Campus Booking Agents
College campuses offer a full slate of resources that might further an a cappella group’s artistic accomplishments and exposure. Who should your group reach out to? How? What do you have to gain? Campus Connections is here to answer those questions.
This column is targeted specifically toward collegiate a cappella groups, though some of the principles and ideas we discuss may transcend that sphere and be useful to high school and non-scholastic groups as well.
In this edition of Campus Connections, our focus is on: campus booking agents.
Whether it’s a professional in charge of coordinating entertainment for the campus community or a student affiliated with student government who coordinates booking events, most college campuses have someone (or some group of people) in charge of putting together large scale events for campus that may including bringing in speakers, comedians, magicians, or, of course, musical acts from afar to the college.
On the scale that I’m discussing, it’s unlikely that the booking agents would book your on-campus a cappella group to be a featured act, but that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t fold you into a major event as an opening act, or work with you to publicize the act they’re bringing in. Sharing a stage with a professional can be a wonderful way of providing you with a larger audience, not to mention possibly affording your group the opportunity to interact directly with a major act backstage and learn from them as artists. And even if it’s a matter of your group publicly singing a song by a major artist in a public spot to promote the fact that that artist is coming to campus, you have now inextricably linked yourself, in the minds of listeners, to that artist, which is not a bad association to create.
Campus booking agents ultimately hold a lot of sway over what the campus is listening to, watching, and, perhaps most importantly, what the campus community is getting excited about. Form a relationship with them, and it could elevate your group in any number of ways.