Your band is a business.
Almost nobody runs it like one.
You have the room, the years and the material. What you probably do not have is a business built around them — the positioning, the assets a buyer actually asks for, and a pipeline that keeps producing without you chasing it. That is the part we take over.
Zaestro is a US company in Albany, New York. Thirty years of building businesses, now applied to careers.
30+ years in business
Building and growing companies since the nineties
Management, not a middleman
We work on the business, and we work it with you
We build it ourselves
Site, EPK, CRM and tracking — in-house, not outsourced
Registered US company
Albany, New York — a real, accountable counterparty
Being good is not the bottleneck
We hear the same five things from acts with decades of stage time. None of them are about the music.
The website talks to fans, not buyers
A talent buyer needs the technical rider, the stage plot, the dates, high-resolution photos and a way to reach you in under a minute. Most artist sites bury all of it under a tour poster and a Facebook feed.
Nobody knows where a booking came from
Enquiries land in a personal inbox, a DM and a cell phone at once. Nothing is logged, so you cannot tell which venue, festival or contact is actually producing work — and you cannot repeat what worked.
The pitch rests on claims that do not survive a check
Chart positions, awards and nominations get repeated until they harden into fact. A serious buyer verifies them, and one bad claim costs you the room. We have found this in every act we have looked at.
The money has one shape
The fee for a night, and nothing else. No sponsorship, no recurring revenue, no product with margin — so a slow quarter has nothing underneath it.
The pipeline lives in one person's head
Usually the bandleader's, alongside rehearsals, travel, payroll and the actual playing. There is no follow-up system, so warm contacts go cold in the gap between one show and the next.
We take the business side and run it
Not advice you have to go implement. We restructure it, we build it, and then we operate it alongside you.
Positioning & business structure
The part that decides everything downstream. Who the act is for, what it is worth, where the money comes from, and what it takes to charge more than it does today.
- Positioning and the story the act actually sells on
- Fee structure and what the market will carry
- Revenue beyond the fee — sponsorship, product, recurring
- Verification of every claim before it reaches a buyer
- A written plan for where the career goes next
The assets buyers ask for
Built to be sent to a festival director, not to impress your fans. If it is not usable by someone deciding on a booking, it does not get built.
- Artist website built around conversion, not a poster
- Electronic press kit written for talent buyers
- Stage plot and input list as a clean PDF
- Dates, press and video where a buyer expects them
- Photo and brand direction, including what to reshoot
The pipeline and the systems
The machinery that makes outreach repeatable and enquiries traceable — so nothing depends on someone remembering to follow up.
- Target list of venues, festivals and promoters with deadlines
- CRM where every contact, enquiry and conversation is logged
- A tracked phone number and forms that record where each lead came from
- Follow-up sequences so warm contacts do not go cold
- Reporting you can read in two minutes
Audience and reach
Once the foundation converts, we turn attention into something measurable instead of into likes.
- Search visibility for the act's name and its market
- Mailing list built and actually used
- Paid campaigns when there is something worth promoting
- Content that supports bookings rather than chasing virality
- Attribution, so spend is judged on work booked
What this looks like in the first thirty days
One current engagement, described exactly as it stands. We would rather show a month of real work than a testimonial.
A Southern gospel group · six decades on the road
An act with sixty-six years of history, a following, and a business that had never been built. We started with the business, not the website.
A site built for buyers
Five pages, including an EPK and a booking page, with enquiries recorded and attributed instead of landing in a personal inbox.
Technical documents that did not exist
Stage plot and a fourteen-channel input list produced as a PDF a sound engineer can work from — previously the EPK said 'in preparation'.
The touring year, published
Twenty dates gathered from a flyer and a phone and turned into a page a promoter can check before calling.
A target list with deadlines
Twelve festivals researched down to their submission windows — including which ones do not accept applications at all, and who has to be contacted directly instead.
Attribution from day one
A tracked number and a lead record for every enquiry, so a year from now the act knows exactly which relationships pay.
The part most people would leave out
Before writing a single pitch we audited every claim in their existing press material. Two did not hold up — a chart position that turned out to come from a different source entirely, and an award described as a nomination that was not one yet. We pulled both, rewrote what could be said accurately, and told the artist why. A talent buyer would have checked. Better it costs us an uncomfortable conversation than costs the act a festival.
No booking numbers here on purpose: this engagement is weeks old, and we do not publish results we have not produced yet.
The terms, before you ask for them
Artists get burned by vague arrangements. Ours is written down in two pages, and this is all of it — including the part that asks something of you.
