Has the role of the entertainment agent changed, or is it simply time to become more old fashioned?
In the old days when we were first starting out as performers if you wanted to work with an entertainment agency, or at least certainly a good one, you would have to have an audition. What really! I hear you cry. Yes the agency would hire an appropriate venue for the day and there would be a queue of different acts lining up for their 5 minute opportunity to make the cut or hit a rut. Think Britain’s Got Talent on a smaller scale but with a few less utterly deluded people and mostly very strong performers.
This seems to happen less and less as the rise of the internet has put pressure on the role of the agency so that they have for a while become semi automated fast turn around booking agents who rely on the acts to do most of the work that in the past an agent would have done i.e. liaise with the client and venue to ensure everything runs smoothly and there aren’t any (or at least not so many) surprises on the day etc.
But the question has to arise that if the agent is primarily taking a booking and then steering the client directly to the artist as soon as possible for the remaining logistics etc. why doesn’t the client just go to the artist in the first place? A valid question and this is something that is happening more often and is in itself part of the reason for the change.
So is it then time for the entertainment agent to review its position in the world and to turn back the clock to a time when the job of an agent was to act as a middleman or woman who genuinely added value to the process? We think the answer to that is a firm Yes. Much as the artists we work with are in most cases more than capable of managing their own show, the more assistance we can give them the easier things are on the night. Equally whilst the client can perfectly well talk to the artists direct, as we have a better understanding of the questions that need to be answered that is a service that surely we should provide as justification for our commission?
At Yes Entertainment we are a bit old fashioned and quite proud of it. That’s why we are holding auditions on 18th August for new DJs to join our roster for bookings over Christmas and beyond. If you are a DJ and would like to be considered to be invited, or you are any other kind of performer and would like us to assess your material please complete our online application.
If you are looking to book entertainment then just tell us a bit about your event and we will contact you to fully understand your requirements before coming up with some ideas.
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years but our view is that some agencies will become more directory-like in their approach and others will move to the other end of the spectrum and become very much more hands on, more involved in selection and quality control and logistics and more, dare we say it, old fashioned.
