• Networking and playing bigger shows/festivals in the UK to gain popularity and be noticed from bigger booking agent

Starting up or working in an existing record label or booking agent and start to look into building a roster of bands

• Build strong connections with bands i meet along the way of my journey with the band

• looking to social media marketing and website building

• Brighton or London based

Have a built strong session musician portfolio

• Build a website for said portfolio and start to look for local bands or singer-songwriters that need live/studio drummers

• Brighton/london based.

Music degree

To start my journey in the booking agency business, I will first of all have to build a database of venues and promoters, as said above. I will then create a strong brand utilising social media, mailing lists, and a website. After this, as my co-workers and i have a strong bond in the doom scene, i will open our email address up to bands and allow them to work with us by sending us their EPKs and song demos and from there, we can choose who we want to work with.

So I've decided to start a booking agency for Upcoming grassroots doom bands that have the talent but find it difficult to find shows. I will be starting this agency with my two friends, Will Graves and Jake Packham. My first step is to build a database of promoters and venues around the UK. (See attached document) Then I will target some bands that we would like on our roster of bands. After I plan to build a brand, Social media, website and mailing list to reach out to audiences. As my co-workers and I are very much known in the doom scene, we will announce that we have this agency on our personal social media, and hopefully, this will gain some attention and traction. Then book a short tour for said bands

We got together this week and put together all the promoters and venues we know in and around the UK onto a Google Doc, so we have a list of people to contact for future tours.

You can see this linked to this post.

I have decided to work on this project because there aren't many booking agencies, especially in the doom scene, that focus on upcoming or relatively small bands.

This week we have decided to call our booking agency "Blind Voodoo booking" and have started working on the branding for this idea

Schedule a video call with the band and talk logistics

Complete Business Plan - How fees will work etc

Have tour booking started, and start negotiating with promoters and venues

Me: Agency Owner

Will : Co-owner

Jake: Co-Owner

All three of us will help with marketing

I was thinking of running the social media and get the website up and running

Hannah: One of my friends will be making the logo and branding for the agency

We came up with how our fee will work by talking to my lecturer, Charlie Piper. He has worked with booking agencies in the past and books tours and shows for some pretty big acts. He gave us the tip of starting out by taking a 15% over a £100 guarantee from the venue/promoter. So, for example, if the fee given to Dungeon from a venue/promoter is under £100, they will take 100% of the profit, but if the fee given to you is over £100, we (Blind Voodoo) will take a share of 15% from the proposed fee.  I think this way of making money is both fair on us as an agency and Dungeon as a grassroots band.

My brand kit:

Colors -

Gray - #bdb8b8 on colorwheel

Black - #020202 on colourwheel

White - #efefef on colourwheel

green - #066f23 on colourwheel

Red - #ba0e0e on colour wheel

Use pictures of forestry taken by me on my iPhone for background imagery on Instagram posts with low contrast and Colour

Gothic font - "Wednesday"

An EPK (Electronic Press Kit) is a digital collection of promo pics, biography and music that you send to promoters so they have an overview of what type of band they're booking

• It's helped me outline my main goals.

• Helped me gain feedback from tutors

• Sparked new ideas when looking at my proposal as a whole

• My idea enabled me to spot gaps in my skillset which now i need to develop

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I have done an in-depth analysis on this, and you can see this in my research document I have submitted

You can see what questions I asked and the results I got from this survey by pressing the link above

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The reason I chose content marketing because I think this will be the most successful way of marketing towards the doom metal scene is by building blogs, conducting interviews and releasing promo photos, etc., as the age demographic is 25+ for this particular scene. Older people aren't interested in live streams or influencer trends. The impact is getting my bands seen and heard.

Collaboration & Cross-promotions -

Collaboration & Cross-promotions are an important way of creating a wider audience, as collaborating with other social media accounts brings views from their followers to your account and potentially gives you more followers/fans. The impact of this will be an increase in social media engagement

Community Building -

Community building is important in an underground scene as it helps create a fanbase and develop you as a familiar face in the scene, resulting in people attending your shows and go see the bands you represent. The Impact is increaded revenue over time, for both the bands and agency.

Venue hires

Van hires

Fuel

Driver cost

Website maintenance

Band fees - £120 we take 15%

Start-up costs

Logo designer - £35

Social media creation - Free

Marketing and promotion - £5 - 7 per day to advertise the tour

Posters and flyers

branding - free via canva

Income streams:

19.50£ per gig after we take 15% from dungeons £130.

Merchandise - t-shirts £20

This is great news for us that a band have already reached out weeks after us setting up the company. This is also a great opportunity to get our name out more. We will now work towards this tour and the dungeon tour for my FMP.

I've attached their email and our initial replies to this post

We are going to listen to the music they linked to the email and decide if we want to work with them or not.

