Frequently Asked Questions
General
Yep! We have over 13 years of experience in booking single shows and entire tours for artists of every size—from single singer-songwriters to full bands—and booking artists of every genre—from rock to pop, hip-hop, and jazz. We've even been recognized as having more venue contacts than any other booking agency in the world, and we received LUX Life Magazine’s Global Hospitality award for Best Arts & Entertainment Talent Agency in Florida in 2019! Pretty cool, right?
Our Independent plan is available globally! Our other plans are currently only available in the USA because most of our venues are over here. Hopefully we’ll get to know more overseas venues better in the future though!
We do! Unfortunately, you're probably asking because you want to see our roster and it isn’t publicly viewable. We know, we know… Some other agencies display their roster on their site. But they book their artists via signed contracts that last years, and those contracts force their artists to agree to things that some of them aren’t comfortable with. But our agency handles booking differently. We handle the booking process through user accounts on our website, and these user accounts are similar to a user account on a social media platform, or a user account through an email client. And just like those sites have privacy policies that protect their users’ information, we have privacy policies too. These privacy policies are required by law to keep our users’ account information safe, secure, and private. All of this information is private and protected by law, including the users’ email address, compensation numbers, and yes, even their names. As such, we cannot share ANY of our users’ information because their information is provided to us via user accounts on a website, and the law takes the privacy of these types of accounts very seriously. Thank you for understanding.
There's only an application process for celebrity artists, not for independent artists. If you’re a celebrity artist who is looking for a contracted deal with one of our commissioned booking agents, then you can help us get to know you here!
Subscriptions
Payment
We use Stripe, which is one of the world’s most popular, secure, and easy-to-use payment gateways. Through Stripe, we accept VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB, & Diners Club.
No, we use Stripe, which is trusted by many of today’s biggest and most visited websites, such as Amazon, DocuSign, and Shopify. Rest assured, Stripe is secure and trustworthy. (Also, their fees are lower than PayPal’s, so we get to charge you less than we would if we used PayPal. Woohoo!)
Nope! We like our employees, and one of the ways we keep them from starving is by allowing them to get paid for their work. Also, it’s simply unethical to expect someone to work for free.
See previous answer.
We don’t take a percentage from our Independent, Dependent*, Basic, Advanced, and Premium plans, because we get paid through the monthly access to our website. We don’t need to get paid twice, so any money that users of those plans receive as compensation for their performances is theirs to keep! We do, however, take a commission from our Verified plan, because we don’t charge a monthly fee for that plan. Our Verified plan is structured more similarly to a traditional booking agency.
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- For our Independent, Dependent*, Basic, Advanced, and Premium plans, there's no fee for booking a tour. The monthly amounts for these plans cover our overhead to pay for the email hosting through our paid email provider, for additional security for each of these individual email accounts, and for the wages of our independent booking agents who work so hard to set up these accounts and work on whatever is needed for these plans, like contacting venues about your potential shows for the Basic, Advanced, and Premium plans.
- For our Verified plan, we take the industry-average amount of between 10%–12% depending on your per-performance compensation for a one-year contract. Other booking agencies in this industry typically do not offer month-to-month contracts, so we take an additional 8%–10% since there is typically 3 months of work for every show that gets scheduled, and we have to do additional months of work for a month-long contract but cannot count on one full year of income in exchange for these additional months of work.
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Agents typically take a cut only if the artist is making over $10,000 per performance and can verify that number with past performance receipts, and can guarantee that they and their team are on track to continue making that much going forward. We offer a plan that just takes a cut (our Verified plan), but the artist has to verify their value with at least 90 days of past performance receipts and guarantee that they’re able to play at least 20 shows a month. This plan also requires a contract. Our agents just can’t afford to add artists to their roster who only make a few hundred dollars per performance, and who only play around 10 shows per month. We can’t expect our agents to work for only a couple hundred dollars every month. They can’t survive like that. If your performance history shows that you meet the same criteria of an artist who would pay a commission, then we can set you up with one of our commissioned agents, no problem at all. But some artists don’t meet that criteria, and some artists don’t want to sign contracts, but they still need to play shows, so we offer other plans so that any artist can benefit from the success of having a booking agent. But we have to look out for our agents just like we look out for our artists, and if an artist gets paid so little from their shows that our agents will end up only making a couple hundred dollars in exchange for a month of work, then we obviously have to figure something else out so that they can make a living. And with that, we offer various plans for the various financial needs of various artists. Isn’t it nice when everybody’s included?
Booking
We accept anybody and everybody! If you’re an artist in any way, we want to help!
All of them! We love all genres and we have experience in booking all genres!
We have over 55,000 venue contacts, including music venues, bars, festivals, fairgrounds, churches, & universities, so we’re confident that you’ll find what works best for you!
We have venues in all 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada.
Success rate varies by artist, because as much as people would like to believe that an artist’s success relies solely on the booking agent, that simply isn’t true. An artist’s success is a conjoined effort between the artist, their manager, their PR team, and their booking agent. We can work 24 hours a day contacting the best venues in the world and telling our network of talent buyers and venue managers about an artist, but if the artist doesn’t perform engaging music, market themselves on social media, have a decent social following, and hold a crowd’s attention while performing, then that artist simply won’t be very successful. You’ve heard the old adage, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link…”
- Independent plan — when you sign up for this plan, you receive a custom email address at our agency domain (yourband@montanebooking.com), to use for contacting venues in order to book your own shows. Talent Buyers at venues admit to ignoring emails received from artists using free email services like Gmail or Yahoo, but admit to reading all of their emails from booking agencies, and reports show over 93% of these emails that Talent Buyers receive from booking agencies lead to actual shows at the venue! You’re free to email whichever venues you know or find, and book as many shows as you want! You control the booking process from start to finish!
