After an unrelenting holiday season that goes from October to Jan 2…with demanding party hosts, constant staff changes due to a germ-filled December, late nights, entitled guests, grateful guests, and nonnnnnnn-stop Christmas music…January is finally here.

I used to think that January was the most boring month of the year, after 3 months of holiday buzz and sugar highs… until I started using that coldest month to reset, recalibrate, and prepare for the year ahead.  Now I look forward to it. I crave it.  I started new challenges, (goodbye sugar! Hello 30 days of yoga!) and started looking at what I was doing in my life that could be easier, bring more joy, and of course, of course! put more money back in my pocket.

So, if you’re ready to ring in the new year binge-ing on Netflix with your couch – good! You deserve it! The independent live music Venues of America are essentially the main source for bringing good cheer to all – and it’s hard work.  Innnnnddduuuuulllllgge.

After recuperating, the next natural thing is to review the past year and see how you can make this one better.

• How will this year be different from the last?
• What do you want to accomplish?

Whatever fulfilling goals you
want to achieve, at their base, most goals benefit from:  1. More time 2. More money.
AmmIright?

Live music venues are the beating heart of every city, they’re essential. If you have regular live music, then one of the most time consuming parts of your job is likely dealing with live music.  Everything from the booking to the production, the technology, the people, the managers, the payment, etc.

And, the slide into all-consuming-cobbled-together-google-systems happens more quickly than most realize. 

What systems are live music venues using?

We estimate that:

• 90% of Venues use some combination of Google calendar/Google Docs and messaging (email/DMs/text)
• 5% use some other booking tool (we know of only one that costs over $400/mo per Venue that requires CONSTANT manual entry) or bespoke custom-created software
• 5% use a mix of a handwritten calendar, texting and/or memory.

Because there has never been a good booking system before, everyone has to make up their own.  Until now.

These numbers show that thousands of people are wasting hours in their day. Why? Because Google never once considered the nation’s independent live music Venues when building their calendar or Google docs system. They made a generic system that requires people to be systems geniuses AND spend 25-30% of their time on manual entry….essentially descending them into the 5^th level of copy/paste hell.

I’m a Google suite subscriber, myself, so… no hard feelings against the Google Gods that run so much in our country. (Google if you’re watching me, and I know you are, I love you very much.)

Something to consider:  All signs are pointing to a bigger-than-ever year for live music…and since the most time-consuming part of this business IS the music and the management surrounding it, that means that any inefficiencies in your current system (ie: manual entry, copy/pasting, one person who knows everything and then gets sick or leaves…etc.) will be magnified as well, and much more painful. But, when you’re in the thick of things, it will be much harder to change.

But, we believe it should be easier, so we designed a system that allows:

• creatives to be CREATIVE
• production people to focus on the minute details that make a good production
• owners/GMs to have full visibility and control, no matter who comes and goes on the team
• marketing to get what they need without waiting
• the booker, the musician, and the team to ALWAYS be on the same page

…no lengthy setup and no project management degree required.

Here’s what AmptUp can do, that even the most well-worn Google systems can’t:

• Set up an entire professional-level booking system in 15 min or less.
• Track the status of each booking (approved, changes requested, declined) on your dashboard.
• Create a single source of truth, update in one place only (for your team AND the Musicians).
• Book each band in 3 minutes (instead of 3 weeks)
• Autoflow booking details straight into the calendar
• Automatically receive Musician marketing assets with every booking confirmation.
• Eliminate the back-and-forth with Musicians
• Auto-generate a printable run of show (no data entry needed)
• Calculate and communicate the sell-out potential (without a spreadsheet)

…all while booking any band you want.

See how it works here. 

So… what? No more Google?

But, if so many people are using Google (myself included), when does it work well?

Like in many parts of the business, you use specific tools for a specific function; the problem occurs for Venues when they try to use gcal/gsuite for all of the functions.

Gcal/Gsuite is great for writing up ideas in a document and collaborating, it’s also great for staff schedules, however most servers don’t use Gsuite to take orders and pass them to the kitchen or close out tabs, and accountants typically turn to quickbooks instead of a Gsheet.

In the same vein, Bookers at independent live music Venues across America are turning to AmptUp to make booking faster, easier, and error free.