Baby strange

1. Selection of artist locations/ objectives

I chose the band “Baby strange” which is an alternative rock band from Glasgow. The band was formed in 2012 and consist of three men: Johnny Madden (vocalist and guitarist), Aidan McCann (bassist player) and Connaire McCann (drummer). They already released an album in 2016 named “Want It Need it” on Ignition Records and their last tour took place last summer from June the 13th to August the 2nd mainly in Scotland and in Northern England. They played in quiet little venues with a capacity between 100 and 200 people, but they were sold out for nearly each gig. The band has a booking agent named Andy Cook. According to chart metric, they have about 9 600 followers and 13 600 monthly followers on Spotify. They also appear in two editorial playlists and in 146 users’ playlists that means they start being known.

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As a local band, they are not really known in countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain etc… Except for purists and people who really like rock music and little local bands coming from rock birthplaces like Glasgow, that doesn’t represent enough people to do a tour in these countries for the moment. In this way, my strategy is to develop the band in United-Kingdom from Glasgow to London, where there are more or less already known to gain more and more popularity and play in bigger venues than before.

I chose to tour in United-Kingdom because it represents the birthplace with a huge heritage of rock music with bands like The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles etc… in the 1960s’; The Stone Roses, Oasis, The Verve later, and today with Kasabian, The Killers, Liam Gallagher and others. Thanks to this rock and counter culture, lots of people still listening to rock music as shows this graph from Statistita that shows Rock music is the second genre of single unit sales in UK.  [pic 2]

When we use the tool: Map on chart metric and we click on UK’s cities like Glasgow for example, we can see the most popular bands from Glasgow are rock bands like Franz Ferdinand, Donovan, Biffy Clyro. It means people still listening to rock music and love that so doing the Baby Strange tour in UK seems more and more coherent. Moreover, Baby Strange is the most listened to in Glasgow, London, Edinburgh, Nottingham and Mexico City according to Spotify as shows the screenshot below.

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1. Dates / routing

Considering previous tour locations and streaming / sales data you should identify appropriate venues and dates in appropriate cities explaining why certain territories and venues have been selected in relation to your objectives. Distances travelled and days off should also be explained. Guide length - 300 words

I decided to make them play in Glasgow at King Tut’s on September 29th 2020, which is a legendary venue where Oasis, The Verve, Radiohead and others took their first steps. The capacity of the venue is 300 and I’m pretty sure it will a success because they did three Poetry Club (100 capacity) in a row last summer and they were sold out each night. (cf. annexe 1). The next day, the band will play in Edinburgh at Electric Circus (250 capacity) to continue to go on October 1st in Manchester at the FAC 251 a beautiful old-style factory with a capacity of 350. The two last gigs will take place in Birmingham at the Night Owl (250 capacity) on October 2nd and in London the next day at the Camden Assembly (400 capacity).

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