For any band, the upsides to playing a college gig can be incredible. There’s good money, free beer, and a room packed with, ahem, spirited college kids, and that’s just for starters.

There are over four thousand colleges and universities in the United States (not to mention Canada) all booking live performances, but there are many more bands looking to play, and so, like anything worth having, getting booked at a college is hard to get.

There are a few significant differences between playing at a college and playing at a regular bar or venue. For clubs and bars, making a profit off of shows is essential to cover overhead. This is not the case for college concert boards, which have tens of thousands of dollars allocated to them with no expectation of it being recouped. These boards are comprised almost wholly of students, who use that money at their discretion for booking artists, paying sound technicians and renting soundsystems. This is why colleges generally pay performers more than regular clubs – because their main objective is entertaining students, not profiting off the show.

In addition to the higher pay, college gigs have residual benefits: a young crowd attracted by cheap tickets and on-campus advertising (newspapers, campus radio, fliers, word of mouth), (generally) free beer, and many good concert programs will give bands meal stipends.

So what stands between you and these shows? First of all, connecting with the college students who book shows remains a daunting task. Bookers at colleges book bands they know and like first, which are usually already-popular bands.

Second, colleges book shows in different ways. Some let the student body vote on who they want to see; others give the decision-making power to a handful of students. Georgetown University, for example, generally puts on one big concert each year or each semester, and the students vote online for who they want to see. Their choices can range from Kid Cudi to Third Eye Blind to Dirty Projectors, but whoever gets the most votes gets booked. There are smaller performances on the calendars of such schools, of course, but these large once-a-semester shows are the bread and butter of most schools’ booking agendas.

Unfortunately, I cannot imagine that most small or unknown bands will have very many opportunities to be booked at such schools. For smaller shows at these larger schools, you’ve got to assume you’re competing against campus bands – bands that the booker will have heard of, that she knows can bring people out, and that won’t be any hassle to accommodate.

For most bands looking to play college shows, small liberal arts colleges are your best bet. Their student bodies tend to have tastes that are a bit more hip (-ster? -pie?), so even niche bands can draw a good crowd, and more people are willing to take chances on shows because they are free or low-cost. Even so, these colleges present their own challenges to bands seeking gigs.

For example, Oberlin College, where I went to college and booked bands for a couple years, has three primary venues – a bar (rock/pop/electronic shows), a coffeehouse (jazz/ folk/comedy shows), and a large chapel (large performances/convocation speakers). Each venue had its primary booking committee – SUPC, Cat in the Cream, and Program Board, respectively – plus another committee (Concert Board) that put on most of its shows at the bar. Each group had its own sizable budget and brought several shows a semester.

Most of these committees were comprised of people who would generally bring a certain kind of show – one kid who mostly booked jam bands, one who booked rap acts, one who booked punk. The artists they would bring would often be bands they already liked or had heard before – not usually bands who contacted them. And even when it comes to opening acts, most openers are local bands suggested by the headliner, friends of the booker, or bands that have been bugging the booker to play and that they want to get off their backs.

As you can see, for a new or relatively unknown band or performer, it can be tough to land a college gig. Many colleges don’t book small or unknown groups, and of the ones that do, it can be hard to get through to a booker and get booked. But it is possible! And in the second part of this piece, I’ll show you the best ways how.