You have a name. You have a rehearsal space. You have too many opinions about the setlist. Congratulations. You're a band.
Now what?
Most bands skip the boring stuff and go straight to booking shows. That works fine until money is involved, until someone quits mid-tour, until a venue bounces a payment and nobody knows whose bank account to complain to. Five minutes of setup now saves you months of chaos later.
Here are the five things every new band should do. In order.
1. Google Your Name. Then Google It Again.
Before you get attached, before you print anything, before you tell your mom: search your band name. Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, Google, and the USPTO trademark database.
There are 40,000 bands named some variation of "The Wolves." If there's another band with your name that already has an Instagram and a Spotify page, venues will book the wrong one. Journalists will cover the wrong one. Your merch will look like bootlegs. This sounds dramatic until it happens to you.
A good name is memorable, Googleable, and doesn't already belong to a death metal band from Wisconsin. If you're clear on all three checks, you're good. Move on.
Quick check:
Search your band name + "band" on Spotify, Instagram, and Google. If the first three results are all you, you're probably fine. If they're not you, keep brainstorming.
2. Make One Person the Point of Contact.
Pick one person in the band to handle all the business stuff. Booking emails. Venue negotiations. Contracts. Deposits. That person's job is to be the one name a stranger can contact and actually get a response from.
This is not about power. It's about logistics. Venues don't want to email four people and get four different answers about your availability. Promoters don't want to cc a group thread that takes three days to reach consensus on a Thursday show.
If nobody wants the job, rotate it. But somebody has to hold it at any given time.
The title doesn't matter:
Call them the manager, the business lead, the logistics person, whatever. The point is: one name, one inbox, one person who responds within 24 hours.
3. Get a Band Email That Isn't Someone's Personal Account.
tyler420@gmail.com is not a professional booking email. Neither is bandgmailaccount123.
Set up a free Gmail with your band name: yourbandname@gmail.com. Or if you already have a domain, use it: booking@yourbandname.com. Either works. The goal is an address that sounds like you mean business and doesn't disappear if Tyler quits.
Share the login with your point of contact and one backup person. Keep it in the band's shared password manager, not just in Tyler's head.
While you're at it:
Set up a Google Drive folder shared with the whole band. Contracts, set lists, song demos, press photos. One place, everyone has access.
4. Take One Decent Photo.
Not eight. Not a full press kit. One photo where everyone looks like a functioning adult who has slept recently and isn't squinting into the sun.
You will need this photo more than you think. Every venue listing, every social media profile, every press mention. "We'll take photos at our first show" is a trap. Show photos look like you're in witness protection. Take a proper one before you ever play a gig.
You don't need a photographer. You need a friend with a decent phone, decent light (go outside during the golden hour), and the patience to take 40 shots until you have one good one. Pick a background that isn't a blank wall or your drummer's basement.
The minimum viable press kit:
One horizontal band photo (at least 1200px wide), one short bio (3 sentences: who you are, what you sound like, where you're from), and a link to two songs. That's it. That gets you in the door for 90% of what you need as a new band.
5. Set Your Terms Before Someone Sets Them for You.
Every band has a first paid show moment where someone calls and says "we'd love to have you play, what do you charge?" And most bands freeze. Or they say "oh, whatever you usually pay" , which is how you end up playing three hours for $75 split four ways.
You don't need to know the exact number. You need to have thought about it before the call. What's the least amount you'd play for? What kind of venues do you want to play? All ages or 21+? Are you willing to drive an hour for a gig?
The Spider Rider tool on The Rock Salt is built exactly for this. Fill out your terms once , your minimum guarantee, your stage requirements, your hospitality asks, and publish them. Then when venues reach out, they already know your price. No negotiating cold. No saying yes to a bad deal because you didn't have a number ready.
The One Thing
If you do nothing else on this list, do number two. Designate one person to handle the business. Every other problem on this list, the messy emails, the missing photos, the bad deals, gets worse when there's no single person accountable for solving it.
Bands break up over logistics more than they break up over creative differences. Having one person whose job is to keep the wheels on doesn't guarantee you'll make it. But not having one almost guarantees you won't.
Ready to set your terms?
Build your Spider Rider and publish your touring terms so venues can book you without a back-and-forth negotiation.
Create your Spider Rider →The Salt Vault · Business · 101 Level · Rock Salt Academy, Track 1