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John William Gordon <johnwilliamgordon>

	Why Touring in the West Kinda Sucks	74 días hace
	While I booked my butt off for our upcoming tour, I noticed one huge regional difference: the southwest has far fewer venues than the east. Besides Google, I searched for gigs with the new Indie Venue Bible (6 regions in 6 PDF files). The puniness of the southwest region's PDF file jumped out at me. Why does the western U.S. have far fewer live music venues than the east? Online, I found the populations of states included in each of the Indie Venue Bible's 6 regions (northwest, southwest, northcentral, southcentral, northeast, southeast) and calculated each region's population. Then I calculated each region's area in square miles by adding the areas of each region's states. Some sick stats: The southwest* and northeast** regions have comparable populations: 51 million versus 56 million. But the northeast has almost double the venues: about 5200 versus about 2800 (Indie Venue Bible). - southwest: one venue per 587 square miles. - northeast: one venue per 35 square miles. Conclusion (no duh): the higher the population density, the more thriving the live music scene. L.A. and San Francisco don't make up for gargantuan areas of empty space in the outrageously huge southwest. Grotesque stat: Even though the southwest has far fewer venues than the northeast, the southwest has more booking agents! - Southwest: about 370 booking agents for about 2800 venues (8 venues per booker, but one booker per 12,220 square miles, about 111 miles x 111 miles). - Northeast: 350 booking agents for 5200 venues (15 venues per booker, but one booker per 520 square miles, about 23 miles x 23 miles). Actually, the picture out west is much worse. Compare by area in square miles. The southwest's area is about the same as the northeast's and northcentral's*** combined: - southwest's area: 605,709 sq miles - northeast's + northcentral's area: 581,372 sq miles (83,206 sq miles + 398,166 sq miles). Now compare the number of venues in those comparable areas: - northeast + northcentral = 9300 venues! - southwest = 2800 venues in the SAME AREA. The northeast+northcentral have about 3.3 times the number of venues in roughly the same area as the southwest! Based on driving time and cost, touring in the east might be 3 times "easier" than touring in the west, not counting bad weather. And booking also might be much easier because there are fewer booking agents contending for each venue. The numbers are rough, of course, and the Indie Venue Bible leaves out many venues and booking agents, but the owners of the IVB keep updating it; and each region suffers from this problem, kind of canceling out this worry of missing venues when comparing regions. So I think the IVB provides a good picture of venue realities in the U.S. For touring bands, especially new ones, the southwest sucks with... ...roughly a third of the venues as the northeast/northcentral; ...further-flung clusters of venues (and metro areas); ...more booking agents contending for each venue, especially in southern CA. *southwest= AZ, CA, HI, NV, NM, UT, based on "Indie Venue Bible" listing of venues by region. **northeast= CT, DE, ME, MA, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT, based on "Indie Venue Bible" listing of venues by region. ***northcentral= IL, IN, IA, KY, MI, OH, WI, based on "Indie Venue Bible" listing of venues by region.
	escrito por John William Gordon