A Better Way to Plan Gigs and Tours: Why We Built GIGNITE

Dan Chantrey

Mar 16

3 min read

Updated: Aug 24

Why tour planning is harder than it should be

A tour planning platform for independent artists should make the route from a great idea to a real tour easier. Too often, it is the opposite. Artists face too many disconnected tools — or no practical tools at all — for booking, routing, venue research, suppliers, crew, agreements, budgets, invoicing, compliance, promotion and payments.

The result is too few opportunities, too little money and too much risk. Artists and managers can spend hours on admin and upfront costs without knowing whether the shows will pay back. When the risk feels greater than the reward, touring can seem out of reach — especially for smaller artists who may not yet realise they have the potential to do it.

More opportunities, better returns and more artists on the road - a better way to plan gigs and tours

That is the problem we set out to solve. We built GIGNITE to create more opportunities and better revenues for artists, and to help more people recognise and discover that touring could be possible for them.

The right opportunity, a great tour plan and the right people around you can open the door to new audiences, bigger possibilities and a career that can travel further. By helping artists and managers plan viable gigs and tours, keep practical details together and reduce avoidable costs, GIGNITE aims to increase live opportunities across the grassroots and mid-tier music industry.

GIGNITE does the heavy lifting on the arduous work behind live music, so artists and managers can focus on what they do best: making music, performing and building their careers. It is a platform, not an artist manager or management service; artists and their teams stay in control while the practical planning becomes easier to manage.

GIGNITE is FREE for artists. We are music and event people who have lived these problems — in venues, backstage, on the road and through the admin behind live events. We are not a tech startup looking in from the outside with no skin in the game. We built GIGNITE because we knew what was broken, understood how to fix it and wanted to put that practical knowledge and infrastructure in artists’ hands.

Grassroots and mid-tier artists, emerging talent and managers with smaller rosters deserve access to the tools that can help them build the international careers of tomorrow.

GIGNITE Artist tour planning dashboard showing audience locations and setting up a tour — GIGNITE Artists dashboards are a fluid step-by-step guide to getting your gigs on the road.

One place instead of endless tools and subscriptions

Planning a tour should not mean opening a dozen tabs. Artists and managers are often expected to use one tool for planning, another for promotion, another for supplier sourcing, another for agreements, another for budgets and another for invoicing — then manage payments, documents and conversations somewhere else.

Every extra tool can mean another cost, another learning curve and another place for important details to get lost. Even free tools can leave people handling manual processes and jumping between systems instead of bringing the full live workflow together.

GIGNITE brings planning, venue and supplier discovery, routing, logistics, compliance, agreements, promotion, budgets, invoicing and secure payments closer together in one connected workflow. That means less time stitching systems together and more time making good decisions about the tour itself.

Connecting everyone around the show

Live music is a team effort. GIGNITE connects artists with venues, suppliers, managers, agents and promoters, as well as crew, technicians and professional services such as photographers and videographers.

Those connections matter because a touring opportunity is only as strong as the network around it. When the right people can find one another more easily, artists can put on better shows, venues can attract suitable acts, suppliers and crew can find relevant work, and the grassroots and mid-tier sector can grow together.

Agreements, enquiries, availability, quotes and other key touring details can sit in one platform, instead of being scattered across separate conversations. Artists can sign-up in a couple of minutes, and start from a dashboard designed to make gigs and tours more manageable.

Planning for a more sustainable future

We also built GIGNITE with sustainability in mind. Optimising tours can help lower unnecessary travel and carbon footprints, while geolocating suppliers helps artists find relevant services closer to where they are performing. Better planning can be better for budgets, time and the environment.

We want more artists to look at touring and see a real possibility, not something reserved for someone else. We built GIGNITE to make the work behind live music more connected, more practical and more accessible — so artists can spend more time on the part only they can do.