A conversation with Phil Egenthal, a booking agent at MINT Talent Group, which is a brand new boutique agency formed in 2020. Phil has also previously worked as an agent at both Paradigm and Madison House.
During our talk, Phil breaks down how the role of booking agent has evolved over the years, shares advice for artists who are looking to add an agent to their team, and he details what agents are looking for when considering bringing on a new client. He’ll also touch on how you can be your own booking agent (although we didn’t frame the question exactly that way; the advice is still worth heeding).
TRANSCRIPT
Frank Keith 0:00
Hi everyone, I’m Frank Keith of Sweetheart Pub, and welcome back to the podcast.
This week on Music Rookie is a conversation with Phil Egenthal, a booking agent at MINT Talent Group, which is a brand new boutique agency formed in 2020. Mint currently represents a broad swath of artists across all genres. Over the past decade, Phil worked as an agent at both Paradigm and Madison House before forming MINT.
During our talk, Phil is going to break down how the role of booking agent has evolved over the years, and he’ll share advice for artists who are looking to add an agent to their team, as well as what agents are looking for when considering bringing on a new client. He’ll also touch on how you can be your own booking agent (although I admittedly didn’t frame the question exactly that way; the advice is still worth heeding)
With that, let’s dive right in.
Frank Keith 1:09
Let’s start with what you do day to day as a booking agent. And then we can pivot that look at it from the other side. You know, I’m a band. I’m looking to work with a booking agent, what do you want to see from a band?
Phil Egenthal 1:25
Sure, you know, booking agents are typically responsible for helping to set up and outline all aspects of a lot of an artist’s touring career. You know, that role has expanded during the COVID time, which I’ll talk about in a few minutes. But for now, you know, when an artist is just starting out their career, they will say “Okay, well we’re worth 50 or 100 tickets in our hometown, we’re ready to hit the road, we want to go play Memphis and Chattanooga, in addition to just Nashville now.” So, when you’ve gotten a leg up or two, and you’ve gotten a little bit of a draw in two to three or four places, you know, maybe five places, then you may be ready to start a conversation with a booking agent.
But a booking agent will contact the venues, they will hold the dates, try to put together a consecutive routable tour that you can drive in a conovan that may break down from time to time. We will negotiate how much your fee to be paid, whether that’s a flat deal percentage deal, you know, there’s basically six types of deals which can be covered in another music business lesson another time. Either way, you know everything from overseeing when the show will be announced to how the show will be marketed. Making sure that using your approved photo that you want to have, making sure that the bill has other acts that are complimentary or you know, helping to benefit the ticket sales all the way through to making sure you get paid. Send me a contract handling the administration and then settling it out so that you get paid the proper amount.
We know as bands grow and get to a bigger level, of course, that’s a much larger level of planning. There are multiple venue options in every single city, certainly not going to play every single place in the whole entire country. Are you going to play major markets or are you going to play secondary markets? Do you have an album out? Are you in cycle? Are you just trying to make money to fulfill your touring livelihood while you’re in between projects? So many different factors
And then in the COVID era, you know, we’ve pivoted a little bit to work in the streaming and virtual world, which, you know, agents get involved in varying degrees. You know, when there is a smaller scale live show element with the streaming portion, there are deals to be worked out, percentages, you know, there are dozens of different types of live streaming deals, where are their advanced monies, back end monies, percentages, reverting percentages, and your agent would help navigate your understanding and benefit of some of those situations so that you as a creative type of musician can concentrate on making music, playing and performing music.
Frank Keith 4:08
You touched on that getting started 50 to 100 tickets in your hometown. I’ve heard different numbers from different people. I’m sure it’s not that, you know, you probably can tell outside looking in when something is starting to take hold as an agent. How are you doing discovery other than, is it just straight up cold call outreach to you from the artists? Or do you kind of have your ear to the streets and seeing if, you know, what’s hitting in this market right now that nobody knows about yet? Maybe I can help develop this artist and more down the line. What does that look like?
Phil Egenthal 4:42
It’s a fair combination of both. You know, typically artist before you wouldn’t be ready for an agent would likely be ready for a manager. That would be a more usual first step in the process because the manager is going to you know become the quarterback of your marketing efforts, your release efforts, your touring efforts, and all of the above, most agents won’t typically consider working with bands that don’t have- or artists, they can be a solo artist- that do not have management. Sometimes they will. But unless there’s a tremendous upside or a tremendous amount of attention or excitement related to your project, it’s very difficult from someone who’s typically busy, not as busy maybe during COVID time, but in the normal world to have to explain or teach you about why the Fillmore in San Francisco has $9 service fees on every single ticket and why you can’t make more than 45% of the growth in that market. When you play that city, you know, or whatever the lesson of the day relating to the situation.
