Q:TIP- Open Mic Night

We've touched on this in past Q:TIP blog posts, but one of the best ways to get college students out for shows is to have local talent play. The Mecca of local talent showcases is the infamous "Open Mic Night" where students can show up and share a song or two on an acoustic guitar or piano. We've got a few tips for your next open mic to ensure high attendance and a quality show.

1. Choose the nights' roster by having students submit a youtube video or mp3 recording weeks prior. This will ensure you are getting quality singer song writers. No one likes listening to off-key "talent" unless Simon is there to  giving them feedback after the performance.
2. Give promotional material to the students performing to help with marketing– after all, they want an audience to show up and listen to them even more than you do.
3. Make a facebook event page and encourage the performers to invite their circle of friends.
4. Only allow each performer 5-10 minutes to perform and keep the concert between 90-120 minutes long. Quality is better than quantity when it comes to concerts.
5. Invite a charismatic, professional musician to emcee the show. This will keep the transition between artists smooth and entertaining. Here are our RECOMMENDATIONS.
6. Have your emcee perform a periodic song between local performers, to hook people in to stay for the whole show, versus leaving right after they hear their friend play. 
7. Utilize a good sound system and have a professional sound engineer running it. Even Adelle can sound terrible if the music not properly mixed to fit the acoustics of the room.
8. Promote your next concert at the end of the show via flyer handout.

 If you have other ideas on how to successfully pull-off an Open Mic night, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a reply below.

Checklist for Promoting Shows on Campuses

Quick Artist Agency wants to help you make your event as successful as possible. A large part of the success of the concerts you put on are based on the promotional implementation of your team. To make sure that our efforts and yours are as effective as possible, we have put together a checklist of things for you to think about as you are putting your concert together.

Check it out below:

Let us know if you have come up with any of your own promotional tricks!

Q:TIP- Cost for Colleges to Attend NACA

As a college booking agency, one of our primary goals is partnering with schools to help grow their music programming. That's a tough challege as student activity budgets continue to be wittled-down. One of our primary goals is to help colleges be good stewards of their budgets. Sometimes it's helpful to get a "birds-eye" view of a yearly expense, so for this blog post, we're going to focus in on expenses for a college wanting to attend NACA.

NACA Annual Membership Fee for Colleges
$400-$950 for membership depending on the school's Full Time Enrollment

NACA Regional Conference Expenses for Colleges

• $180 registration fee per student / advisor (delegate)
• $150 per hotel room per night (2-4 people)
• 2-5 meals on your own per delegate
• Transportation expenses (via van, airline, etc.)

Estimated Expenses for a Regional Conference

• Smaller school taking three delegates: $1,450 plus transportation expenses
• Larger school taking ten delegates: $5,300 plus transportation expenses

NACA National Conference Expenses for Colleges

• $375 registration fee per student / advisor (delegate)
• $200 per hotel room per night (2-4 people)
• 3-5 meals on your own per delegate
• Transportation expenses

Estimated Expenses for a National Conference

• Smaller school taking three delegates: $2,100 plus transportation expenses
• Larger school taking ten delegates: $8,350 plus transportation expenses

Now keep in mind that these are estimated totals and that each school is going to have a different total cost, depending on how far they have to travel, what kind of hotel they choose, where they go out to eat, etc.

Q:Tip- How artists are chosen for NACA

Ever wonder how artists & lecturers are chosen for a NACA showcase? Here's the scoop:

A committee is made up of 5 student volunteers and 4 staff. The Chair of the committee does not vote, but acts more as a facilitator. A few members may have past showcase experience but most don't. The students on the committee can go to the conferences but there is no requirement to do so.

It is a 3-5 days process, with breaks, facilitated but the committee Chair. The committee completes the process in an unidentified hotel location. The identity of the committee is never revealed.

The committee watches submission videos and listens to submitted audio material. Some submissions are digital, through music websites like sonic bids. Other submissions are hard copy material. Regional showcase committees typically view 400-500 submissions in the 3-5 day process.* The first submission to be viewed is determined by random alphabetical selection.  Showcases are determined by rounds as follows:

Round 1: 90 seconds of video viewed (3 minute for lecture).  The main focus for this round is determining if there is substantail talent. At least 50% of the committee must be in favor to move it to round 2.
Round 2: Next 30 seconds of video viewed:  In this round, they compare acts to similar acts the committee has already heard or seen.
Round 3: Next 30 seconds of video viewed.  The focus of this round is to make selections that will help fill a void in the genre of diversity for the already selected acts.
Final Round: Compares acts to create a well-balanced distribution and evalutate all given facts thoroughly.

*National Convention selection committee differs in that they split the committee for Round 1, as submissions are greatly increased on the National Convention level.

Q:TIP- If you build it they will come...and keep coming back

So how do you keep the kids coming back for more concerts? You've gotta bring in talent and lots of it. Last Q:TIP, we pointed out that booking local artists will save you money and helps boost concert attendance. In this blog post, we want to emphasize that if student programmers over-rely on this strategy and only book local, you will eventually run your concerts dry.

Here's the lesson for the day:

"If you bring in national touring artists and pair them up with locals, you'll see more consistent concert attendnace."

If you look at any venue in a city (capacity 100-300), this is how they set up the majority of their weekend shows. Unlike student programming organizations, they do not have student activity fees funding their concerts, so they have to be spot on in attendance in order to sell drinks and keep their doors open.

The local artists' role is to help promote the show and bring out their fan-base. The national artists' role is to bring out the "wow" factor that gets the girls screaming and the guys wishing they knew how to play the guitar. Create this kind of band line-up and you'll have students eventually trusting your capability to set up a good show.