At the end of December we traditionally look back at the past year. A successful year in which we have grown considerably, made our debut at the Amsterdam Dance Event and the further expansion in Europe. Some of our highlights are in this blog; so take a seat and recap the year with us!
Growth of the platform
We are currently active in eight different European countries, and one of the goals this year was to let the amount of subscribed acts grow in these countries. This has more than succeeded with a duplication (!) of the number of artists compared to last year: more than 6000 registered acts! We also see that the number of requests for live music is growing enormously this year. The month May generated a new Gigstarter record with more than 800 offer requests. Curious about our artists? Take a look at our sites in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom and Austria.
DJ Mike Gerritsen and Erik from Gigstarter during ADE
European support
We are proud that this year the European Commission supports Gigstarter with further expansion in Europe. The Horizon 2020 program allows us to extend the boundaries for live music within Europe even more. In 2018 dozens of bands have performed abroad via the platform. We want to expand this exchange even further in 2019 thanks to the fund.
Debut at the Amsterdam Dance Event
Also offline we were active with various organized events. A highlight was our official debut at the Amsterdam Dance event with a beautiful evening in the Disco Dolly. Our Dutch DJs Joe Bailar, Mike Gerritsen, DJ Amlan and the talented Belgian DJ Odssey played their tunes for an enthusiastic crowd. Also our annual Artist of the Year finale was extra special because of the international participants: the French SoulPhoenixs, rockband Stoned Therapists and the Belgian Blues veterans Buckwood Mojo. The Stoned Therapists won the title Artist of the Year, the SoulPhoenixs took off with the public choise award and the Spanish DJ Frank Gomez is the DJ of the Year.
Gigstarter Artist of the Year 2018: Stoned Therapists
In the media
Gigstarter has been a lot in the media this year. The Belgian press attention was extra special, because in a short period of time we were both in the Flemish financial newspaper De Tijd and afterwards in the large French-speaking newspaper Le Soir. From these stories many new registrations and bookings in Belgium followed. Also in the coming year we will tell the story of Gigstarter to everyone who loves music!
2019
We want to make live music more accessible in 2019 both for the professional music industry and the private events market. Furthermore, we will continue to stimulate the exchange of artists in Europe. Ambitious acts can also grow with us through the introduced PRO+ membership. With this membership you are visible as an act in every country where we are active in. We want to thank everyone who helped us this past year and who supports Gigstarter. 2019 will be a year full of live music with Gigstarter, thanks to you. With no hassle and just music!
The original Dutch article in the Flemish newspaper De Tijd
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