From Sign-Up to Booked: How the getNgigs Artist Workflow Works

Most independent artists are running their booking operation across four or five different tools. Pitches go out through email. Gig history lives in a spreadsheet that gets updated when there is time. The EPK is a PDF someone made two years ago. Tour budgets get sketched out in a notes app the night before the first show.

getNgigs is built on the premise that all of this should live in one place, and that the tools should be good enough that artists actually use them. This is a complete walkthrough of how the platform works, from the moment you create an account through to booking, managing your calendar, and tracking what you earned.

Phase 1: Creating Your Account

Getting started takes about two minutes. You sign up using Google or a magic-link email, no password required. During signup you choose your role: Artist or Venue. Choosing Artist immediately generates your dashboard and your public profile URL, which takes the form getngigs.com/a/your-slug, with the slug pulled automatically from your Display Name.

Before you can pitch venues or appear in search results, the platform requires five things from you: a Display Name, a Bio, at least one Genre, a Profile Photo, and at least one Media or Social Link. These are the minimum requirements that unlock the platform's core features. They exist because they are also the minimum a venue needs to take a pitch seriously, which is the right design choice.

Once those five fields are complete, the Gig Board, direct pitching, and session requests all unlock at once.

Phase 2: Building Your EPK

Your public profile on getNgigs is your EPK. It is the page a venue sees when you pitch them, and it is the page that surfaces in search results when venues are looking for artists. Getting it right matters.

The guide recommends building it out in a specific order: photo and bio first, then live video, then your format and capacity specifications. That order reflects what bookers actually look at first.

Identity and Positioning

Beyond your bio, you can add a Tagline: a single sentence that describes your vibe and appears on your search card before anyone clicks through to your full profile. Think of it as the first five words a venue hears about you. It is worth taking seriously.

If you perform under multiple configurations, you can register up to two additional Project Names, each with its own avatar. A guitarist who performs solo, as an acoustic duo, and with a full band can represent all three formats from a single account. You toggle between them when posting to the Gig Board or Tour Board.

Location and Travel

Your Home City and Travel Radius determine which gig opportunities you see and which venues can find you. Venues outside your radius are filtered out automatically, which saves everyone time. Set your radius honestly: a radius you cannot actually cover creates friction with venues and hurts your reliability reputation.

Performance Specifications

This section tells venues exactly what they are booking: Formats (Solo, Duo, Trio, Full Band, DJ), Minimum and Maximum Capacity so you are not getting pitched rooms that are wrong for your act, Set Length in minutes, and whether your set length includes scheduled breaks. These fields exist so a venue booker can look at your profile and immediately know whether you are a fit for their room without having to ask.

Media Portfolio

This is where most artists undersell themselves. The platform supports Gallery Images (three to six live show photos recommended), Live Video URLs from YouTube or Vimeo, and Audio Sample URLs from SoundCloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp. The guide is direct about what matters most: a three to five minute live video clip is the single most persuasive tool for getting booked. If you have one, make sure it is there.

Pro accounts can also upload a full Tech Pack directly to their EPK, including stage plots, tech riders, input lists, and press materials. These attach automatically to every pitch you send.

Phase 3: Getting Your Profile Out There

getNgigs builds in a set of tools specifically designed for the moments when you meet a potential booker in person and need to get your EPK in front of them immediately.

Your dashboard gives you a downloadable QR code that links directly to your public profile. Print it and stick it on your instrument case or display it at your merch table. You also get a vCard download, a .vcf contact file pre-loaded with your name, phone, email, and website, and an iPhone Wallet Pass that lets you share your contact card directly from your phone screen.

These are small tools, but they close the gap between a live conversation and an actual booking inquiry more reliably than exchanging phone numbers and hoping someone follows up.

Phase 4: Finding Gigs and Pitching Venues

This is where the platform does its core work.

Direct Pitching

Open any venue profile and click Pitch. getNgigs auto-populates a formatted pitch using your bio and media links, which you can customize before sending. The pitch lands in the venue's inbox. You are not sending a cold email into a general inbox hoping it reaches someone. You are sending a structured, professional pitch through a platform the venue is already using to find artists.

Free accounts get three pitches per month across a shared pool that covers venue pitches, Gig Board responses, and Session Board responses combined. Pro accounts get unlimited pitches. If you are actively trying to build your calendar, the math on upgrading is straightforward.

The Gig Board

Venues post booking requests to the Gig Board when they are actively looking for artists. You can search the board by ZIP code and radius, filter for what fits your act, and respond directly. All posts expire after 14 days, so the board stays current. These are warm leads: venues that are already looking for someone like you, right now.

The Session Board

The Session Board is a separate feed for open session-player work: vocalists, instrumentalists, and other collaborators posted by producers, bands, and venues. Browsing is free. Responding requires a Pro account. If session work is part of how you earn, this is a direct pipeline to those opportunities.

