A booking agent’s work looks quite different depending on the artist. With an established name, much of it is handling incoming offers and routing tours around demand that already exists. With an artist who is still building, it means pitching to promoters who may not know the name yet, and how far that goes depends a lot on what the artist brings to the table. We spoke to Dennis Meentz, booking agent at Just Jazz International, about balancing both across a roster, what promoters look at first, and what he would do to find gigs if he were starting again without an agency.
Just Jazz International is based in Cologne and is run today by Catherine Mayer, whose father, Gerd Mayer, founded the agency. Its history includes tours with Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson and the Count Basie Orchestra. Dennis works across a roster of around 35 artists.
Can you give us a brief background on who you are and what you do?
I work as a booking agent with Just Jazz International. The agency is based in Cologne, and I’m based in Sweden myself. I’ve been working as a booking agent for 10 years now.
I started out as a musician – and still am – and I was always very interested in how the booking side of everything worked. The part that the musicians didn’t want to do was something I found quite interesting. So I got involved in that quite a bit, moved to London at some point, started booking more and more and joined an agency there. I’ve been doing this for a while now, and I still enjoy it very much.
From your side, how many bookings come to you, and how many do you have to go out and find?
That really depends on the level of the artist. Some artists have a lot of their own momentum. They play a lot, people see them a lot more, and you get more requests. If it’s younger, more up-and-coming artists, you need to invest a lot more time. You need to really convince promoters that this is an artist they need to take a look at, and then convince them that they can sell it to their audience as well.
So it depends on the artist, and we try to keep a balance across the roster. It’s nice to work with artists you really believe in and need to push very hard for. At the same time, it’s nice to have more established artists with a bit more momentum, where things go a bit easier in certain ways. For example, you might receive concert date requests and then you can focus on filling in the gaps, rather than having to build entire touring periods from scratch
When you’re showing a promoter that a new artist can sell tickets, how much is down to the agent, and how much to the artist having their socials, photos and videos together?
I think it’s very important that the artist has that together, because there’s only so much an agent can do. As an agent, we reach out to promoters and say: this is someone you really need to take a look at. You might not have heard of them yet, but look at this and this and this, and you’ll understand why they belong in your club or festival.
The next step is that the assets the artist provides, whether that’s videos or social media or anything else, need to tell the right story. They need to make it immediately clear to a promoter what this artist is about, so the promoter can think: yes, I understand this, and I will be able to sell it to my audience.
Some festivals reach out every year saying, “We’re working on our November programme, who do you have?”, and it’s good to be able to put a list forward. But every now and then there’s a new festival or a new club somewhere that we haven’t worked with before. As long as you have the right assets, we get bookings in there too, from the first contact, the first email.
How important are an artist’s numbers on Spotify, YouTube and social media?
There’s a bit of a disconnect sometimes. We’ve worked with artists who had millions of plays on Spotify and Apple Music, and promoters still hadn’t heard of them, because they hadn’t done much live, or there hadn’t been much promotion in that particular country.
At the same time, if an artist has a big following, it does make things easier. It gives a promoter confidence that if they need a boost in ticket sales, they can ask the artist to share the show or announce it, and more people will see it. So it’s definitely good to have, but it’s not a guarantee.
I work with an artist now who is fairly new on the scene and doing quite well, and we’re trying to get him into the rest of Europe. He has a good following on social media, but not a lot of promoters know him yet. So we have to make it clear that he has a following across various countries, and also that the story, the music and the musicianship are good enough to justify having him at the club.
If you were a full-time musician now, without an agency or a database of contacts, how would you go about getting your next few gigs?
I would look for artists I think are similar to what I do, musically and stylistically, and see which clubs book those artists and which promoters are interested in that kind of music. That way you can see where your possible routes are.
I’d also think a bit further ahead about where I realistically want to be in a few years. You should always dream as big as you want, but it helps to have a realistic path as well: set out a plan for yourself, then try to follow the routes other artists have taken, where you think you might fit.
What do you look at when an artist pitches you?
When someone sends me a pitch, I check out the music first and foremost. Then I look at the background. What has the artist done? Where have they played? Do they already have strong territories? Then followers too, because it’s good to know how many people are following an artist.
Is there anything else you think musicians need to hear?
Good assets are so important. I just can’t emphasise that enough. Even if you’re a more established artist, it’s good to have updated material: good live videos, and material for each project if you want to pitch a different project. It’s something that can be underestimated. Artists think, “My album is out.” That’s great, but people want to see instantly what they would be getting if they book you. The word of the day is assets.
I always lead with a short bio and a video. Promoters are inundated with material, so if they even look at your email, it has to be instantly clear what you’re trying to sell them and why they should look at it. They’re not going to listen to your whole album.
It’s also very refreshing to get a to-the-point pitch email. You see so many where you have to read through pages of personal history first, about where everyone has lived and so on, before you get to the music. Sometimes it’s just too much information.
Watch the full interview
Jazzfuel PRO members can watch the complete conversation with Dennis, including why an agency might turn down an artist it likes, how selling out shows in advance helps an agent raise fees and book bigger venues, and why asking for a tour three months before your album comes out is too late…
