Empowering the long tail of live music

Today, we’re launching Showcrow.

An idea that’s been rumbling in my head for over seven years. And the first step towards solving a problem that hasn’t gotten any better in that time. In fact, it’s gotten worse.

I’m excited to tell you about what we’re building, why we’re building it, and what comes next.

But first—a little history.

By 2010, people had all but stopped buying CD’s. Merch wasn’t easy to sell online. And streaming services started gobbling up revenue that would otherwise have gone to independent musicians. It was becoming impossible to make money as a musician.

Today, a solo artist needs around 5,000,000 streams a year on Spotify just to make roughly the federal minimum wage in the US. If you’re in a band or group? Multiply those streams by each person.

Streaming royalties themselves are getting worse for artists every year. It’s gotten so bad, 1 in 3 musicians are planning to quit the profession altogether.

Music itself doesn’t make independent musicians money anymore.

For them, live shows are the best, easiest, and fastest way to be profitable and sustainable. But getting booked to perform a live show isn’t easy.

For the venues, booking live music to play at their establishment isn’t easy either. It’s a high volume, highly detailed, antiquated back and forth process, with little technology to support it.

Just emails back and forth until details are settled, artists are vetted, and something (finally) gets booked.

Then they’re responsible for images and information on their website and digital calendar, promotion via social media, and more.

Live music is crucial for small businesses. Coffee shops, breweries, wineries, restaurants, and bars, all have an available revenue stream in live music, whether they indulge in it or not.

And when live music is present in those locations, people patronize places they wouldn’t otherwise, spend more time there, and by proxy spend more money—not to mention have a better overall experience with the brand when there’s consistent, quality, brand-matched music in the space.

But particularly for small, non-traditional, independent venues, engaging in this revenue stream involves the complex and outdated process of booking music. One that’s inefficient at best, and a nightmare at worst.

So if live music is so good for artists and so good for venues… Why is it so hard for both parties to book frequent, quality, safe, and profitable shows?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a long time. And through conversations with artist friends, industry connections, and venue research—we’re not the only ones asking it.

We know there has to be a better way for independent venues of all types and independent artists to book and promote profitable shows together.

So. That’s where this whole thing comes in. Showcrow. That’s us.

We have a feeling we can bridge the gap between independent venues and the artists that play them better than anything that exists right now.

Both parties deserve a more efficient, more frequent, more human, and more profitable experience. One that helps sustain the small business of both traditional and non-traditional venues, and the small business of musicians.

When these two entities come together, they make up the majority of live music in our society. To many, when they hear “live music” they think of popular artists playing large arenas in major cities. But that only accounts for a small percentage of live music happening on any given night around the world.

In North America alone, there are about 30,000 independent venues, 600,000 restaurants, 70,000 bars and nightclubs, 35,000 coffee shops, 11,000 wineries, and 10,000 craft breweries. Not all of these spaces feature live music. But many do.

Millions of small, independent artists play at these small, independent venues every single month.

Acoustic guitar players singing pop covers over coffee. DJ’s spinning latin jazz records over dinner. String trios playing classical songs while people sample flights of wine. Punk bands playing their new record before it’s even released at their neighborhood bar.

Small artists in small rooms making beautiful music in their communities.

This is the long tail of live music. The less massive, less sexy side of rock and roll. But the true heart of independent music.

This is who we’re here to serve. Those artists, and those places they play.

So in order to do that… We’re starting small. Er, small-ish.

And we’re hoping to solve one of the first problems artists face—which is—when you want to play a show somewhere—where would you even start?

How do you find venues that would be a good match for you? Your genre? The number of people you think you can bring out? What if you wanted to do a tour in your home state, and play four or five shows in a row? How would you find out where to play?

So in service of that, we’re starting a free venue catalog for artists. To start, it’s heavily indexed on our home state of Minnesota, and our neighbor Wisconsin. Over the coming months, it’ll be vastly more robust, including major and minor cities in most states in the US.

You can check out what that looks like here.

Our initial goal is to help artists (and by proxy, fans) find good places to play (or see) live music near them.

As that grows, we’ll be focusing on a platform for the small independent venues inside our catalog to solicit live music requests, streamline booking their shows, and expedite the calendaring and promotion of them. Helping under-resourced small businesses turn attention from artists into more shows booked faster, easier, and more profitably, without the headache of constant calendar updates.

So at an extremely high level, we’re looking to build the following, for the following:

Independent Venues A booking and calendaring software that streamlines show requests and displays booked shows for promotion to help independent businesses make money off live music.Independent Artists A catalog of live music venues across North America and a profile builder that helps connect them to places they could play live music and make money off their art. Independent Music Fans A way to connect with both the artists you love and your favorite places to see those artists play, wherever you are.

I want to be clear. If you’re a 1,500+ person venue? We’re not here for you. If you’re an artist that doesn’t care about live shows or is already making plenty of money? We’re not here for you. If you’re a music fan who exclusively buys arena tour tickets for pop musicians once or twice a year? We’re not here for you.

You’re all a crucial part of the live music industry and ecosystem. But you’re not who we’re here to serve.

We’re here to serve the tens of thousands of small, independent venues, of all types, with thousands of small, independent artists playing there, in front of hundreds of thousands of independent music fans—every single night in North America.

It’s you that we’re here for. You all have a special place in our hearts. And we want to help.

I started performing music live in 2006.

Since then, I’ve released EPs, albums, and singles, totaling more than 50 songs, and performed hip hop and spoken word in six different states across the country.

I got my first job in software in 2010.

Since then, I’ve worked with 13 software startups across North America, ranging in size from $5MM in ARR to $150MM in ARR, two of which went on to be acquired.

I am not—in the least—trying to brag. I’m only trying to explain that I’ve lived a double life for a long time, and had no idea my two worlds of music and software would one day collide.

Today, that collision becomes something we think can be special: Showcrow. We have some idea of where it’s headed. But we also know there’s a lot we don’t know yet.

We’re excited to partner with and learn from venues, artists, and fans, so we can be a unifying force in the industry, and change the face of live music across North America. Maybe around the world.

It’s a big goal. But to be incredibly trite: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

So today’s that single step.

If you’re interested in learning more about what we’re up to and where we’re headed, give us your email below, and we’ll let you know when we’ve got more to share.

If you have thoughts, feedback, or questions—positive or negative—or you simply want to get in touch, my digital door is always open, and I’d be glad to hear from you. You can email me at ryan@showcrow.com. Thanks for making it this far. We’ll see you at the show.