Job titles vary across Europe. At a club the same person may run the programme, the marketing and the bar rota. At a festival the booking team can be five people with the genres split between them.
What the job involves
- Watching what sells locally and what is touring
- Taking calls and emails from agents
- Placing holds on dates and releasing what does not firm up
- Building a bill that works as an evening, not as a list of names
How it differs by country
In the Netherlands and Belgium many venues are subsidised, so a programme is judged on its artistic plan as well as on ticket income. In the UK most clubs are commercial, and a room that loses money twice rarely gets a third try.
What they need from an artist
Recent numbers help more than adjectives: the last local ticket count, streaming figures for that city, and a date that fits the routing. Send an EPK link rather than a 40 MB zip.