miles Davis, even if just to play an improvised solo with the mastery that he did.’

Alfredo Lucero-Canaan, bass, Only on Tuesdays: ‘I would love to wake up as Joe Lally, the bass player from Fugazi, only because I would get to play with my favorite band of all time.’

Only On Tuesdays blend the very best elements of folk, indie and blues and bundle it all up into a shiny pop package that’s instantly catchy and smooth. The guitar playing is superb, going tête-à-tête with the impressive vocals as the tempo-perfect rhythm section rolls along beneath it all. It’ll be gorgeous live. For fans of: Lisa Loeb, Carla Bruni, The Growlers

Marcelo Loss, bass & vox, Banda Concreto: ‘I wanna be one of the biggest musicians in the world, Mr. Glenn Hughes. He is my hero – an amazing musician and a great singer as well.’

Insanely tasty heavy metal from four Brazilian rockers, reminiscent of the most fun headbang-worthy acts from the 80s, updated just the right amount for a contemporary audience. Wailing vocals, shredding guitar, machine gun drums – Banda Concreto has it all. Don’t miss them. For fans of: Iron Maiden, Saxon, Avenged Sevenfold

RickEy, keys, Of The Dark I Dare: ‘I would most want to be Quincy Jones because I can’t play trumpet and he can.’

Tribal beats meet soaring, soulful, dark vocals and stripped back and sultry electronic elements to create an exciting and unique sound that you can either dance or bliss out to. It’s earworm-worthy music that is going to sound incredible live. For fans of: Björk, MØ, Lamb

Kathleen Farless: ‘Freddie Mercury; he was an incredible performer, a brilliant singer-songwriter. I wish at least I could be half of his talent. He is really an inspiration and a huge influence on my music.’

Jagged beats, cabaret-inspired lyrics and rolling piano and bass make the perfect vehicles for Farless’ powerful, sweet vocals, at once tender yet inspiringly confident. With bulletproof composition and challenging arrangements, it’s seriously beautiful stuff.

For fans of: Corinne Bailey Rae, Rebecca Ferguson, Les Nubians

Erica Lulakwa: ‘I would want to be me. In life one never knows what really goes around or what other big artist goes through in their life. So I would want to be me and be an icon of my own.’

Synthy and infectious, Tanzanian-born Erica Lulakwa’s music is a funky, friendly take on Afropop, blending in elements of dance and gospel to make something totally new. True to form, African polyrhythms set the meter, as enchantingly atmospheric sounds swirl around and Erica’s voice cuts through like a crystal. For fans of: Sade, Yemi Alade, Sia Tolno

What do you think? What if you WOKE UP THIS MORNIN’ and saw another face? Who’s rock’n’roll mug would you want staring back?