The concert and event sector in the US is forecasted to reach a worth of US $399.88 billion by 2027, with some of the biggest players including Live Nation Worldwide Inc, Ticket City Inc, Bizzabo, Eventbrite, Ticket Falcon, and InEvent. The return of in-person events, music fests, and concerts is being embraced by an audience that has, in no small way, been ‘starved’ of musical entertainment for the past two years. The burgeoning health of the industry is making way for many jobs, both center-stage and backstage. If you want to find a job in the music industry, and if you think you have what it takes to land a job as a crew member for musical events, what steps will you need to take?
1. Honing Your Area of Interest
The number of jobs within the music events sector is wide, enabling you to match your specific interests, abilities, training, and experience with a wide array of potential jobs. If your strength lies in organization and management, then jobs that may appeal include concert promoter, tour manager, booking agent, tour coordinator, stage manager, festival director, and advance persons. The latter travel to each destination on a tour prior to the band and crew’s arrival to make sure that aspects such as accommodations, venues, and promotional material are all ready for the band’s arrival.
2. Ensuring Your CV Matches Up with Your Chosen Job
Landing a job as a promoter, manager, or booking agent will require specific training and experience. For instance, professional promoters usually have a degree in entertainment management, which teaches students how to apply business skills to promote various artistic and musical disciplines. If you want to increase your chances of working behind the scenes, then majoring in the business side of this undergraduate degree is ideal, since other specialties focus more on the history of visual arts and other subjects that may be less pertinent. This degree will enable you to access various roles, including those of tour manager, publicity manager, and artist manager (to name a few).
3. Honing Your Technical Knowledge
If you have strong computer skills and you think you might enjoy tasks such as curating musical performances, working in a recording studio, producing tracks for other artists, mixing music, recording audio at live events, video editing, or managing sound and video equipment during live events, then you will need to choose your specialist and invest in training early on. An audiovisual technician, for instance, has a major responsibility in concerts. They are responsible for choosing the right software, running audiovisual and signal testing ahead of events. They need to be knowledgeable on everything from when to use a dynamic microphone to adapting pop filters and wind shields to their equipment. Optimal frequency responses, sturdy construction, and pricing are just a few considerations they have to both prioritize and balance to keep projects on track. If you opt for a technical specialization, be prepared to continue your learning journey, since you will need to be updated on new audiovisual and livestream technologies as they arise.
4. Reading Job Descriptions
Before investing in a degree, diploma course, or similar, read job descriptions of various jobs related to musical events. It pays to know the different responsibilities and qualifications that each job will require. If you wish to be an event promoter, for instance, then you will need to be clued up on social media and SEO, to enable news about your event to reach as wide an audience as possible. Having experience in sales and marketing will also be handy, as will optimal public speaking skills. Reading a job description for the post of event promoter will make clear in an instant that to excel at this job, you need to be a “people person” with a wide network of connections you can draw upon to make your event a success. Of course, building a network takes time and so long as you have the training, interest, and personality suited to this job, there is no reason why you can’t work your way up to an impressive list of contacts.
The music events sector is enjoying great success and that means that there is a wide array of available jobs in the sector, From social media management to installation technician or audiovisual technician, there are a host of specialties to choose from. Because these specialisms often require deep business or technical knowledge, investing in education is required, as is taking the time to build a network that will stand you in good stead with every new musical project you are called upon to tackle.
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