Industry expert Bob Baker says that 20% of all music sales take place in the last six weeks of the year. Is the same period also the most profitable for live music ticket sales?
The Year End Sales Boost
When Bob Baker shares his opinion - musicians listen. Mr. Baker has a earned a reputation for showing indie artists how to get exposure, connect with fans, sell more music, and increase their incomes. In his recent post on Hypebot Baker says that 20 percent of all music sales take place in the last six weeks of the year.
Most artists never tap into this holiday revenue potential. Why? Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah come only once a year, and they are short-lived events. It’s easy to justify not putting much effort into them. Therefore, most musicians ignore this holiday music income stream. That’s a BIG MISTAKE!
Baker goes on to list action steps for bands that want to cash in on the holiday rush, including the need to "think ahead and create a plan now that will serve you and your fans during the holiday season." If you work with, or book musicians at a venue, Baker's post is recommended reading.
Most people have the last few weeks of the year off from work and just about every college student (a big live music demographic) is out of school. All those folks want something fun to do during the holidays. But how does a live music venue owner find out if the end of the year consistently generates increased tickets sales?
Step one is to take a look at the ticketing website. The historical sales data can be exported and viewed in popular spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel. Sorting the data by date should show the peaks and valleys of ticket sales. Once identified, that period of time can be better planned for by making an "action list" like the one Bob Baker encourages musicians to compile.
Identifying periods of the year when ticket sales go up isn't the only benefit ticketing software can provide. Sorting ticket sales by zip code can reveal how well advertising is performing in a given market area.
Live music ticket sales with ThunderTix
Finding out when your most profitable six weeks of the year occurs is a function of your choice in ticketing software. ThunderTix ticketing software for live music venues can generate sales reports by date - but that's just the start!
Popular among our customers is the ability to sort sales data by zip code in order to gauge the effectiveness of traditional advertising campaigns (TV, radio, print, etc.).
You can also search for and export your customer contact information. Find past customers by first or last name, address, phone and, of course, the all-important email address. Use the export reporting function to pull customer email addresses as needed to update your email marketing campaigns. After exporting the contact email addresses, you’ll be able to import the data into any of the popular email marketing applications, like Mail Chimp.
If you are interested in gaining keen business insight into your sales data, please contact us at your convenience.
Image source: Wiki Commons