When Mike Cohen decided he wanted to get into artist management, Berklee Online was the obvious choice. “Obviously, regarding music, Berklee has always come to mind as one of the top players. I found the online courses and thought, ‘Wow, this is perfect!’” Cohen recalls. He soon enrolled in the Artist Management professional certificate program.
After completing the certificate program, Cohen went into artist management. This eventually lead him to booking where he amassed the contacts needed to launch Gigwax in summer 2014. Gigwax is a free, New York-based booking service that connects DJs directly with venues.
“The way we work right now is essentially as a gig listing service. We have over 800 DJs locally in New York, and we’re looking to roll out next year into main cities like Boston, Miami, and Chicago,” Cohen explains. “Gigwax connects all these people in a way where we go out to bars and convince promoters to post their gigs, and then DJs just apply to it. We send out a list of applications to the music program of the venue or whoever set up the gig. They choose, or we can help them choose. The next feature we’re going to launch - hopefully in the next few weeks – is actual DJ profiles. The profiles allow the DJs to promote themselves. Eventually, we want to be able to tackle the private market in terms of bar mitzvahs, birthdays, gallery openings, whatever. We feel that it will help artists build their profiles, be more proactive with it, then have people come in and browse the DJs so they can say, ‘Oh, I want this guy for my party.’ They can try to contact them then decide if it’s for free or if they’re paying a fee – you know how it goes. But we definitely want to comb the market for live music booking — obviously starting with a niche that is the one we know, building a community with it, then trying to stretch the tentacles a little further.” Cohen and his business partners hope to open Gigwax up to full bands, solo musicians, and more in the future.
“Berklee helped me grasp a little more of the little ins and outs of management and all the marketing and online marketing that goes with it and how to place it. It’s always been about contacts: who do I know? Who owns the clubs? Who has the best parties? It definitely helped me grasp more of what an artist needs in terms of getting his name out there,” Cohen says of his Berklee Online studies.
If you’re based in NYC, you can sign up for Gigwax here. Watch the video below to see a party that Gigwax threw in a subway car!