A ninety-day pilot
Long enough to build the foundation and work a pipeline, short enough that you are not trapped if we are wrong for each other. It ends on a scheduled review, not a renewal you forget to cancel.
Exclusive, and narrow
During the pilot we are your only representation. Two people working the same buyers in your name costs you credibility with the ones who matter, and makes it impossible to tell whose work produced what. What you are agreeing to is narrower than it sounds: you keep answering your own phone, you keep talking to anyone who reaches out, and every relationship you already have stays yours to handle directly. You are agreeing not to put a second representative in the market at the same time — nothing more than that.
What we owe you for it
Exclusivity runs both ways. In the first forty-five days we commit to at least twenty documented approaches to new buyers, a pipeline you can open at any hour of any day, and a written update every week whether the news is good or not. If we miss the twenty, you end this on the spot — you should not have to wait out ninety days to find out whether we are working.
Commission only on work we originate
Every relationship you already have is listed and frozen on day one — those are yours, permanently, and we never take a percentage of them. We are paid on what we bring in, and only when you are paid.
A tail on what we started
If we open a door during the pilot and it turns into a date six months later, the commission still applies. The pipeline is shared, so both sides can see exactly what was in it.
Costs at cost
A small monthly operations budget covers third-party expenses — application fees, tools, tracking — billed at what they cost, with nothing added. Anything beyond it needs your approval first.
You own everything
Domain, website, code, contact data, CRM and accounts are in your name from the first day. If you leave, you leave with all of it. That is what keeps us earning the next month.
Fifteen days to walk away
Either side, in writing, for any reason — and the exclusivity ends the day the agreement does. There is no year-long tie-up here and no automatic renewal. We would rather be chosen than retained.
One thing we want to be precise about
Zaestro acts as management: we work on the business of the act, its positioning, its assets and its systems. We are not a licensed talent or booking agency and do not present ourselves as one — where the law requires a licensed agency to procure engagements, that work goes to a licensed agency, not to us. Nothing on this page is a promise of bookings.
Who this is actually for
We take on very few artists, because this is operating work and not advice. It is worth being blunt about both sides.
This works when
- You already perform well and the rooms confirm it
- There is history, a catalogue or a following to build on
- You are willing to hear that a claim, a price or a photo is not good enough
- Someone on your side answers email within a couple of days
- You want a business around the act, not just a nicer website
This does not work when
- You are looking for someone to get you shows and nothing else
- The act is still finding its sound or its line-up
- Decisions need six people to agree before anything moves
- You want the website but not the conversation about pricing and claims
- You expect results in the first month — the foundation takes about that long
Questions artists actually ask
Straight answers, before you spend an hour on a call.
That footer credit means we built that site — and, in that case, that we manage the business side of the act as well. If what you saw looked like what your own act is missing, this page is the same service. Use the form and tell us whose site you came from.
No, and the distinction matters legally. We are management: we work on how the act is positioned, what it charges, what it can sell, the materials a buyer needs and the systems behind them. States like New York and California license agencies that procure employment for performers — where that licensing is required, the work belongs to a licensed agency and we say so rather than blur the line.
A commission on work we originate, paid when you are paid, plus a small monthly operations budget billed at cost for third-party expenses. No retainer during the pilot, and no percentage of the relationships you already had. The exact numbers go in the two-page agreement before anything starts.
Because the problem usually is not musical. Thirty years of building businesses is what tells you the fee is priced below the market, the offer has one revenue stream too few, or the pitch rests on a claim that will not survive checking. We bring the business discipline and the systems; you bring six decades of knowing your room. Where we need industry specifics, we research them properly and show our work.
Only if it is costing you work, which we will show you rather than assert. The test is simple: can a festival director find your rider, your stage plot, your dates and your contact in under a minute, and does anything record that they came? If not, the site is a brochure and not an asset.
No. You approve every price, every pitch and every public claim. We do not sign anything on your behalf, and everything we build is in your name from day one. Management here means we do the work and carry the systems — not that we own the career.
The foundation — site, EPK, technical documents, target list, tracking — takes roughly three to four weeks. Outreach starts while it is being built, but the honest answer is that festival cycles run months ahead, so a pilot is judged on the pipeline it produces, not on dates confirmed inside ninety days.
We are a US company and this service is built for the US market, where our current engagement is. We work in English and Portuguese, so a Brazilian act touring the United States is a conversation worth having — but touring logistics and immigration are their own problem, and we would tell you where you need a lawyer rather than pretend otherwise.
Tell us about the act
Where you play, what you charge, and what has been stuck. We will come back with an honest read on what we would change first — including whether you need us at all.
No obligation, and no pitch deck. A real conversation about the business.