A live music marketplace and gig booking site is set to expand to 10 more cities after seeing success in the North of England.
GigPig launched in June after securing pre-seed funding and signing up dozens of venues in Newcastle and Manchester. The platform is free to artists and allows venues to hire musicians directly without third parties.
The company is now based in Manchester, where it employs 12 and already works with 100 of the city’s restaurants, bars, pubs and clubs. Co-founder Michael Forster is based in Newcastle, where the platform has also signed up dozens of venues.
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Now it is set to launch in 10 more cities - Brighton, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Nottingham. GigPig CEO Mr Forster hopes the expansion could help it attract more than 1,000 venues and 3,000 artists, potentially generating over 1,000 gigs a week in the coming months.
He said the inspiration for the platform came from previous work with a chain of venues in the North East, when he and his co-founders realised that a booking system they had built could have a wider use across the industry. Mr Forster, who founded GigPig with Andrew Garner, Kit Muir-Rogers and Ed Francis, said: "We knew the market wanted it because obviously it came from the market itself and is being welcomed with open arms.
"We now have opened up in Manchester alone upwards of 100 venues. We just had a massive sales week last week as well with some great accounts on top of the ones that we have. We've trialled it in Manchester, and the North East because that was where we had a large concentration of artists in the first place, but the growth has massively been in the North West. And the whole of the hospitality industry looks to Manchester these days - the big national operators are looking at the Manchester operators to see who's cool, what's new, what's coming."
Mr Forster has worked in the live music industry for 30 years and says he wants to help artists make a living from their music. He said: "In 2019 there was just shy of 60,000 gigging artists around the UK, and post-pandemic it gets down to about 40,000. That's 20,000 artists that have been lost to jobs like Amazon drivers, etc, who we're trying to get back into the industry.
"One of the things as an agent I was most proud of was the young artists who used to come to us and say, 'Look, can I do this professionally?' So the thing I'm most proud of is that we enable artists to follow their dreams basically."
Among the companies working with GigPig are national chains such as Arc Inspirations, and NQ64. GigPig says it works with Manchester venues including Crazy Pedros, The Alan, Freemount Stack and Jimmy’s Manchester. In the North East, GigPig works with venues including Stack, Tiger Hornsby, and Apartment Group.
Mark Austin, head of operations at Arc Inspirations, said: "GigPig has been a revolution for our business, a simple and intuitive system that has allowed us to streamline and make significant cost savings on our ever growing entertainment offerings."
Afnan Prince, a lifelong career musician and early adopter of GigPig, said: "What GigPig is trying to do is nothing short of amazing for our industry." Kate Nicholls, chief executive at trade body UKHospitality, said: “Going to see our favourite bands or artists perform is always such a great experience and our vibrant and diverse live music venues play such a central part of that.
"Hospitality can play a key role in driving economic growth in our cities and innovating has always been a key part of what we do as a sector. It’s fantastic to see businesses like GigPig explore new ways of working and I’m looking forward to seeing the results of its national rollout.” Nik Antona, national chairman at the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), said: "We're delighted to support GigPig - an easy-to-use and valuable tool to help local pubs book live musicians and DJs. We know that many top musicians have started their careers performing in the nation's pubs, and publicans can use live music to help drive traffic on slower evenings.
"As the hub of their local community, pubs are natural live music venues, creating a fantastic opportunity for people to get together and enjoy a pint while listening to the music they love."
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