NACA

"I been down this road before."

CHaT (of which I was a board member) did this, some years ago.

You're going to spend a lot MORE than $315 before you showcase.

First, you'll need to apply for showcases at each conference. Application fees range from $35 to $100, last I checked.

They always highly recommend that you have a VIDEO of your performance. So get one made/duplicated on VHS (and probably DVD now). Not cheap.

Next, you'll HAVE to buy a booth at each conference. That's several hundred dollars right there. I think it's set up so you need to pay half for the booth before you find out if you showcase, and then you pay the second half if you actually get a showcase, or you can forfeit the other half and give up your booth, or you can pay the other half and just go staff the booth in the hopes of getting gigs when nobody has seen you play... You can't play live in the booth, but you can hand out demos and have listening headphones there.

Course, then you need an actual booth setup. If you've ever been to any conference/festival (even non-musical) you've seen how glitzy these can be. Those cost money. Lots. You can make a simpler booth yourself, or if you are creative with fabrics and lumber, maybe even build your own glitzy one, for the cost of time (you have very little of that) and materials (not all that cheap either)

Now your collective needs to score enough showcasing slots that it's worth building a booth everybody likes well enough, and having somebody on duty at that booth, setting it up, tearing it down, etc.

Throw in travel and expenses related to that, for your act[s], and at least one other person to run the booth, and...

Now, this HAS been successfully worked out by SOME people. I know one gal who did this, went to one conference, and scored $10,000 in gigs after playing one killer set. There are also solo/duo acts that make a good, solid living at this.

I also know a ton of people who worked it very hard, spent a lot of money and even more effort, and got nothing in return.

The NACA rules and regulations and the forms and whatnot will also drive you crazy, or at least they did me.

Also keep in mind that at NACA events, you are competing with not only all the other music acts, but also Seminars (drug abuse, alcohol awareness, etc) and Novelty Shows (reptile taming, etc) and carnivals (rides/games) and jugglers and ...

The Buyers at NACA events, in my experience, fall into several categories, presented in their most frequent order:

1. Student Government that spent $30,000 for ____brand_name_____, and now have $10,000 to find 4 more acts that "sound like" other brand name acts. If you're a Dave Matthews sound-alike, you have a shot. If not, don't bother giving them a demo. They won't like it. It's not what they hear on commercial radio, so it must suck.

2. Political Activists looking for specific theme-related acts/talks. So if you can ALSO sell a Seminar, run by yourself, on XYZ, you increase your odds here.

3. Party Band Seekers - They want their fellow students to Party On so they can get re-elected to their position.

4. Music Lovers -- These are, alas, few and far between, and generally were very genre-specific-minded, and were on a committee with several other Music Lovers who, alas, were also very genre-specific-minded, but in a DIFFERENT genre. So either they guy/gal who loved your stuff argued well to get you booked in the committee meeting, or not, and/or had enough favors owed to call them in this time around, or...

Most of the bands involved in CHaT only fit into Category 4 criteria. We were not particularly successful, and dropped out of NACA after a couple years. Too expensive, and no benefits were happening.

Perahps we didn't go about it as well as we could have -- Perhaps we needed to focus more on the few bands in our organization who fit into the first category, to get the ball rolling.

You should definitely be on the lookout for acts you like who are successful at the NACA circuit, and talk to them. :-)

You may want to contact somebody like Terry Mazurak over at Peppermint CDs who does a fantabulous job of "working it" for them and theirs at NACA and via her contacts in the College Market.

But I would seriously suggest you do a lot more research before you send in your $315 and form a co-op. It's not quite that simple :-)

You may want to consider trying to get signed on with an agency such as Wally's World of Entertainment or Auburn Moon who already have a solid roster of indie music artists and do the NACA thing routinely.

Wally and Nancy (Auburn Moon) basically run a business of getting their indie acts gigs at colleges. They rock.

They're very selective in what they take on though, and you probably should exhibit some success at getting a few college gigs on your own first.

You can also go after college gigs direct, at most colleges. Most of them use NACA and demo submissions in a balanced way. Some few use NACA exclusively, for whatever reason.

Also be sure to focus your efforts on more than just the standard official Student Government Entertainment Committee of the school.

I know one guy who focussed on Women Freshman Dormitories and convinced their Activities Chairperson it would be way more cool to host a dorm concert with him than to throw yet another pizza party for their semester Event.

They were already collecting $20 from each dorm resident for this kind of stuff, and had to spend it somehow on Events. They had spent some of it on other Events, and some on refreshments for his concert. But still. Do the math.

Now he routinely plays College gigs, in part because the Freshman women who booked him years ago, and the ones who saw him perform, bought his CD, played it incessantly, later became the ones in charge of choosing acts for the whole school.

This is a longer row to hoe for the really big money gigs, but you have better odds convincing one 18-year-old young woman to spend a little money on you instead of another Pizza Party, than convincing a half-dozen committee members to spend a small fortune on you. YMMV