New Website Connecting Artists with Promoters Aims to Save Your Local Music Industry

Live music venues are closing their doors or moving away from live music performers at a record pace. With every venue change from live musicians to DJs or karaoke, the odds of having great music tomorrow being born today is slowly diminishing.

For the venues and concert promoters who organize live entertainment, the challenge isn’t a shortage of rising stars—it’s the extremely time-consuming and difficult task of bringing together the right talent to create great entertainment experiences night after night. Combine that with the rise of services like Netflix, Amazon and YouTube, and the competition for consumer spending on entertainment becomes even more fierce.

The life of a musician often consists of long hours, tremendous competition for gigs, and little to no financial rewards until—and only if—they become a household name. But as venues continue to change formats or close at their current pace, the chance for those household names to hone their craft until they become a “bright new star” grows dim, or goes out completely.

Seeing the writing on the wall, a performing musician and a live show promoter teamed up to address this issue head on. Together, Vinay Kathuria and GigBoss created Muzaic: a free website designed to make live events more profitable for the venue, promoter, and artist.

Muzaic was launched in Fall of 2017 to a small test market in Southern California, achieving impressive and promising results. Today, just four months after going live, the site is used by hundreds of bands and solo artists, and by people who book shows for venues like House of Blues Anaheim, The Viper Room (founded by actor Johnny Depp), and the world famous Whisky a Go Go on Sunset Boulevard.

The site works like a combination of an employment service and a dating app, matching artists with opportunities and venues with performers. Promoters and talent buyers have reported a huge time savings in booking shows. What used to take 2-3 days could now be done within a few hours. Artists also benefit from getting opportunities better suited to their genre, gig preferences, or type of act; and exposure to event organizers who might have otherwise passed them up.

Muzaic has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise awareness to the problem, and operating capital. Founder and CEO Kathuria said the company’s plans include expansion to cities with the largest markets for live entertainment, and eventually to the local pub just down your street. “Every dollar raised will go towards keeping our website running as a free service, and marketing efforts to increase our expansion. Our hope is that we can reverse the current trend of venues dropping live entertainment altogether.”

Partner and co-Founder GigBoss elaborates, “From our perspective, Muzaic isn’t just a better way of doing something, it’s the start of a movement. Without these stages for local artists to play and hone their craft, there will be no musical heroes to look up to tomorrow.”

For more information, visit savelocalmusic.org.