| FAQs |
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| Frequently Asked Questions |
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| 00 |
"How will I know if the band are any good?" [ You'll get a chance to hear them and ... ] |
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"Why should I book with Good Gigs?" [ Here's why.... ] |
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"Would it not be cheaper to book directly with the band?" [ Not necessarily ... ] |
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"How much time do I have to make up my mind?" [ Popular bands ... ] |
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"What if the band let's me down?" [ Accidents happen but ... ] |
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"I play in a band. Why should we advertise on the Good Gigs web site?" [ Five reasons ] |
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"I play in a band. Can we register with you in order to get gigs?" [ Yes ... ] |
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"I want a band for a corporate event. Can you provide a VAT receipt?" [ No problem! ] |
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"Are you not plagued by "timewasters"? [ No. We welcome all inquiries. We try ... ] |
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"What services do you offer to bands / performers? [ We offer a number of services ... ] |
| 10 |
"Can you find musicians for gigs abroad?" [ Yes. We have recently sourced musicians in London for ... ] |
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"Can I pay by Credit Card?" [ Yes. We have an account with PayPal a very secure online bank...] |
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"Why are there so-called "generic pages" on the site where a considerable amount of detail is given on a particular band or performer but no name?" [ Some bands and performers ..... don't want .....] |
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"Why are the "results" called up by your search-engine in such a mess?" [ Because we didn't know ... ] |
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| 0. |
"How will I know if the band are any good?" |
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You'll get a chance to hear them and make up your own mind. We'll have sent you contact details of bands that we think match your requirements, bands that are available and within your budget. All you need do is ring up and arrange to go along to hear the bands of your choice before making any decision. You are always in control. We merely facilitate you and make our huge database available to you.
Even if you had our list of 1,600 bands you would not know who to contact. You would have to know how far they were from the venue and what kind of music they played. You would need to know how big a band they were and how much they charged. Finally you would have to get through to them by phone, text or e-mail to find out if they were available for the date in question. That's what we do but our database does it instantly at the press of a button. Most of the questions we can answer immediately ourselves. Availability is the one we have to confirm before recommending bands to you.
How do we know what bands to recommend? After eight years running this agency and dealing with the same bands over and over again each week we get to hear things! Good things mostly, thankfully. Check out our "Satisfied Customer Comments" page to see what people tell us. There are others who tell us why they didn't choose a particular band. We ask. Our customers are letting us know every day what they think about our bands and performers. We listen and try to remember. You can benefit from the knowledge and experience we have accumulated over the years.
That is not to say that we can assist you in your taste in music. That is subjective. The homely Country band that would appeal to old-timers (like me!) will cut no ice with younger generations seeking the pops of the Noughties. Some bands are better than others at keeping up with today's charts. Younger bands may not have the same extensive repertoire of their more established confreres. There are bands who concentrate on a particular style of music "Latin American" for example. Others can play a good mix of tunes from many genres of music. It is up to you to audition as many bands as you can before you make your choice. We'll make that easier for you.
If you describe to us what you are looking for and what you like we will try and ensure you get just that. Some bands have Audio Clips online that you can listen to. Others will send you Demo CDs. Ultimately there is nothing better than going along to a gig similar to yours and watching them perform. Talk to them over the phone and in person and then book them through us. When talking to bands or performers don't forget to mention us . They are delighted to hear we recommended them and pay us a small percentage of their fee. That is what keeps us going. |
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| 1. |
"Why should I book with Good Gigs?" |
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Weddings |
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Organising a wedding or other function is a huge undertaking. It is probably the biggest most important day in your lives and that of both your families. The end of the day's celebrations should be in keeping with the rest: a really well-presented relaxed happy memorable occasion where everyone gets on to the dance floor and enjoys themselves with good music, singing, and dancing, in a party atmosphere. You need a good band. |
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We'll save you time and hassle. We have the experience. We know the bands. We know who is good. We'll find you just the band or performer you require in the shortest time possible, to play the music you like, at the right price. |
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Venues |
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If you manage a venue such as a golf or GAA club, hotel, or bar, and would like to have live bands perform once or twice a week we can organise a rotation for you so that you don't have to worry about bands turning up. In addition we'll send you a few flyers beforehand to publicise each band and we'll also publicise your venue on this web site. (See Darkey Kelly's) |
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Good Gigs maintains regular contact with a number of excellent bands and musicians throughout Ireland. Depending on the information you give us on your Request to Book a Band form we can immediately send your request to those bands that we know will meet your criteria and would be ideal for the event you are planning to find out if they are available for the date in question and how much they would charge.
