1. I am going to research a particular area of the music industry that focuses
on unsigned bands. Being in an unsigned band myself I have hand hands on
experience about the difficulties of self promotion and funding.
In the Norwich area there are several main venues that signed
and unsigned bands can perform at. The biggest of these
venues is at the University Of East Anglia which holds
approximately 1550 people. This venue is predominately for
bigger signed acts. Then there are smaller venues such as The
Waterfront, Brick Makers, B2, The Marquee and the Arts
Centre. These venues give opportunities for unsigned smaller
bands to perform at.
The main venue my band performed at was B2. This facility is a bar at the front
of the building and then a modernised gig venue at the front with expensive lighting,
PA system and their own sound engineer. This venue is free to rent out and this
attracts a lot of interest from promoters and bands alike. They make their money from
bar sales.
One problem that I found with the Norwich unsigned music scene from
being in a unsigned band was the lack of promoters around. When I performed in
previous bands around 4 years ago their was a huge amount of teenage promoters
putting on gigs weekly. This was a great facility to indulge in as it meant that a gig was
already organised including line up of bands, venue and advertising. The main reason
for the high amount of promoters was partly to do with the very big and expanding
“heavy metal” music scene at the time. Many teenagers, typically 17-18 year olds put on
gig locally and made a huge amount of money by charging on average £2-£3 entry
charge. This made them a lot of revenue and also helped bands out with promoting the
music in the area.
Most recently in my newest band I have found that the level of promoters
out there has decreased significantly. I think the main reason for this is because the
local music scene for unsigned music has died slightly, and this may be due to the
change in genre of music. Several years ago the main type of music gigs for unsigned
music was heavy metal but this has
changed with time, with more indie and
pop punk music becoming popular.
Consequently the level of entrepreneurship
of promoters has decreased, making it
harder for unsigned bands to play gigs and
get their music out their. From personal
experience I found that around 70% of the
time we had to self promote our band to
get gigs and our music heard.
Above is a picture of the B2 venue.