Why There's Pressure To Nail The Live Aspect Of His Artists' Careers

"Festival season here is just starting to wind down, and I've spent pretty much every weekend this summer travelling somewhere to go to a festival, so it's nice to have a couple of weekends off before I head down to Australia for BIGSOUND."

It seems like a pretty tough life for Marshall Betts of US booking agents Windish Agency, but as always there's a lot of hard work to be done before the watching bands and partying kicks in. Betts started out in management, working with an eclectic array of artists such as Guided By Voices, Yoko Ono and Tift Merritt, before drifting into the field of booking agents. Currently he books tours and festivals for a roster including Courtney Barnett, Alvvays, White Lung and Cibo Matto, and these bands all having one foot in the indie rock realm is by design rather than accident.

"A lot of the bands tour for the money because they're not making as much on royalties or things like that anymore."

"I think if I worked with bands that I didn't like then I'd rather be a dentist," Betts chuckles. "I sign the bands that I like and I've always come from an indie rock background — that's the music that I've gravitated towards. I work with bands that I admire and enjoy and whose music I like. There's other stuff that I enjoy but don't necessarily have the background in and probably wouldn't be the best agent for, like on the electronic side of things, but I leave that for people who really love that music."

Betts explains that with declining album sales it's more important than ever to nail an artist's live booking.

"That's where bands get a lot of their money today," he offers. "A lot of the bands tour for the money because they're not making as much on royalties or things like that anymore — they aren't selling as many CDs or records — so they have to lean back on the live aspect of their music. Also people are spending more on live music now more than ever, so it's definitely an important part of any new artist's career to understand and develop their live show and to book things on a strategic level.

"I'd say that it's much more competitive than ever before, but I feel that more competition breeds better music. If there's a million bands that sound like you then you've got to find a reason to stick out, and you've got to be damn good at it because otherwise you'll just get passed by. A lot of good stuff gets passed by just because of sheer volume, but I also do think that the ability for artists to go and record something amazing on their home computer and go and tour the world because of it's a pretty amazing thing. Look at Courtney [Barnett], she started everything from her bedroom including her record label, and that would not have been possible 15 years ago. Well maybe she would have pulled it off because she's pretty incredible, but you get the gist of it — there are so many ways for people to get their music out and heard now, but I think that competition is a good thing."