How to start a booking agency with no staff & low overheads

The music industry can be pretty transient. Some acts become legendary, others come and go with the trends. This means it’s risky business to be a booking agent—one season, booking requests for a popular artist come streaming in, the next it may be dead quiet.

Many smaller booking agencies are opening and closing within a year.

So, how can you start your own booking agency without closing shop before you ever make a profit? We chatted to Niels van Loo, a booking manager who recently started his own agency, Parachute Booking, to find out how he did it and how you can do the same.

A bit about Niels

Niels has been working in the electronic music scene in Berlin for about seven years, with the past three years as a full-time booking agent.

Although he enjoys music and has DJ equipment, he says he has "no ambition of ever becoming an actual musician." His great passion is working with musicians and helping them reach their goals.

Where did it all start for him? He studied and lived in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and completed a half-year internship in Germany working for a consultancy that dealt with Melt Festival (1997–2024).

During this time, he realized two things: he wanted to work in electronic music and move to Berlin.

Before shifting his life to Germany, he returned to Amsterdam to finish his studies. At that time, he started working at De School, which he describes as "a very nice nightclub to work in… good bookings and good lineups every weekend, and cool event concepts." He also did an event production internship in their office. Unfortunately, De School permanently closed in January 2024.

His De School internship led to a connection with a German booking agency. At this agency, he handled the production for the artists they booked. After that agency closed, he worked in different creative agencies, focusing on project management.

Later, he joined Frills booking agency, where he was hired as an assistant and quickly given more responsibilities, eventually becoming a booking agent.

When Frills closed shop, it left Niels at a crossroads: find a new job at another agency, or start his own thing. You know what happened next!

Is it a good idea to start your own booking agency?

For Niels, the decision to launch his own agency was driven by a desire for independence and a history of working in a volatile industry. The booking agent role can be very demanding: "It's not really 9 to 5," Niels says, “Agents must be online constantly for troubleshooting because artists are working in different time zones, flying all over the world.”

Running his own booking agency allows him to do what he loves and manage his schedule more effectively, blending life and work on his own terms. For example, he can decide to chill on a quiet Monday morning and work in the evening.

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Another push to start his own agency was finding himself out of work for the second time in his life. Because the entertainment industry is so dynamic and unpredictable, booking agencies often close down.

This was a bit of an “aha” moment for Niels.

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Niels also grabbed the opportunity to start his own agency because he was in the right financial position to do so. He had a small income on the side while in between jobs, which enabled him to start up a new company with a financial fallback.

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To summarize, we recommend you have these three checks in place before considering starting your own booking agency:

1. A passion for music and helping artists succeed.
2. Experience in various roles in the music industry, especially working in clubs and other agencies.
3. A financial base or fallback.

If you checked yes to all of the above, then you’re ready. Let’s go through Niels’s process and advice for kitting out your agency.

Start with a network and roster

Having an existing roster is fundamental to starting your booking agency. You also need to be well-connected with a number of artists, promoters, and venues.

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Your roster needs to make sense. Include some established names to guarantee you an income, and also some refreshing names that are growing their audience. Niels says choosing artists is a collaborative process involving many talks.

The key is matching identities: “the whole concept of your agency and the identity of the artist have to match and be in the same line.”

Looking for booking software? See how SystemOne works for electronic music booking agencies.

Get your legal & operational setup ready

Once you have your network and roster in place, the practical and legal foundations must be established:

Set up office

Even if you don’t have a website, at the bare minimum, you must have an email address and phone number. You’ll also need a business address for your company registration.

The next most important thing you need is booking software. Niels uses SystemOne at Parachute Booking and previously used it at Frills. He finds it highly beneficial because it makes contact management easier and enables document customization. He also uses SystemOne’s eSign feature to get contracts signed automatically by all external stakeholders.

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Learn more about SystemOne’s native document eSign feature.

Seek professional advice

A note on bureaucracy: Niels found that dealing with company registration in Germany was "a bigger pain in the ass and takes me more time than setting up the rest of the agency." So, if you’re wanting to register your company in Germany, be aware that it could take a while—and a lot of paperwork.

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Operate with low overheads

A key strategy for reducing risk and avoiding bankruptcy, especially in a volatile space like entertainment booking, is keeping your costs low. Niels structured his agency specifically to minimize financial exposure.

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He views expansion as the biggest risk. He explained that if an agency expands by getting an office and staff, and for example, one of their big artists leaves, then there's all of a sudden a very big financial gap every month that they have to cover.

So, he’s avoiding rapid growth—lower income with a smaller team is easier to manage and won’t create such big losses because the cost-to-company is low.

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General advice for aspiring booking agents

Don’t be afraid to take the leap! Niels received a lot of positive feedback from the industry after his independent launch. He found that promoters and festivals are very responsive, supportive, and open to new booking agents and artists—more so than if you were reaching out from a big corporate booking agency.

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But also be cautiously optimistic. There aren’t any guarantees in the booking business, and it’s a lot of hard work. Give yourself some financial runway to work independently without being too reliant on the income.

If it looks stable after a year, then you could consider continuing and finding ways to grow your business.

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Get your booking agency off the ground

Starting a booking agency independently requires years of industry knowledge and a strong personal network. People hardly start out as booking agents—they’re often starting out as musicians themselves, or roadies, or event managers.

Niels’s approach shows that minimizing overhead costs—operating without staff and using your personal residence as an office—can help a lot in getting started as an independent booking agent. Having some savings or an extra income will also help you stay afloat while you build your artist roster and fill up their booking calendars.

The lower your costs, the lower your risk of bankruptcy and the more control you’ll have over operations until your agency flourishes.

Ready to get started with SystemOne as your end-to-end booking platform? Book a demo or request a free trial.