WORKING WITH ADVANCES

What is an Advance?

Look, we get it. A lot of artists might be afraid to ask this question, because they’re worried they should already know what an advance is. That often means that artists don’t end up doing an advance at all, which isn’t fun for anyone - the promoter, your fans, or you!

An advance is the process of confirming all of the details of a show prior to (and no, this does NOT mean texting the promoter when you are a half an hour away). Reaching out to the promoter and venue prior to the show to make sure that all of your technical and hospitality specifications are met (a.k.a. “The Rider”) helps to identify and resolve any issues ahead of time, which means that everyone will be set up for success.

In other words, don’t be afraid to ask the question. Because an advance is all about asking the questions!

Creating an Advance

When you are ready to start the advance process, access the Shows page, located in the left sidebar menu of your Band Portal Page.

Once in the Shows page, click the CREATE ADVANCE button beside the show you would like to advance.

Editing an Advance

A new advance will be named “General Advance by default. Modify this field to help you remember which advance this is, who it’s for, what kind of advance it is, etc.

For example: Nice Horse @ Scotiabank Saddledome, Calgary AB – Tech Advance

TIP: Remember, you can create multiple advances for the same show if you need to send different types of advances to different promoter or venue contacts (for example, tech/production advance, hospitality advance, etc.)

TOGGLES

Many of the questions on the advance editor have toggles beside them. Switching the toggle to on (blue) beside a question will include it on the advance for the promoter. If the toggle is not switched on, that question will not appear on your advance.

TIP: The advance generator in BANDIE is intuitive – if you already have data entered in the Days and Shows sections, the advance will auto-select the toggles in the advance based on what you already know or still need to find out. For this reason, we recommend FIRST working through the Days and Shows tabs with any info you’ve already been given, and THEN creating the advance. This will prevent you from asking for info you already have.

CUSTOM QUESTIONS

If you can’t find the question you want on the advance editor, use the “Additional Questions” sections. “Additional Questions” sections are located throughout the advance editor so you can add custom questions wherever they make the most logical sense.

ATTACHMENTS

Use the attachments section to include any files you need to send to the promoter (bios, photos, stage plots, etc.)

TIP: If you don’t see the file you want in the dropdown menu, make sure you’ve uploaded it in the FILES section of the management portal (in the left sidebar). Accepted file types include JPGs, PNGs, MP3s, and PDFs.

BAND CONTACTS

Use the “Band Contacts” section to fill in any band and crew contact details that would be important to the promoter.

TIP: Make sure you complete your profile information in the SETTINGS section of the management portal! If complete, some profile info (including bios, stage plots, band contacts, and more) will auto-populate by default into the advance editor.

Don’t worry – you can always override the default files and data manually in the advance editor if needed.

See Getting Started - The Management Portal for help on filling out the Settings section.

Once you have completed your advance questionnaire, hit the SAVE button at the bottom of the Create Advance page.

Previewing an Advance

To preview the advance that will be sent out to the promoter, click on the SHOW button at the top right of the Advance. (Note: be sure to SAVE first - this button will only appear once you have saved your advance!)

Sending an Advance

Once you have saved your advance, navigate to the Advances section, located in the left sidebar menu of your Band Portal Page:

In the list of Advances, copy the link you want from the Link column.

Once you have copied the link, paste it into your email to the promoter! They can follow this link to answer your advance questions.

TIP: When sending an advance email to the promoter with a BANDIE link, let them know how to fill it out! Some promoters may be seeing BANDIE for the first time. Politely request that they click on the link provided, answer all of the questions, and most importantly, remind them to save their answers by clicking SAVE at the bottom of the advance.

Receiving an Advance Response

Once the promoter responds to your advance by filling out the questionnaire, a RESPONSE icon will appear beside that Advance on the Advance list page. Click on that icon to view the response from the promoter.

Now that you have the answers you need, fill them into the necessary fields in the Day and Show pages! BANDIE does not autofill the promoter’s responses into the Days and Shows fields YET (this capability is coming soon!) For now, you will need to copy the data over to the Days and Shows pages manually.

TIP: To easily transfer information from the completed Advance questionnaire to the Days and Shows pages, keep two tabs open in your browser, and copy-paste the information from one tab to the other.

Deleting an Advance

If you need to delete an advance from BANDIE, do so by clicking the DELETE button in the bottom right corner of that Advance’s page. Note that once you delete the advance, the advance link will no longer be available to the promoter. Deleted advances cannot be recovered.