We were lucky to catch up with Dylan Harley recently and have shared our conversation below.
Dylan, appreciate you joining us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
When it comes to booking & promoting music the challenge of turning a profit is a major hurdle we face with each and every show we do. Getting people to come to a bar/music venue to see smaller musical acts is not as easy as posting a show flyer once and moving on. It is very easy to have a show be very popular on social media leading up to the event but end up having to pay the venue and bands out of pocket day of due to low attendance.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am Dylan Harley and I am the other half of Welcome To The Family, an independent music promotion company based out of North & South Carolina. I’ve always felt live music is the most immersive method of experiencing art. I went to a lot of “bigger” heavy metal shows in college and eventually found my way into the local music scene. After college my partner, Jake Woodard, and myself created Alt Talks Podcast where we interviewed smaller artists and reviewed new releases. This in turn became Welcome To The Family Fest, an annual local/regional music festival held in Charlotte, NC. After 3 years of running the festival we decided to move to year round show booking in early 2023. I’m based out of Greenville, SC and manage all of the bookings here while Jake manages all our Charlotte events.
Working as a partnership in two different markets really allows us to provide multiple avenues of aid to bands needing shows. I’ve taken it a step further and invite touring bands I book in Greenville to stay at my place after shows so they have somewhere safe to sleep and shower.
At the end of the day Jake and myself are really just wanting to help out the music scene as much as possible by providing solid shows for smaller artists to play.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
The music industry is no different from the rest of the world in that networking will get you everywhere you want to go. Being friendly, professional and easy to work with goes a long way with every single party you interact with while promoting a show.
Working alongside other promotion agencies in our area has been a huge help as we can trade contacts, share our thoughts on bands we’ve worked with and even co-promote larger events.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Jake and myself really put ourselves out there by volunteering our own time and money up front to promote smaller acts through our old podcast. The show created a laundry list of great relationships that we were able to use easily when it came to booking our first few live events.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://welcometothefamily.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wttffest/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wttffest
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/wttffest
Image Credits
Audrey Wilson