The Guild Showcase

The Showcase is the one Guild series that a non-member cannot play. That is not a status exercise. It exists because the Showcase is the moment where membership has to visibly do something for a member's career, and a benefit open to everyone is not a benefit.

The format

Five Guild members. Twenty minutes each. A hundred minutes of music plus changeovers, which puts the night at a little over two hours, and that is deliberate — a showcase that runs four hours is a showcase where the last two acts play to the bar staff.

Twenty minutes is the industry standard for a reason. It is long enough to establish who you are and short enough that nobody in the room checks their phone. Most artists fit four songs into it comfortably. The ones who try to fit six are gently talked out of it.

Production is the same for all five acts. Nobody gets a better engineer because they went on last.

• Sound — a full professional rig with an engineer who has the input list before load-in, and a proper line check for every act.
• Video — multi-camera capture of every set, cut and colour-graded afterwards.
• Photography — a stills photographer working the whole night, with usable images delivered to each artist.
• Backline — a shared house kit and amplification so changeovers take five minutes instead of twenty.

Every artist leaves with the footage and the photographs. They retain ownership of their music. The Guild retains the right to use the material to promote the Guild, which is agreed in writing before the show.

Who is in the room

The Showcase is the night the Guild spends its relationships. Invitations go to bookers, venue programmers, studio owners, sync and licensing people, local press, and the businesses that sponsor Guild events. They are guests, they are not paying, and they are asked for nothing except to turn up and watch.

Nothing is promised on either side. No artist is told a deal will come out of it, and no guest is told they must take a meeting. What is offered is a well-run room where five good acts play twenty focused minutes with professional sound, which is a rarer thing than it should be.

The value of the Showcase is not that somebody important is watching. It is that when somebody important is watching, you sound the way you actually sound.

How the five are selected

Selection is by the booking team, from the Guild membership, and it is a judgement rather than a queue. The criteria are stated here so that nobody has to guess.

• Readiness. Twenty minutes has to be twenty minutes of finished material, played tightly. This is the single largest factor and the one that most often decides it.
• Balance across the bill. Five songwriters in a row makes a long night. The five are chosen partly against each other.
• Momentum. Artists with something happening — a release, a tour, a run of good local shows — get more from the room and give more to it.
• Turn. A member who has played a recent Showcase moves behind members who have not.
• Contribution. Members who show up for other members' shows, take gig board work seriously and volunteer are visible to the booking team, and it counts.

Members can put themselves forward, and should. A profile in the artist directory with current music on it, a clear genre and an honest typical draw is most of the application. The rest is having been seen playing.

What it is not

It is not a competition. There is no winner, no vote, no bracket, and no ranking published afterwards. Competitions between musicians who all know each other tend to cost more in goodwill than they generate in ticket sales.

It is also not a substitute for a paid booking. Showcase sets carry a fee, as every Guild set does, but a twenty-minute slot is priced as a twenty-minute slot. An artist ready to headline a Guild Live show should be headlining a Guild Live show; the Showcase is not a demotion or a probation period.

Attending

Members are admitted free, as they are to every Guild Live night. Public tickets are the low end of the usual range, because the room being full matters more here than the door takings. If you are considering joining the Guild and want to see what the membership actually amounts to, this is the show to come to.