We narrowed it down to three venues:

Fuel Rock Club, Cardiff

The Cab, Newport

The Pit, Newport

We decided to look at Newport as well as Cardiff, just in case there is no availability

Screenshots of emails linked on this post

Will got working on a proposal to send over to them, i thought it was a good idea to use the dungeon proposal as a structure and just edit the parts that needed customizing to Kalopsia. Will sent them the proposal on Monday and requested an EPK so we can start contacting venues

I've linked their proposal in this post.

We decided on a fee of £100 for Kalopsia as they have just recently started up as a band, and thought this is a good starting point to make sure we get a bit of money for our efforts of booking them on a tour. We have gone with the same 15% over £100 guarantee because we thought this works well for us.

Another legal concern I have is that if I am putting on the night myself, I need to have terms and conditions on the ticket link so that if somebody does get injured in the crowd, we don't get sued.

Branding is another legal thing that I will need to get copyrighted so nobody copies my branding and logo

Another legal concern I have is that if I am putting on the night myself, I need to have terms and conditions on the ticket link so that if somebody does get injured in the crowd so we don't get sued.

Branding is another legal thing that I will need to get copyrighted, so nobody copies my branding and logo without my permission.

We will hopefully hear something back soon

Overall, this week was very productive to look back on and it was useful to get all this stuff done.

In the future, it is important to read over emails to double-check for any mistakes as this can compromise our professionalism

This week I also got started on booking for the London date of the tour. This experience went well because I reached out to my friends in London who have a good connection with The Dev, an alternative venue in the heart of Camden. so they have put in a word to the venues. If I don't hear back, I will contact the venue directly. I decided to do it this way because sometimes venues/promoters don't take any notice of newer Instagram accounts, or sometimes emails that they haven't dealt with before go into their spam folder.

We also received a message from a contact in Cardiff that included loads of information about venues/promoters in the surrounding areas for us to contact. This was very useful as we didn't know that many promoters or venues in that area.

This week i sent an email to John from the Gryphon regarding booking dungeon at his venue. I did get the wrong email address, though and only found out the week after. This is something to be careful about, as it is so easily done. In the future, I will reference the booking sheet we have with all the venues/emails on rather than looking directly on Google.

Blue - Contents

Red - Professionalism LO1

Yellow - Performance LO3

Purple - Communication LO7

1) Project Overview/Success metrics

Project Outline in 60 seconds & FMP Success metrics

2) Project Documents & Charts LO1/LO3

This segment includes everything to do with LO1/LO3

3) Research Document

All research relevant to my FMP

4) LO1: Professionalism

This segment includes everything to do with the Professionalism LO

5) Week 1:

This segment includes my thought process of week 1 and a reflection on this

6) Week 2:

This section includes my thought process behind choosing what I wanted to do for my project, reaching out to our first band and reflecting on this

7) Week 3:

This section focuses on team building and my KPIs for December submission and reflects on this.

8) Week 4

This section includes evidence behind the initial steps of building my company, including the proposal sent to bands and branding

9) Week 5

This week focuses on asset creation for our first signed band, date selection for the tour and reflects on this.

10) Week 6

This week focuses on reflecting on my formative feedback, tour booking, and focus group testing and reflects on the week

11) Week 7

This week focuses on booking the Bristol stop of the dungeon tour and reflects on this

12) Week 8

This week focuses on my marketing strategy, booking of tour dates and introduces our second signing. Finally, i reflect on the week

13) Week 9

This week introduces our third band, includes booking emails, focuses on legal considerations and reflects on this

14) Week 10

This week focuses on booking emails and reflections

15) Week 11

This week focuses on booking emails, touring re-routes and reflections.

16) Term conclusion paragraph

A Look back on the term, what went well and what needed improving. What's needed for next term,

• SWOT analysis

• Blind Voodoo GANTT Chart TERM 1

• Blind Voodoo GANTT Chart TERM 2

• Blind Voodoo Booking Hypothesis

• Market Research Document

• Lecture Notes

• Blind Voodoo booking risk assessment

• Booking contacts list

• Personal & Business 2026 cash flow

• Promoters/venues contacts list

• Dungeon proposal

• Kalopsia Proposal

• Blind Voodoo Bookings Instagram Account

• LO1: Legal Considerations

• Transferable skills matrix

• Focus areas for FMP

• Year 3 Goals

• Where I was two years ago...

