Revolutionary gig booking app to launch in Leitrim this week

A new gig booking App for bars will launch on Thursday night at the Barrelstore in Carrick-on-Shannon at 8 pm with local band Late Night Radio providing music.

The app, Ceolconnect, created by three business students from DCU, aims to take the trouble out of booking gigs for bar managers and, hopefully, make it easier for young artists to get a start performing.

The trio, which includes Eoghan Matthews, a musician from Carrick-on-Shannon, first got the idea when they had to put together a fake business for a college module.

The young man, who got his start in music in the bars around Carrick-on-Shannon, is well accustomed to the difficulty of trying to get your start in music and getting booked as a live performer for the first time.

“When I first started gigging, the best way to describe it is someone has to take a chance on you,” he says.

He was also aware of the difficulty that bar managers face when trying to book artists months, if not a year, in advance to ensure they had good quality musicians playing their venues during the summer.

“When I was 18, I didn't really know if I wanted to be around the following summer, a full year away, because I wanted to do J1, I wanted to do Interrail and stuff, but if you say no to the gigs and I didn't do any of that stuff, then I'd have no work for the summer, basically.”

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Meanwhile in cities, like Cork, Galway, and Dublin, arrangements are made through agencies, who take a cut of the booking fee.

When they began interviewing bar managers for the project, they realised that the problems went both ways, with artists often cancelling last minute and bar managers needing to scramble to find someone.

“It's actually like your LinkedIn profile as a business person, that you can see where you've played before, you can have videos of you playing.”

“It's kind of like a portfolio and then for the bar, on the other flip side of it is the bar is not going in completely blind because the first time I played in a bar, the barman couldn't be sure whether I'd clear the bar or if I'd bring in more business because that's what music is for, a bar is to bring in more business.”

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There was weight behind the idea, and they applied to the Enterprise Ireland New Frontiers course, which provided them with a salary for six months and space to work on it.

They have raised €200,000 in investment for the start-up so far as they launch the product, starting in Carrick on Shannon this week.

“If anything goes wrong or if there are any problems or bugs in the app, we trust the bars in Carrick and the musicians in Carrick to let us know and we'll fix that.”

The goal is to expand quickly after they have trialled it in Carrick; they aim to expand across Ireland and then into the UK within a year.