Our mates over at Muso have a solution! We had a chat with one of the Co-Founders of this gigging app, Alan, about his passion, live music and Muso, the app that is connecting musicians to gigs that are close to them!

Tell us a bit about Muso?

Muso was founded with the mission to create more live music in more places. Getting gigs can be an incredibly stressful exercise and often gets down to who you know, not what you know or how talented you are. Muso is in the business of making this much, much easier for musicians everywhere. 

Muso is a simple gig-booking app that puts the power in the hands of the artist. Venues list events they need musicians and DJ’s for, they outline the rate, set times, genre and artist types. As an artist, you can scroll through the ‘Gig Feed’, which is literally just that – a feed of gigs. 

If you find a gig you’re happy with you can ‘show interest’. The venue will be notified, they will check out your profile and if they’re happy they will book you. We don’t allow free gigs on Muso so every gig is a paid gig. Boom.

We want to create as many opportunities for live musicians as possible. Muso makes live music easier and more accessible for venues and because of this we’re already seeing a few venues who have never done it before start to book it consistently. It’s epic to see that we’ve already begun to make an impact. 

Tell us a little bit about the Muso team?

The Muso team is a group of people who have all come from different areas of the live music industry, we have ex-artists, venue managers and agents, all working towards a common goal. 

We are an incredibly mission-driven team, we love a good gig and we can on occasion be found playing four square in the office (no really, we do that). We’re not the quintessential start-up founders you’d read about in books, we do things very differently and we’re proud of that! 

We’re a small team now but we’re growing quickly, and we’re invested in creating as many gigs in as many places as possible. 

Where did the idea for Muso come from? 

It all began when one of our co-founders (an ex-venue manager) struggled to find live musicians for his bar. He would try and book musicians for various events, but because he wasn’t overly connected it was a time consuming and often stressful task. 

Interested to see if this was a widespread problem, two of us spent two weeks speaking to 140 venues to try and understand if the issues were beyond his own. He found that it was a common problem – venues wanted musicians and DJ’s, they just often didn’t know where to find them or how to book them, and how to do this easily.

The interesting part is that there are thousands of musicians who are out there looking for gigs. It was clear that the problem was having a connection between venues looking for artists, and artists wanting to play.  

Another one of our co-founders was on the other side – an artist. He had experienced the hustle of getting consistent gigs, it’s a massive uphill battle and he was hell-bent on solving it. 

We realised that something had to be built to connect everyone in such a fragmented industry… So that’s where Muso started. 

What is the main thing about Muso that got you all to quit your day jobs and focus solely on this app?

We are a passionate team that wants to have a real positive impact on the live music industry. We want it to be more inclusive, accessible and fair for everyone. There was a moment where we had spoken to enough artists and venues to validate that this was a real problem that needed to be fixed. 

We knew that we could make a real impact and help develop young artists into full-blown gigging machines. So, in the end, it wasn’t a hard decision at all. 

You guys are in the middle of launching across Australia, once you guys are set up, what’s next?

Muso wants to create a world where any artists can play anywhere, and we mean that quite literally. Eventually, we want artists to be able to create their own tours. We want musicians and DJs to be able to sustain amazing careers and with consistent income from gigs. So the more gigs we get on the system the better.

We are launching across Australia, but there is still so much work to be done here. There are so many venues that don’t even know that live music is the right answer for them but are starting to understand that it is. We’re working on unlocking these new spaces to bring more gigs onto the platform. So with that being said, we don’t think we will ever be ‘set up’. 

However, there will be a clear point where we will look to take Muso overseas, likely as the first step to NZ, then either Asia, the UK or the US. This will allow our artists to tour internationally or take working holidays where they can gig in venues they’ve never even heard of before. This is our mission and we’re doing everything we can to get there. 

What advice would you have for anyone thinking about signing up to Muso?

Unfortunately at this current moment, we don’t accept every artist that signs up to Muso. We do this because we want every artist on Muso to have a real chance of booking a gig. If we act like every other marketplace platform out there we will, unfortunately, saturate our venues and significantly reduce the probability of getting a gig. 

We release access codes to the platform as more and more venues move onto the system. This is to make sure that we have a fair ratio. We also let artists on based on their exact genre, style and experience – we want to make sure that every artist is ready to gig to ensure that the artists, the venues and the patrons all have a great experience through Muso. 

Everyone should sign up for an access code, as we are always releasing more. However to make sure you get the best chance, make sure you link some amazing content of you playing live. We’ve found that artists with good quality content are the ones that are booking gigs all the time, they are also the ones that capture our attention when we’re going through applications! 

Is there anything else that Muso does?

Muso is much more than just an application. We think it's important to offer a support system for our artists that extends far beyond booking gigs. The live music industry is a hard one to navigate, especially if you haven’t experienced it before. We do a lot of work outside of the core application to help with this process. 

One of these initiatives is our mentoring program, run by Matt from British India. We offer this program to artists on Muso. It’s a 30-45-minute session that allows artists to ask any questions they may have about the industry. We also utilise our networks to give our artists a leg up, connect them to the right people and give them non-monetarily incentivised advice. 

We want Muso to help young artists ascend to their very best in a live environment but also in other facets of the music industry.

JMC Academy is proud to be the Exclusive Education Partner of Muso and love being able to work closely with their team of legends. As part of our partnership, all JMC students will have access to on-campus Muso workshops throughout their time at JMC. These workshops will be held by the founders of the app to help optimise their Muso profiles and get as many gigs as possible!