• GIBBS Reflection Week 1

• KPIs for December

• Transferable Skills matrix

• Team Building

• GIBBS reflection week 3

• Booking Agency Initial Ideas LO3/LO1

• First contact to Dungeon via Instagram DM

• GIBBS reflection Week 2

• Finished Dungeon proposal LO1/LO3

• Branding LO1

• Dungeon Proposal Email LO7

• Creation of instagram Marketing Account

• Temporary Logo LO3

• Creation of first Instagram post LO3/LO1

• First instagram post LO1/LO3

• Logo Creation Communications LO7

• First drawing draft

• Last Logo Messege

• GIBBS reflection week 4

• Week Overview

• Dungeon reply to proposal email

• Blind Voodoo date change communication LO7

• Promo material request & Updated dates LO7

• Dungeon EPK LO1/LO3

• Creation of Electronic Signature LO1

• GIBBS reflection week 5

• Formative reflection

• First Contact For Booking London date LO7

• London Follow-up

• Focus Group Google Form

• Cardiff promoter DM LO7

• Cardiff promoter DM 2 LO7

• Cardiff promoter DM 3 LO7

• Cardiff promoter DM 4 LO7

• Cardiff promoter DM 5 LO7

• GIBBS reflection week 6

• Bristol Booking email LO7

• GIBBS reflection

• Marketing Strategy: FMP business class task

• London Booking email to The Dev LO7

• London Booking email (Retribution Alive) LO7

• The Dev Email reply 1 LO7

• Blind Voodoo reply to The Dev LO7

• Potential expenses

• Second band (Kalopsia)

• Week Overview

• Third band (OwlCrusher) Email Thread

• Kalopsia tour booking & proposal

• The Gryphon Follow-up

• Cardiff Booking Email LO7

• Fuel Rock bar reply 1 LO7

• The Dev replies to fees and headline acts LO7

• LO1 Professionalism: Legal Consideration

• Gibbs reflective cycle

• The dev 8th February headliner message LO7

• The Dev email LO7

• The Louisiana booking enquiry: Bristol LO7

• The Croft initial booking enquiry

• The Canopi Cardiff booking enquiry LO7

• Dungeon Rundown DM LO7

• GIBBS reflective cycle

This week I reached out to The dev, camden, a venue in the heart of London, regarding the dungeon show. This went very well because they replied almost instantly and scheduled us for our desired date. They have also provided us with an opening band. This went very well, and i have nothing else to reflect on from this.

I made a list of potential expenses for this project. This went okay, but I struggled to find more expenses than what I could think of because I think there's only so much you can prepare for when working in this industry, and I think some expenses will be a massive surprise for us. This is annoying, but I think it won't be too much of a problem at a grassroots level.

Finally, we managed to sign a second band to blind voodoo, Kalopisa. We will help them book their debut tour for next year. This is very good as it will help us get our names out in the scene. It might be a bit of a challenge to juggle two bands and document it all for my portfolio, but I will give it a good go. I think a way we can resolve this is to equally split the bookings between the team.

On Monday, i reached out to a prominent doom metal and heavy music promoter based in Birmingham called Road To Masocist to book the Birmingham date of the dungeon tour

Slide 2)

I emailed a doom metal and heavy music promoter based in Bristol called Witchstalker Promotions enquiring about the Bristol date of the dungeon tour.

Slide 3)

Instagram DM to a well-known metal promoter in Cardiff enquiring about the Cardiff date of the dungeon tour.

1) To have launched the company. For example:

• Social media set up

• Email set up

• Signed at least one band

2) To have a tour booked for this band to perfectly lead into next term.

This week was also good as Will organised a video call with our potential third band, Owlcrusher. Hopefully the video call will lay out our ideas, and they will accept our proposal.

I also had various emails to and from venues for booking the dungeon tour; venues in Cardiff and Newport seem to be fully booked. Within the next couple weeks, we will keep on pushing, but if nothing is doing, then we will have to change the route. This won't be too much of a problem, but it will take some time to sort out, maybe resulting in not having the dates pencilled in for my submission. In the future, I should start booking tours earlier.

I negotiated fees with The Dev for Dunegon. I asked for the full £130, but they said it depends on the turnout of the night and might just be able to cover transport. This isn't the end of the world, as the aim for this booking agency is to get lower-level bands into the scene and be seen by new people. In the future, maybe we should either propose a lower fee or go through a promoter that will be able to pay our desired fee.

Finally, this week I took some time to look over some legal considerations. This was a useful exercise to make sure we are running as a legal company, and nobody will be able to catch us out, or we miss out on a gig payment because of dodgy contracts. I think next term, I will look into this with more detail going into next term, as I will have more bands to look after and things might be able to slip through the cracks more easily.

For me, this term has been very busy, but I have also amazed myself with what I have created and can't wait to start seeing it all come together next term.

• Reviewing my KPIs

• Booking emails/DMs LO7

• Road to masochist replies LO7

• London Booking LO7

• Blind Voodoo group chat & finalised tour route LO7

• Witchstalker - Bristol reply

• Tiny Rebel - Cardiff reply

• Owlcrusher email chain LO7

• The Canopi - Cardiff LO7

• McCann's Rock Bar - Cardiff

• New route emails LO7

• Gibbs reflection

5th Feb: Birmingham/Shrewsbury

6th Feb: Hitchin/ Milton Keynes

7th Feb: Southampton

8th Feb: London CONFIRMED

9th Feb: Eastbourne CONFIRMED

By the time I come back next year, I’m hoping this tour will be fully booked and will start being promoted on the Blind Voodoo Instagram account.

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