Bands come and go. They form and break up. They change names. Their membership changes. Over the years we have auditioned a large number of really good bands and got to know and trust them. Some have a great deal of experience behind them, have a huge repertoire, are extremely professional and have stood the test of time. Others are young and upcoming and full of talent, excitement, and enthusiasm.
We will send you a list from which to choose. We will send you details for each band such as line-up, style of music, selections from their set lists, and their fee, having contacted them beforehand. If they have a CD we'll send you a copy and if they have a web site we'll include the URL.. We will also send you the phone number of a contact person in each act so that you can arrange to go and hear them play before making your choice. Finally if you like what you hear we will ask you to book the band through us and we will ensure that the details of the booking -- venue, date, starting and finishing times, special requests, etc -- are clearly understood by the band and by you.
Perhaps the best reason to book with Good Gigs is that we know most of the bands and performers and will only recommend good performers who are likely to meet your requirements. See our customer COMMENTS page. |
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| 2. |
Would it not be cheaper to book directly with the band? |
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Not necessarily. When we check their availability we ask the band to make a provisional booking for us on your behalf for the venue and date in question. Since we deal very frequently with each of the bands on our list most of them quote us an agreed competitive rate. Most give us a discount. We provide an advertising / booking service for those bands and they appreciate that. Just as a shopkeeper buys from a wholesaler our agency can place many gigs with the best bands. As a result we can give you a competitive rate for your event, frequently less than you would receive if you had approached the band directly yourself.
In addition if anything untoward were to happen and the band were unable to fulfill the booking we would be in a better position to find another band at short notice.
We have published details of our fees on this page: Fees |
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| 3. |
How much time do I have to make up my mind? |
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Popular bands are in considerable demand. They are already booking 2010 and 2011. When we approach a band with your request we ask them to hold the date for us for a short period. Obviously they will be anxious to accept the first confirmed booking that comes along so there is no guarantee that they will hold the date for very long. We include the phone number of a contact person for each band or act we recommend so that you can arrange to go and hear them perform. Sometimes it happens that a band is no longer available on a particular date by the time the client decides to approach them with a booking. This can be avoided by keeping us informed of your intentions. Needless to say if you make a booking elsewhere we would appreciate if you would let us know so that we can inform the bands we approached on your behalf that they are free to accept other bookings for that date. |
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| 4. |
What if the band I have booked lets me down? |
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Obviously accidents happen, people fall ill, and through circumstances beyond anyone's control arrangements made far in advance of a particular date have to be changed. If you book through us we will be able to help you find an alternative band for your event -- at short notice -- even at the last moment. |
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| 5. |
I play in a band.
Why should we advertise on the Good Gigs web site? |
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- Everyone in the music business looking for gigs needs to make themselves known. Make yourself known to us and we may audition you with a view to recommending you for suitable gigs. We don't follow up on all requests. You have to be really good, good musicians, good singers, good at persuading us to come and audition you.
- Even then "HOODGIE BOODGIE & THE HEDGE-TRIMMERS" may only be suitable for a less than discerning boistrous audience while a classical string quartet would be out of place in a rollicking Sunday afternoon suburban pub. (Who said, "Depends on the suburb" :-). We try and select Acts on the basis of the client's requirements and budget.
- Registering with GOOD GIGS MUSIC AGENCY earns us €40 plus VAT per year (We appreciate that!) and ensures that
- we make more of an effort to recommend you to people wanting to book live music.
- we give you a username and password to access the Quote for Gigs page.
- For a small additional fee we publish a basic web page for you. This serves as an online advertisement for you. Having a web page on Good Gigs is a cheap way of getting details of your Act, your photograph, and some promotional material online. In the basic web page people can contact you through us. Our current charges for a basic page with a photo and text start at only €60.50 , VAT included, for one year!
- Cheap? Compare the cost of newspaper advertising for one day! And the cost in time and commitment to take part in a Wedding Fair?
- Sadly even having a web site of your own is no guarantee that anyone will come and visit it. The Good Gigs web site however is like a market place, a "portal" for musicians. It comes up frequently and high in search engines. Try it on Google. "Find a band for my wedding" brought this site up in third place on Google just a moment ago. Consider this: how did you come upon this site?
- We support this web site with printed leaflets and newspaper advertisements. We also distribute a flyer to hotels and venues likely to need to book musicians.
- Some musicians actually use their Good Gigs web page as a flyer to print off and distribute to venues.
