Booking gigs and small tours in India: a practical guide for independent acts

Most independent acts in India get their first shows by accident: a friend runs an open mic, a cafe needs a Saturday act, a college fest has a gap in the line-up. Getting from there to a planned run of five cities is not luck. It is a list, a pitch, a written deal and a calendar. This guide walks through each step for bands, singer-songwriters, DJs and live electronic acts who book themselves, and points to the law where it actually matters.

It sits alongside two other guides: our touring budget basics worksheet covers the numbers, and GST and income tax for Indian musicians covers tax in depth. Here the focus is the booking itself.

Step 1: build a venue and promoter list

Before you send a single message, make a spreadsheet. One row per venue, promoter or festival, with these columns:

• City and neighbourhood.
• Capacity (ask, or estimate from photos).
• Who books it: the owner, an in-house programmer or an outside promoter who rents nights.
• Genre fit: which acts like yours played there in the last six months.
• Deal style they usually offer (fixed fee, door split, guest list only).
• Contact route and date of last contact.

The genre-fit column is the one people skip, and the one that decides whether you get a reply. Look at the venue's own event listings and the acts' social posts. A venue that ran three indie-folk nights last quarter is a better target than a bigger one that books only Bollywood covers.

In many Indian cities the people who book the nights are not the venue staff. Collectives and independent promoters rent a room for a night and take the risk. Find them through the acts you already share bills with: ask who booked their last show.

Step 2: have something to send

A promoter decides in under a minute. Send one short message with:

1. Who you are, in one line, and where you are based.
2. The specific date range and city you want.
3. Proof you can bring people: a recent show's attendance, your city-wise listener numbers from your streaming dashboards, or an email list size in that city.
4. One link to a live video, not a studio track.
5. A link to your electronic press kit with photos, a short bio and a technical rider.

Pitch eight to ten weeks ahead for clubs and small venues, longer for festivals. Follow up once after a week. Then move on.

Step 3: agree the deal in writing

The Indian Contract Act, 1872 treats an agreement enforceable by law as a contract (section 2(h)), and the Act does not generally require contracts of this kind to be in writing or signed (see sections 2(h) and 10). A clear email or WhatsApp thread where both sides agree the terms can be enough. What you need is clarity, not stamp paper. Put these points in one message and get a "confirmed" back:

• Date, venue, set length and set time, plus load-in and soundcheck times.
• Money: fixed fee, door split (say, 70 percent of the door to you after an agreed cost), or a guarantee plus a split. State whether the figure is before or after GST and TDS.
• When you are paid: on the night, or within a number of days of the invoice.
• Advance: a part payment to hold the date, and what happens to it if either side cancels.
• Backline and sound: who provides drums, amps, DI boxes, monitors and a sound engineer.
• Travel, stay and food for out-of-town shows.
• Recording and streaming: whether the venue may film or stream the set. The Copyright Act, 1957 gives performers a performer's right in their performances (section 38), so this should be agreed, not assumed. Our guide to live streaming performance rights goes further.

If a promoter will not put the fee in writing, treat the show as unpaid and decide whether it is still worth doing.

Step 4: invoice and get paid properly

Send an invoice the day after the show at the latest, with your PAN, bank details, the agreed amount and the date.

Two tax points routinely confuse first-time touring acts.

TDS. Some payers, such as a registered company, an event agency or a large venue, may deduct tax at source: they pay you less than your invoice and deposit the difference with the government against your PAN. That money is not lost: it shows up in your annual tax statement and counts against your tax for the year. The Income Tax Department's help pages explain how to check it in Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement (AIS). Agree up front whether the quoted fee is before TDS, so the net amount is not a surprise.

GST. The GST Council's registration guide says a supplier of services need not register while aggregate turnover stays at or below Rs 20 lakh (Rs 10 lakh in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura), and that exemption holds even when you perform in other states. Most acts booking their own small tours are below that line. If you are registered, quote fees plus GST.

Music licensing for the venue itself (for recorded music played between sets, for example) is the venue's job, through the bodies described in our guide to IPRS and PPL in India. Your original set is yours.

Step 5: route a small tour

Once you have two or three cities that respond, build a run around the strongest one.

1. Anchor first. Confirm the city where you have the most listeners, on a Friday or Saturday.
2. Fill outward. Add cities within one overnight train or short flight of the anchor, ideally on consecutive nights.
3. Weeknights are for building. A Wednesday in a new city at a small room is a reasonable bet; a Saturday in a city where nobody knows you usually is not.
4. Book transport late enough to be sure, early enough to be cheap. Confirm every show in writing before buying tickets.
5. Carry the gear you can actually move. Check the airline's baggage and instrument rules before you book; a hardshell guitar case or a synth flight case can cost more than the ticket. A compact rig, as in our live setup for electronic artists guide, makes every leg simpler.
6. One shared document. Keep the full itinerary, contacts, load-in times and payment status per show in one place everyone in the band can see.

After each show, update your venue list: real attendance, what you were paid, how fast, and whether you would go back.

What we think

The Indian independent circuit still runs largely on goodwill and WhatsApp, and that is not all bad. It means a polite, specific message from an unknown act can still reach the person who books the room. But informality cuts both ways: it is the artist, usually, who absorbs the late payment, the "exposure" gig and the surprise deduction.

The fix is not lawyers. It is habit. Artists who write the terms down every time, including for friends' venues, get paid more often and are taken more seriously, and they help normalise written deals for everyone who plays the room after them. We would also argue for treating the first tour as research, not income: the data on which city turned up, which promoter paid on time and which room sounded good is the asset you are building. Five honest rows in a spreadsheet are worth more than one big-but-empty show booked for vanity.

And keep the music at the centre. A tight 35-minute set that a promoter wants to book again is a better pitch than any deck.