So your manager would usually be your first step. And we rely on a network of managers, you know, to tell us about what their next and latest and greatest projects and pursuits are. Now, that also extends to labels, lawyers and publicists and our network of just talking to people about who they’re working with. That being said, one of my default and go-tos over the years about my hand, our process, and how I find new bands is entirely talking to the promoters. There in every city is a 300 to 500, or even up to 1000 capacity independently owned venue that’s likely been operating for a while. And the town buyers and promoters from that establishment are pretty likely to know who’s coming up in the ranks in their city. And if you have a good relationship with them, and you talk with them in advance, they can feed you tips about who they like, before they give it to the other agents or vice versa. And you know, establishing rapport, they cut to the pipeline that you need to find.
So the narrative that I’m trying to get out here is in a long winded way, make sure when you play these little calls, establish interviewer the opener, the support, that you are professional, friendly, polite, and grateful for all the opportunities because when those promoters go, and they see people like myself, calling them say, “Who is the next up and coming and who’s the greatest?” And they say, “You know, I had the greatest, greatest guys, and here- or ladies-the other night, they were just so sweet. And they were professional, finished on stage on time. Crowd really loved them, I would definitely book them again,” that’s the you know, report we’re looking for.
You know, of course, there’s the well, the “Zack that’s local sold out my room, but they showed up two hours late in my green room and drank all the booze and whatever it was, you know, we will take those two depending on the circumstance, but you know, trying to rough around the edges or sand around the edges, they’re not as fun.”
Frank Keith 7:55
I can imagine booking The Black Lips has its pros and cons.
Phil Egenthal 7:59
Oh, that’s exactly what it is. You know, there are creative genius. and creative genius unfortunately gets sort of rewarded in a lot of ways and sometimes enabled and we don’t like to enable anybody for bad behavior or rude behavior. But sometimes we will put up with a little bit of impoliteness to get the art out there.
Frank Keith 8:19
That’s all great insight.
Phil Egenthal 8:21
I’m seeing more and more kids are learning about some of these types of topics in school and music business class, which is interesting to me as well.
Frank Keith 8:29
I went through that program at UGA down here and I can’t tell you it’s been so long I don’t remember what did I learn there, and what have I just learned out in the real world doing this, but it sure as hell didn’t hurt.
Phil Egenthal 8:43
Well, the program when you went through it, I’m not gonna say how many years ago since we’re recording, was not as evolved I’m sure as it is now. I imagine that they probably have lots of eloquent guests and feature people to help talk about stuff like this, but when you went maybe it was a little less lesser. So I imagine your life experiences definitely outweigh your college collegiate academic experience.
Frank Keith 9:09
All right, well, Phil, I’m honestly I’m not sure what else to ask you, man.
Phil Egethal 9:14
Why don’t you let me help you out a little bit, then? You know, our clients, we have a really wide reaching roster, which is EDM through Southern rock, a lot of legendary iconic elder states people that are icons of their instrument or whatever. And in the last few months, just prior to this COVID spike, pretty much everyone had been in their house from park to now have started raising their hand say, “Hey, we want to tour. We’re sick of being at home and cooped up. What do we do?” And one thing that happened that was interesting is that in the fourth quarter here, we saw a ton of socially distant, safe, responsible options popping up for touring. And those were varied from pod shows, you know, in a park, Farm, plantation, backyard, whatever it was, all the way through drive-ins, etc.
There were some victories and some definitely some misses. Many people did not care for the shows that were the FM transmitter, because it really delayed and there was some sound issues they prefer the concert sound. The older fans don’t really like to go to drive-ins. But the younger fans for EDM and jam bands. Those older fans prefer to go to the pod shows and are out in a picnic blanket or socially responsible seat or table that they get on their own, the hotel shows where they rent out a hotel and put the DJ at the bottom are really really popular, people like having their own party room. No surprise there.
