How to pitch a band to a label, festival or promoter

A promoter has an empty Tuesday and a room that costs money whether or not anyone shows up. A festival booker has fifty slots and two hundred agents pushing for them. A label is deciding whether to spend a year and real money on you. If your email reads the same for all three, it is not written for any of them. Answer one question from their side of the desk: why would this make their week easier? For a club, the honest answer is usually that you can bring forty people on a weeknight. For a festival, that you fit a gap and already have a regional following. For a label, that you have momentum they did not build. If you cannot answer it yet, play more shows first.

Bookers read email on a phone between load-in and doors. Keep it under 150 words, put the ask in the first line, and make every link work without a login.

• Subject line: band name, what you want, a date or month. "The Quiet Marrow / support slot / Oct 14" beats "Booking inquiry!!!"
• First sentence: who you are in one clause and exactly what you are asking for.
• Second sentence: proof. Your last two or three local shows, the rooms, rough headcount. Numbers, not adjectives.
• Two links maximum: a stream that opens on your best song, and one live video. Not a folder, not a zip.
• A phone number and the name of the person who will actually answer. Plain text, no attachments, no BCC to twenty venues; bookers can tell, and they talk.

Nearly every Bay Area club publishes a booking email on its site, usually under "contact" or "about." Use that address, not the general info line and not the bar's Instagram. If certain nights go to an outside promoter, the site will say so.

• Club shows: pitch six to ten weeks out. Earlier and the calendar is not built; later than four weeks and the good nights are gone.
• Support on touring shows: filled by the local promoter, sometimes with the touring act's agent weighing in. Name the show and say why your crowd overlaps.
• Festivals: fixed submission windows, often the fall before a spring or summer event. The largest do not take open submissions at all.
• Labels: find who released the last three records you love that sound anything like you. Small labels either list a demo address or say plainly they do not take demos. Respect the second.

Strip away the niceties and a promoter is looking at three things: can you draw, are you flexible on the date, and can they hear and see you in under two minutes.

• Draw: how many paying people you brought to your last show in a comparable room. An honest twenty-five on a Tuesday is bookable; an imaginary eighty gets you blacklisted.
• Date: offer a range. "Any weeknight in November, or the first two weekends of December" gives them something to work with.
• Links: one song, one live clip. A phone video with bad sound from the back of the room is worse than none.
• Bill-building: if you can bring two other local acts who draw, say so. A complete, sensible bill from one email gets remembered.

Festival submissions are a form, and the form is where bands get lazy. If it asks for a 100-word bio, write 100 words; the person screening 800 entries will not read 400. Your press kit should be one linkable page: short bio, two or three full-resolution photos, embedded audio and video, notable shows, contact. A kit whose highlight is a show from two years ago says you have been quiet since.

Locally, Noise Pop typically opens submissions in the fall for its late-winter run across SF and Oakland. Neighborhood and street festivals often book through the city or a merchants' association, with earlier and quieter windows. The big-ticket festivals go through agents; without one, spend your energy on rooms that will reply.

• One follow-up, seven to ten days later, in the same thread.
• Add something new: a show announcement, a press mention, a better video. "Just checking in" adds nothing.
• No answer after the second email? Stop. Come back in three months with a fresh pitch and fresh proof, not a third nudge.
• A no is useful. If the calendar is full, ask to be on the last-minute fill-in list.
• Do not turn up at the venue to find the booker unless invited.

The region has a rough ladder. Pitching one rung above where you are is fine; three rungs up wastes everyone's time. The 100-capacity bars and back rooms (Hotel Utah, Thee Parkside and Kilowatt in San Francisco, Eli's Mile High Club and the Golden Bull in Oakland) will take a band with almost no history if the bill makes sense. The 250 to 500 rooms (Bottom of the Hill, Rickshaw Stop, Brick & Mortar, Cafe du Nord, The New Parish) want to see you have already filled a smaller one. The 500-plus rooms (The Independent, Great American Music Hall, The Chapel) are mostly touring headliners with promoter-chosen local support.

San Jose runs on a shorter list, The Ritz and Art Boutiki chief among them, and its crowd does not travel north easily; a South Bay draw is not an Oakland draw, so say where your people are. Mid-size bookers build calendars around touring acts routing between Los Angeles and Portland, so your best shot at a good night is a weeknight in the slow stretches: late January through February, and the weeks after Labor Day.

A pitch email is a cover letter with a hometown draw attached. The rules that make a good cover letter in plain English carry straight over: open with the ask, keep it short, and let the links do the bragging.