- Dependent plan* — when you sign up for this plan, you receive a custom email address at our agency domain (yourband@montanebooking.com), to use for contacting venues in order to book your own shows. You also receive access to our database of over 55,000 venues in the United States and Canada, along with their contact info, to help you book your shows without having to search for venues yourself. You’re free to email whichever venues you decide, and book as many shows as you want! You control the booking process from start to finish!
- Basic plan — when you sign up for this plan, you receive a custom email address at our agency domain (yourband@montanebooking.com), and you provide us with details about your band. We use this email and the details about your band to contact venues on your behalf. We have existing relationships with these Talent Buyers, so we make first contact with them and pitch your band to play at their venue, which greatly increases their comfort in potentially booking your band. You will receive the login info to the email address that we used to pitch you, so you can log in and check to see about any responses you’ve received. If you see a response from a venue, you then pick up the conversation at that point and finish the process of communicating your desires and needs to the venue for your show. We will make first contact with 25 venues each month that your account is active, and leave the control in your hands to continue communication with them from that point forward!
- Advanced plan — when you sign up for this plan, you receive a custom email address at our agency domain (yourband@montanebooking.com), and you provide us with details about your band. We use this email and the details about your band to contact venues on your behalf. We have existing relationships with these Talent Buyers, so we make first contact with them and pitch your band to play at their venue, which greatly increases their comfort in potentially booking your band. You will receive the login info to the email address that we used to pitch you, so you can log in and check to see about any responses you’ve received. If you see a response from a venue, you then pick up the conversation at that point and finish the process of communicating your desires and needs to the venue for your show. We will make first contact with 50 venues each month that your account is active, and leave the control in your hands to continue communication with them from that point forward!
- Premium plan — when you sign up for this plan, you receive a custom email address at our agency domain (yourband@montanebooking.com), and you provide us with details about your band. We use this email and the details about your band to contact venues on your behalf. We have existing relationships with these Talent Buyers, so we make first contact with them and pitch your band to play at their venue, which greatly increases their comfort in potentially booking your band. You will receive the login info to the email address that we used to pitch you, so you can log in and check to see about any responses you’ve received. If you see a response from a venue, you then pick up the conversation at that point and finish the process of communicating your desires and needs to the venue for your show. We will make first contact with 100 venues each month that your account is active, and leave the control in your hands to continue communication with them from that point forward!
- Verified plan — when you sign up for this plan, you provide us with your EPK, one-sheet, audience numbers, performance compensation numbers, and performance receipts. You sign a booking contract with us, which is structured either as a year-to-year contract in exchange for between 10%–12% of your gross pay for performances or as a month-to-month contract in exchange for 20% of your gross pay for performances. We use your provided information to book shows for you every business day of your contract duration. We handle every step of the booking process from start to finish!
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- No, those are typically handled by an artist manager. For our Independent, Dependent*, Basic, Advanced, and Premium plans, we don’t handle show logistics or artist compensation, so those will be the responsibility of either your manager or yourself.
- For our Verified plan, we don’t handle show logistics, but we do handle the artist compensation aspect. During our negotiations with venues, we send them your performance contract and they send us a 50% deposit of your total performance compensation via bank wire transfer. We deduct our respective commission and then send you your remaining balance via bank-wire transfer to your bank account. The venue will then provide you with a check of your remaining 50% balance upon completion of your performance on the day of your show.
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No, these are typically handled by the artist’s manager. If you don’t have a manager, it’s your responsibility to arrange your own transportation and lodging requirements.
No, these are typically handled by the artist’s public relations agency. If you don’t have a PR agent, it’s your responsibility to promote your shows and coordinate those efforts with the venue.
- These are typically communicated to the booking agent via the artist’s tech rider, which is sent to them by the artist’s manager. For our Independent and Dependent* plans, we can’t access your data related to your shows through these plans, so we have no way of handling this on your behalf. If you don’t have a manager, it’s your responsibility to communicate your sound and lighting needs to the venue.
- For our Basic, Advanced, Premium, and Verified plans, yes, we will coordinate sound and lighting equipment needs with the venue, only as long as you upload your tech rider to your account documents on our website. If you do not upload these documents to your artist account, then we have no way of knowing your sound and lighting equipment needs, so we won’t be able to send the venue info that we don’t have. Please ensure that you have uploaded all necessary documents to your artist account ASAP.
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Keep your emails short and sweet, as longer emails tend to get ignored. Also, make sure to give the appropriate information when reaching out, including your website, socials, and any special credentials and media coverage about yourself. We recommend following this list for the best results!
That varies from venue to venue. Talent Buyers are extremely busy people, so it’s not uncommon for some venues to take a while to respond, (sometimes a month or more) but the sooner you email them, the sooner you’ll see results, so keep trying!
- For our Independent and Dependent* plans, you should reach out to whichever venues you need to cancel or change the dates of and explain your situation to them personally. We can’t access your data related to your shows through these plans, so we have no way of handling this on your behalf.
- For our Basic, Advanced, Premium, and Verified plans, you can fill out this form in your account.
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Venues
Sure, we’d love to send artists your way! Fill out this form and we’ll get right on that.
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