But the point of all this is we’ve taken all of our touring, that was originally flipped from March through, you know, basically everything we pulled out and postponed from 20 to 21. And we’ve now started to make new models. And in every single city, there will be options. And those options will be 100 tickets all the way through 1000 tickets, there will be a drive-in or event. For example, in Nashville, the marathon music works 1000 person normally plus 1200 maybe, is doing 100 ticket person ticketed shows. You know, there are some all different types of opportunities, you know, they’re they don’t work as well for developing act because the smaller capacities, if you’re playing marathon, they don’t always want to do a 15 or $20 ticket because they can’t cover the expense of 1000 capacity venue on that ticket price. However, they’re keeping their staff working, are keeping some fans in the house. musicians are touring. And there’s definitely some goodwill there.
So we appreciate all that effort, because they’re certainly not making any money. But my point of this is, there’s likely an available action for every single type of touring act, every level. Some of our acts are doing virtual privates for their fans, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we’re like, you know, it’s $500 for 30 minutes, and you get eight friends, if you want to add 10 friends or 20 friends, it’s another $1,000 or another 30 minutes is another time. And yeah, they can make some really good money and have some really good, you know, groceries for while they’re not on the road. But you obviously have to have an established fan base and things to be able to support these endeavors.
So, you know, the thing that I’ll say is nobody should get discouraged, there’s going to be greener pastures and clear skies ahead, the model is now starting to take a little bit of shape, and there is definitely going to be a way forward for touring musicians. It is definitely not going to be what it was, it’s not going to be back to normal. But if you’re like, “Oh man, I have to go work in the financial sector because my mom says I can’t be a musician anymore.” I don’t think that’s the answer.
Frank Keith 13:03
So there’s one thing I did remember I wanted to ask you as soon as I said I don’t know what else to ask you. And that is what advice do you have to someone, “I want to be a booking agent. What do I do?”
Unknown Speaker 13:17
The opportunity now, I would say is greater because every agency and across the board from the highest level to the lowest, has sadly had to make a lot of cuts and changes to their operations. And what that’s done has been a nice rebirth of a bunch of independent boutique agencies sprouting up and in the previous years, maybe the past five to 10 years, the opposite had been happening. Every one of the unique cool boutique agencies of every genre and variety of specialty had been gobbled up and absorbed with the exception of a couple that remained independent into the major agencies into Paradigm and other places. So now, the spawning I’ll call it of these various agencies, TBA artists, arrival artists, Mintel and group. So several others, you know, have given way to shops and various places you don’t need to work or live, excuse me, in the cities where those offices are. I know that our operation is eager to train and mentor a bunch of people, you know, that are quality, once we get enough opportunity to be able to, you know, empower folks.
You know, I think people have a little more time now. One benefit to opening a new company in a new shop during the pandemic is a little more time. If you tried to open a company or a new talent agency during a normal booking time. Your life is so consumed with the regular details of all of those tours and touring, that it would be a little harder. So you know this pandemic has given us a minute to first pause and breathe and think about things in a really strong way that gave us a perspective that we think is going to be a good model for many years to come.
And then the last thing I’m gonna say about that is, you know, we work with artists that we don’t throw a lot of things against the wall and just see what sticks. You know, our mentality is for career longevity. So, you know, we want to know that, you know, hey, this record is going to come out and we’re going to put it out independently, or maybe have a label or two, and it’s going to do it it’s going to do, but nobody becomes usually their most popular on their first record, you know, most people on their second, third, fourth quality effort when people start to pay attention. Unfortunately, in our world, the best music, I’ll say the most mediocre music gets the most popularity, and the best music, unfortunately, is relegated to medium amounts of popularity. So let’s hope that we can have a little bit more of a dynamic shift in the future.
Frank Keith 16:05
And there you have it. Thanks to Phil for taking the time to speak with me and for unpacking the role of the booking agent in 2021 and beyond. Once again, we see how important relationship building and networking is in the music industry, and I really want to hammer home the importance of first impressions. Don’t be that band that trashes the green room, because you never know who the venue owner or promoter, talent buyer, etc., you might be talking to.
As always, thanks for listening, and if you’re interested in more insider information like this, be sure to check out our weekly newsletter, which you can sign up on sweetheartpub.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already, that way you’ll be notified when every episode comes out. If you got any specific questions, feel free to tweet me or shoot me an email- I try to make myself as easy to find as possible.
Same goes for follow up questions for Phil, or any of our guests for that matter. If you want to reach out to us, we’d be happy to check in with them or put you directly in touch, if that seems like it would make more sense.
This episode was produced by Brandon Kinder and me, Frank Keith IV, and I’m also responsible for our theme music.
And with that, as always, go do something useful.
