house concerts and 21st century touring

Several hosts have recently asked if they can sponsor an artist’s membership fee to help them join ConcertsInYourHome. The result is such a win/win/win that I’d like to share it with you.

Benefits

• A talented artist gets needed help to advance their career/income.
• A host deepens their relationship with an artist they admire, and gets the warm feeling from supporting our vibrant arts community.
• We get new talent referrals from our most important source - our hosts.

Here’s how it works.
The contributing host approaches me to discuss the artist’s readiness to join. We look at their skill level, touring goals, and promotional tools (live video, website, testimonials, etc.), and we determine if now is the best time for them to join. If so, here’s what we do.

• With the host’s recommendation, we offer the artist our “returning member discount” of $168. (Current rate is $200 for new members.)
• The host offers to pay half of the fee, or $84, so that the artist still has a vested interest in using the site.
• The artist joins up, makes their payment, and we send an invoice to the host for the other half.

With a host sponsor, even a modest DinnerAndSong event would easily recoup the artist’s investment. Artist membership fees are the primary source of income for CIYH, which allows us the budget to keep inspiring, coaching, and supporting house concert hosts.

Sweetener - 5 CIYH shirts for you to give away.
I’m inspired by the generosity of this community, so I’m offering 5 free CIYH shirts to the first five hosts who’d like to do this. One host asked to do this anonymously, which we can do.

Your fan,

Fran Snyder

contact fran@
ConcertsInYourHome.com

P.S. - If you are a host going through a rough financial time, please know that your generosity of putting on these events is quite enough. We are grateful.

P.P.S. - to see if an artist is a current member of CIYH, search here.

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This is my response to an inquiry from an agent who wants to list several artists at ConcertsInYourHome… I thought you might find it informative. — Fran

We did away with agent memberships and incentives a few years ago, for several reasons.

1. Most agents aren’t willing to change “the way they do things” in favor of the personal approach that is necessary to connect with house concert presenters
a. riders/contracts tend to be a problem (unfit for house concerts)
b. guarantees are unusual (and agents typically ask for them)
c. hosts usually want access to the artist before the gig
d. emails should be personal, and not a broadcast to a bunch of collected host addresses.

2. We raise our talent standards each year, and each artist has to measure up on their own, and not through affiliation with an agency.

3. We want artists who are committed to the concept, and who want to inspire their fans to host shows. Artists who have agents are rarely pro-active about engaging their fans with our videos, guides, etc.

So if you have a specific artist in mind that would like to join, and participate in the community, we’d be happy to take a look. Video is important. It’s not necessarily bad that an agent would work the site on their behalf, but the artists must be engaged and enthusiastic about we offer, and the agent must be willing to work the site and not harvest information.

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Congratulations to seven of our CIYH artists who were selected from hundreds of submissions to be among this year’s finalists in the Falcon Ridge/Grassy Hill Emerging Artist Showcase at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival later this month. They are;

ilyAIMY - Baltimore MD
Jason Myles Goss - Brooklyn NY
Karyn Oliver - Boring MD
Layah Jane - Toronto ON
Louise Mosrie - Nashville TN
Putnam Smith - Portland ME
Suzie Vinnick - Toronto ON

Well done!

July 22, 23, 24, 2011
On Dodds Farm - 44 CR 7D, Hillsdale, NY
www.FalconRidgeFolk.com

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