The problem with festival booking

I got an email today from someone who is in a management company that works with Christian bands. He asked me for contacts at two music festivals. I have one, but I'm not sure I have the other. I've been in booking long enough to know people who would be able to tell me the contact that I don't have, and I feel good that I'll be able to get it. That's not a problem.

The problem is that new bands, even if they're really good, won't know where to go to to find the booking information to a festival that they've never played. And so, today I pretended that I was in an indie band, and I went looking for an email contact to a random music festival. This is what I found:

Please send an email to booking@festival.org, with a message in the subject line "festival submission." Include a link to your website so we can listen to your music. We can assure you that someone will listen to your music, but we can not promise you a spot on the stage simply based on your email submission.

Most of the music festivals will have the same kind of information for bands who are interested in playing at the event. This method of submission is not effective for indie bands who are trying to find venues to play. First, this information was incredibly hard to find-- how good would you feel about the time you spent finding the address and sending the email? And, after all the time you spent searching for the information, all you are promised is that "someone" will listen to your music.

When you're sending your information to a general email address such as booking@festival.org, you would write:

Check us out at www.bandname.com
We would love to be considered to play at your music festival next year. My phone number is....

But, if someone could give you a personal email address like andrew@festival.org, you would write:

Hey Andrew! This is ______ from www.bandname.com. I am a friend of _______, and he gave me your email address. Please consider us to play at your festival next year. You can reach me at ....

These personal email addresses are the contacts that a booking agent would be able get or would have already. How much would you be willing to pay for a good booking agent who has that kind of information? What if you didn't have to pay for it? Your band still has to be really good to land the gigs at music festivals, but if you didn't have to pay for this kind of booking information, you could afford to spend your hard earned money and time elsewhere to help build your band.

Where do you find information like that other than a booking agent? Stay tuned.