- Some venues when hiring a band download and print off the Good Gigs entry to put in the window: "Have you a poster? No? A web site? A photo online? That'll do then!" We recently had the experience of playing in a country town and finding our own online "splash" page enlarged and prominent in the hotel window. The colour photo downloaded and printed from the web page made a very good advert.
- We publish a list of gigs available on our "Quote for Gigs" page. Take a look!
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| 6. |
I play in a band. Can we register with you for gigs? |
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Yes. No problem. The Registration Fee is only €48.40 VAT inclusive per year. Just fill in this Act Registration form giving as much detail as you can and we will contact you to arrange an audition. You should also send us a good digital photo and a demo CD if possible together with any promotional material you have especially newspaper reviews. If you are up to an acceptable standard of performance for the type of venues you have in mind we'll recommend you for gigs. |
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| 7. |
"I want a band for a corporate event. Can you provide an invoice and a VAT receipt?" |
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Yes! No problem. We are registered for VAT and can document the booking as you would wish.
Some artistes and bands come to us and ask us to act for them as "an approved supplier" for big companies or State bodies who need to issue a "PO" or "Purchase Order" before booking a group. We do the paper work and the band plays the gig. We pay the band and then invoice the company in the usual way. Sometimes we are left waiting for a considerable length of time but that's business. The band gets paid immediately or within a few days of their performance. |
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| 8. |
"Are you not plagued by "timewasters"? People asking for information with no intention of making a booking?" |
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We welcome all inquiries. We try to respond quickly to each inquiry but with from fifteen to twenty requests arriving each week we may have to employ some triage in order to prioritise them for attention.
Here is how we respond to all requests:
- Some we will respond to immediately with a brief phone call saying that we cannot really offer any worthwhile assistance and suggesting alternative sources of information.
("Check the Sacristy and the Sacristan for information on local Church Singers" for example.)
- Others we will offer to our registered bands by publishing an entry on on our "Quote for Gigs" page (which is working really well!) and putting them in the queue for processing through our database of over 1,600 working bands.
- Requests accepted by us for processing will be given an Event Number and the progress of the request can be followed by the client on the "Quote for Gigs" page.
- Those at the top of the queue will be drawn to the attention of suitable bands from our database. We will phone, e-mail, and text the bands in order to check on their availability and price for the particular gig. (Think of the time involved in phoning twenty bands!)
- Once we have sufficient information to pass on to our client we will send them a list of available bands and their details by post and by e-mail.
- We'll send each band a note reminding them that we have recommended them for your event and that they should hold the date for a while until you have had a chance to get to hear them and make your decision.
What is the point of all that work if people don't bother to reply? In our experience over the last six years many people do reply especially since we began to send contact details for each of the bands or performers so that clients can go and see them perform. If they find one to their liking they book them through us and we are pleased to have been of assistance. Yes! We also get a small discount from the band which enables us to provide the service.
Where things go wrong and where our time may be wasted is where the inquiry is made by someone who does not actually have the authority to book a band. When we inquire as to the fate of our list we are told "Oh. Sorry. Someone else booked another band." Thankfully that doesn't happen very often. |
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| 9. |
"What services do you offer bands / performers who send their details to Good Gigs?" |
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We offer a number of services.
- We enter your details on our database and keep your Demo CD or Video on file and send them out if a client responds to our recommendation.
- When suitable gigs come along we'll check with you first over the telephone regarding your availability and price and include you in our recommendations to our client.
- We publish recent requests for information on bands on our "Quote for Gigs" page and you can check there from time to time to find events that may suit you and that you may wish to be considered for. Unregistered bands may also quote for these but will have to register with us and satisfy us as to their suitability for the gig before we will agree to recommend them. The charge for registration is €40 plus VAT.
- We can put up a web page for your band on www.goodgigs.com (this web site) which will serve as a web page for you if people use Internet search engines to find information about your band. The charge for this is €50 plus VAT.
- Regarding our costs and charges we need to negotiate a competitive price with bands for our clients in order to get gigs and to include a small discount to cover our costs.
- We have also prepared a "Reserved Area" for Registered Bands where details of our "Gig Exchange" appears as well as our "Quote for Gigs" page.
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| 10. |
"Can you find musicians for gigs abroad?" |
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Yes. We have recently sourced musicians in London for an Irish company organising a corporate event for their sales staff in the UK.
