Please tell me about yourself and your work
I started as a market trader aged nine. That gave me a massive sense of sales!
It was probably four years ago that I started getting involved in local music scene, producing music videos and gigs via my artist management company, GET Management.
Then late last year I started working as PR and Marketing Manager at tech startup Muzivo, which enables artists to build their own apps. Together, we are working with events such as Hop Farm Music Festival, Open Mic UK, Teen Star Competition and the B-Side project.
I also set up The Kent Music Network, which is a monthly music meet up networking event held in Tunbridge Wells for like minded music industry people to connect including artists, bands, DJ's, producers, managers, consultants, promoters and more.
My other business is in fashion retail — Onesie Warehouse, which, as the name implies, sells onesies!
What kind of artists do you work with at GET Management?
Mainly urban artists. I manage two rap artists (Lee Wilz and Danny Who) — and also a clairvoyant. However, I’m looking to work mainly with musicians going forwards.
Tell me about the events you organise
I use Facebook and Twitter to promote events I’m involved with. For bigger events, I use Eventbrite for ticketing — though all the events I’ve run so far have been free ones.
Every event I know that sells out uses Eventbrite. It makes it easy for event organisers, with email, Facebook and Twitter integration. It also allows you to integrate your own brand into your event page. The customer check-in features are also really useful.
The downside is that it’s really expensive. I was going to go with Event.ly, but they charge a rather large fee, based on the number and size of your events. It’s hard to know how that would work for me, as I haven’t done any paid events yet. [LR: Event.ly has just been acquired by Evvnt]
On balance, Eventbrite probably is worth the price.
How do you plan to price your paid for events?
I’ll definitely do the Early Bird thing — I always fall for Early Bird tickets, because it makes me feel like the event’s going to sell out.
Also, the earlier people buy, the more people they get to come along.
I haven’t really thought about the actual pricing of my events yet, because I’ve only done free events so far, as I mentioned. But I don’t feel that I’d want to pay more than a tenner to go to a gig similar to the ones I organise.
How about flash events?
No, I’d never do that — maybe you could get away with it with a famous artist, but not for less well known ones. Even for a recent free event I did, I had to promote it for a full four weeks.