Inbound Pitches

Venues can also pitch you. When a venue finds your profile and wants to reach out, the inquiry comes into your getNgigs Inbox. You can reply, accept, or pass. As your profile gets more complete and your visibility in search improves, inbound inquiries become a meaningful part of your booking activity.

Phase 5: Tracking Your Outreach

Every pitch you send is tracked in real time on your dashboard through a four-stage pipeline: Sent, Replied, Booked, and Passed. You always know where every conversation stands without digging through your email or trying to remember whether you followed up.

This is one of those features that feels simple until you have fifteen active pitches in motion and you realize you have not been following up with the ones stuck at Replied. The pipeline makes that visible. It turns pitching from a scattershot activity into a managed process.

Phase 6: Managing Your Calendar

The Rolling Gig Calendar shows up publicly on your EPK under Upcoming Shows, so venues checking your profile can see your availability without asking. You add entries from your dashboard or directly from your public profile: date, status, genre, capacity, deal type, and notes.

Each entry has one of two statuses: OPEN, which signals to venues that you are actively seeking a booking for that date, or BOOKED, which marks it as filled. Open dates can be pushed directly to the public Gig Board or Tour Board with one click, turning your calendar into an outbound marketing tool.

Phase 7: Planning and Running a Tour

The Tour Tracker is covered in detail in The getNgigs Business Toolkit: Earnings Tracker and Tour Tracker, but here is how it fits into the overall workflow.

You create a tour from your dashboard, name it, and add stops one by one. Each stop carries a city, date, venue, status, and estimated income. Stops move through a four-stage pipeline: Exploring, Pending, Confirmed, and Cancelled. Under the Budget Tab you log fixed costs and per-stop variables. The P&L Tab calculates your projected financials across all confirmed stops so you know whether the tour makes money before you commit to it.

When the tour wraps, the Log to Earnings button records your actual income directly into your Earnings Tracker. The Tour Board Sync feature pushes your confirmed stops to the public Tour Board so venues along your route can see you are passing through and reach out to book you.

That last feature is worth pausing on. Most artists on a regional tour leave money on the table because venues in the cities between their confirmed stops do not know they are going to be nearby. The Tour Board makes you discoverable to exactly those venues without any additional outreach on your part.

Free vs. Pro: What the Upgrade Actually Unlocks

The free account gets you a complete profile, EPK, and enough pitching capacity to test the platform and start building your calendar. The Pro account, at eight dollars a month or eighty-four dollars a year, unlocks:

• Unlimited pitching across venues, Gig Board, and Session Board
• Direct venue contact details (email and phone instead of locked placeholders)
• Tech Pack uploads attached automatically to your pitches
• Rate visibility on your public profile
• Priority placement in search results
• Access to private event requests including weddings and corporate gigs

For an artist actively working to fill their calendar, eight dollars a month is a low bar against the value of unlimited pitching and direct contact information alone. One additional booking covers the annual cost many times over.

The Bigger Picture

What getNgigs is building is not another directory or another pitching tool. It is the infrastructure layer for an independent music career: the place where your professional identity lives, where your outreach is managed, where your calendar is visible, where your tours are planned, and where your income is tracked.

The artists who use it most effectively are the ones who treat it the way any professional treats their core business tool. They keep the profile current. They use the pipeline to stay on top of their outreach. They push open dates to the board consistently. They run the P&L before committing to a tour.

The platform does not book gigs for you. What it does is remove every structural obstacle between you and the people who want to hire you, and give you the tools to run that side of your career like a business.

Create your free getNgigs artist profile and start building your calendar.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is getNgigs free to use?

Yes. The free account includes a complete public profile and EPK, access to the Gig Board, and three pitches per month. The Pro plan at eight dollars a month or eighty-four dollars a year unlocks unlimited pitching, direct venue contact details, tech pack uploads, priority search placement, and access to private event requests.

How do I show up in search results on getNgigs?

You need to complete the five minimum profile requirements: Display Name, Bio, at least one Genre, a Profile Photo, and at least one Media or Social Link. Once those are complete your profile becomes visible in the artist directory and in venue search results. Pro accounts receive priority placement.

Can I manage multiple performance formats from one account?

Yes. You can register up to two additional Project Names beyond your primary account, each with its own avatar. You toggle between them when posting to the Gig Board or Tour Board, so a solo acoustic act and a full band configuration can both be represented from a single login.

What is the Tour Board and how does it work?

The Tour Board is a public feed where artists can post their confirmed tour stops so venues along the route can see they are passing through and reach out to book them. You sync stops directly from your Tour Tracker with one click. It turns confirmed dates into outbound marketing to venues in every city on your route.

What happens when a venue pitches me?

Inbound venue pitches arrive in your getNgigs Inbox. You can review the offer and choose to reply, accept, or pass. As your profile becomes more complete and your search visibility improves, inbound inquiries become a growing part of your total booking activity.