Productivity Hacks for Concert Promoters

What do Concert Promoters Do?

As a concert promoter, you may have noticed there are dozens of tasks on your plate every day. Therefore, it’s difficult to say in just one sentence what concert promoters do.  According to the Berklee School of Music, “They independently plan, market, and sometimes produce live concerts, including single shows, tours, festivals, and special events (…) They assume all of the financial risks for the shows they put on.”

It sounds straightforward, but each live or streamed concert involves planning for a significant number of details. As a promoter, you are responsible for accurate and timely execution. As Berklee continues to affirm, a good concert promoter should cover numerous areas:

• Budgeting, with a focus on maximizing returns and profitability
• Marketing and publicity to get the word out about the event to as many people as possible in a cost-effective manner
• Event production, which involves everything from securing a venue to booking airline tickets for the artists
• General knowledge of performing artists and music venues
• Managing contracts with suppliers, artists, venues, among others
• Negotiation with several parties, including local authorities in some cases
• Spreadsheet skills to keep track of every area in an organized, visual manner (more on how to make this more effortless in the following section)
• Multitasking abilities to be able to manage it all

With this set of items, it is possible to see yourself less as a concert promoter and more as a project manager who can create, organize, and complete comprehensive to-do lists facing specific music-industry challenges. Productivity becomes vital, especially when a single promoter typically works on more than one event simultaneously. 

Related: How Do You Plan A Concert Checklist? 

Why Focusing on Concert Promoting Productivity Now?

There’s a quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin that says: “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” This is arguable if you think of what concert promoters do. Your routine is, in fact, busy and unpredictable, but you can’t get everything done if they don’t have specific productivity discipline. 

Your job as a concert promoter involves a highly demanding schedule that includes nights and weekends. Sometimes, there are a few days in a row when you can’t carve out time to stop and take a rest. 

Needless to say, the pandemic eased part of the concert-promoting workload throughout the industry. However, the scene will soon start to pick up an exciting pace again, perhaps like nothing you’ve ever experienced. Are you ready? 

Organizations from all sides of the entertainment industry around the world are promoting social and governmental action for a safe return to live events. Leading concert promoters should plan to get their productivity game on.

Related: Easing Promoter’s Workloads with Event Promotion Tools 

Plan Ahead: Boost Your Concert Promoting Productivity with These Hacks

Improving productivity will make you more competitive when it all comes back to normal. Here are a few hacks you can start implementing today.

1. Leverage remote culture: The pandemic increased many people’s ability to adapt to remote collaboration. With the appropriate communication and coordination technology, you can reduce or eliminate the number of in-person meetings,  freeing up valuable hours of time in the week. You can use this extra time to either carry out other tasks or to recharge your batteries with personal activities.
2. Estimate commuting time: Some meetings or venue inspection sessions cannot take place remotely. You have to be there physically. In these scenarios, you should consider commuting time before and after the actual appointment and add it to your calendar so you can plan the rest of your day around those time slots. It is a good idea to use this space for learning activities, such as listening to an audiobook or an interesting podcast. 
3. Evaluate delegation: Are there any tasks you can delegate to someone else on your team? You must have a bird’s-eye view of the concert promoting map, but sometimes, the helpful hand of an assistant manager or an outsourced marketing executive, for instance, can get you to focus on high-priority issues.
4. Keep an eye on meetings: Before accepting a meeting request or even before creating one yourself, consider whether it is essential or if an email or a teleconference can replace it. Meetings are common productivity killers, and the usual recommendation to counterbalance that is to have fewer and shorter sessions.
5. Remove distractions from your phone: This is a challenging exercise for concert promoters because you must be on top of social media as part of your work. Even so, limiting phone distractions is a proven way to increase productivity. Review the apps you have on your phone and analyze how much time you spend on them every day. Make the conscious decision to either remove nonessential ones from your work device or use them only when you have free personal time for yourself. For those you keep, consider disabling distracting notifications. An alternative idea is to create work-related profiles for social media where you only follow accounts related to your daily job activities. 
6. Practice time blocking (and consider a block to take care of yourself): Time blocking, as per Memory.ai, “is a time management method that schedules your day into set, controlled units. You allot finite portions of time to specific tasks ahead so that you can course through your workday without interruptions or deviations. Instead of simply making a to-do list and plowing through, time blocking maps out controlled spaces to ensure each task actually takes place.” This is a beneficial habit for concert promoters who have a difficult time setting aside some time to take care of themselves. If you separate a personal time block, it will be easier for you to fit in anything from doctor’s appointments to family gatherings and even meditation time. 
7. Simplify your tech tools: It is very likely that you, as almost all concert promoters, handle several tech tools (apps, software) to make your goals a reality. Most of these tools require you to manage a table of some sort. Do financial spreadsheets, contact lists, or calendar planners ring a bell? Disorganization and manual processes kill your productivity and your ability to get work done effectively, mistake-free. 

The most productive concert promoters, however, have found ways to simplify their app load while saving significant amounts of time by working with just one platform to meet all their needs. The ideal one will be able to let you manage:

• Calendars
• Communication
• Collaboration (with internal and external parties)
• Budgeting and financial data (with real-time analytics and visualization)
• Offer generation
• Customizable reports
• Settlement

The ideal productivity app will also offer automation and device flexibility, so you can easily access it from a desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone. It will be perfect when you are on the go. 

Prism is the “rule them all” tool you need to ditch all those time-consuming spreadsheets and become the most productive concert promoter around. Partnering with Prism will give you a single platform that consolidates and automates all your scheduling, budgeting, and other planning data. Your management skills will ramp up to unprecedented levels, and they will convert into incredible events audiences will love. Request your demo today.