We often get requests from the owners of venues in holiday resorts where Irish people take their vacation. Some even travel to Ireland in order to audition musicians. |
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| 11 |
"Can I pay by Credit Card?" |
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Yes. We have an account with PayPal a very secure online bank.
When you have made your choice you can, if you wish, pay the deposit and some if not all of the balance, online using your credit card. You can even pay by instalments, subject to our agreement. Just let us know the Act you want to book and we will direct you to a page on this site that will allow you to make payments using PayPal. All you need do then is fill out a brief booking form and send it to us, sending the deposit by PayPal and we will confirm the booking in writing for you with the Act you have chosen.
Details of these arrangements will be sent to you by e-mail once you tell us you have made your choice. You find more about this on the page [ Payments ] |
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"Why are there so-called "generic pages" published on the site but with no Act Name given? Plenty of other details, even a photo, but NO NAME? " |
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Some bands and performers who just perform in their local area and are well-known to their local community don't want their names and phone numbers "plastered all over" the Internet. Nevertheless they appreciate a call from us for a wedding or corporate event in a venue close to their area. We can access them for you and recommend them to you if they are good and if they match your requirements.
On other sites where bands and performers are given a "free" entry you will find the act name, the contact person and a telephone number. Nothing else. No other details. You will have to trawl through lists and make dozens of phone calls in order to find an act that you like. Many of the phones are unattended and messages left are ignored. We relieve you of the stress and hassle and put you in touch immediately with exactly the kind of act you are looking for. We are ready for your call or inquiry by e-mail, text message, or phonecall almost 12 hours per day but please phone before 1.00 pm if possible and not later than 8.00 pm.
Since we would prefer clients to book through us we do not want to give out information in such a way that clients could evaluate the acts here and get the contact details elsewhere.
These "generic pages" have cost us a lot of time and research. They contain a good description of a particular band or artiste.
Most "generic pages" contain such information as
- their geographical location,
- their line-up with instruments, vocals, and backing-tracks if used (if it is Karaoke you want you should know you are getting Karaoke),
- a set-list of tunes (see if you like the kind of music they play)
- their ability to accompany guest artistes (Not all musicians are good spontaneous buskers: when your Dad gets up to sing you may find the band have all suddenly responded to an urge to take a break),
- their ability to provide a DJ for the afters or not, and
- their dress code.
On this site we want you to find an act that closely matches your requirements by using the search engine, [ search ], read the description, and then contact us so that we get a chance to send you some very competitive quotes to choose from for your event.
We will provide you with full details of the act in question: name, contact person, telephone, e-mail, website, availability for your chosen date, and the price they have quoted for your event.
Giving such details on the Internet is an invitation to others to copy and paste our hard-won information and use it for their own purposes in competition with us.
Websites that do publish such information charge fees that are much higher than anything we would ever consider a musician should have to pay. These "generic pages" are free or at least are included in our promotional response to your payment of the Registration Fee.
We do offer webpages to Bands & Performers for €50 + VAT but the contact details lead to the agency in the first instance.
For €100 + VAT they can have all their contact details published and thus bypass the agency.
Even that is cheap by Internet advertising rates. They get an Internet URL or address, design of a simple web page that conveys all the information a client might require, and, if required, some help in writing the advertising copy for their band in plain English (or Irish!).
In subsequent years the renewal fees are only half the original fee.
In addition to the above services we recommend "registered" bands and performers to clients who ask our assistance in finding suitable live music for an event. Clients can then visit their pages on our site, go to their own dedicated web site if they have one, listen to sound-clips or watch video clips on You Tube or Bebo or whatever, phone the contact person for a gig list where the client can see them perform and audition them, text them, and e-mail them. We give the clients all the details they require to make their choice when searching for a suitable band or performer.
We will always give preference to those acts who support our agency by registering with us or taking an advertisement with us.
What of the pages with no name? They are free and designed to give the required information to clients without encouraging them to go off again to other agencies with information gleaned from us. We work hard and we need to protect our investment of time and money. These generic pages give lots of information and are intended as a help to clients who may know very little about the music industry apart from the kind of music they like and the kind of band or artiste they want. |
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"Why are the "results" called up by your search-engine in such a mess?" |
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Because we didn't know as much about the importance of the code fields <title> and <meta description content> as we know now. We just copied from one page to another. We are not professional web site designers and we will try hard over the next few weeks and months to improve the presentation of the information. In the meantime we hope the search-engine creates as much fun for you as it does for us. There is not a day now that we do not find something that needs updating. Sigh! It is a big job. We hope it will eventually be worth it. |
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